I think he's been pretty good this season, but nowhere near as incredible as most have claimed. Last season I think he was pretty awful. Overall I would give him a B. I don't think he's guaranteed success in the future. We could do better. We won't. But we could.

You're correct. I should have just assumed that he was an idiot from the get-go and realised that he was incapable of realising that the club was lacking in ambition and dysfunctional before he joined. Not like there were obvious signs or anything...

Don't upset the Eustace cult. Let's not forget, he came in here 12 months ago and read from the hymn book. Didn't miss a beat about operation survival and what a mess the club was. 12 months later and he'll leave us because of lack of ambition when the club is in the top 6? Smacks of an opportunist who talks out of both sides of his mouth. IF he leaves, then he deserves the lies he may have been told over the last 12 months as he was telling just as many himself. Unfortunately for us, our club will eventually be filled with the types of characters that our ownership and leadership deserve.

I'm not being positive about it, but it depends what you define as 'operate'. I think we could live out some very depressing Championship seasons for quite a while. We will always have enough pull to get the odd decent loan and free agent signing and to put together squads that are OK for this level. Now, things could very easily go wrong and I don't see how we recover in League One in our current state, but I don't think we are guaranteed to go down over the next 2/3 seasons.

My God, they've even put the 'you know' in the quote.

We will get some compensation for Dolan. Tyjon will probably end up being worth something. Not Wharton levels, but a talented English attacking player will always be worth a few million. Pears could be shifted for a couple of million if we ever saw fit. Please God. We will get Sigurdsson off of the wage bill this summer and likely give up on the Cantwell experiment at some point over the next 18 months and trim wages further. You then take the Dennis wages off of the wage bill and we will be looking at a much lower spend next year compared with this. As history has also shown, every couple of years we will get an academy talent through who will be worth 2/3m+. I'm not advocating this approach, but I don't think the club is going to go out of business.

JDT is the only manager who's really managed to get a tune out of him. That isn't some pro-JDT statement, but I think he's a fairly limited player and it is the only time that the system really worked in his favour.

I don't think so. We are out of golden eggs for now, if we are committed to only spending exactly what we can afford as a self-sufficient club then we will be able to keep the lights on through transfers. There will be enough academy talent and the odd player increasing in value and we will be able to keep things going. Put it this way, the couple of hundred thousand generated from an extra cup tie isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference. Let's say things got THAT bad. What is that? Another week of staying in business? It's a drop in the bucket.

I don't think we need any money. We clearly have no intent to use the money generated from transfer revenue for anything other than basic overheads. I don't think the club generating extra revenue has any impact on anything.

No it isn't.

Because we have a small squad that is stretched enough as it is. We have a small chance of making the playoffs, an even smaller chance of making our way through them, but a 0% chance of winning the FA Cup. It allows us to focus our attention where it matters and to get that tiny bit of extra rest that could prove the difference in one or two matches.

Happy to be out of the cup. No shame in the performance and killed ourselves by letting them score 2 quick goals. A few positives mixed in with some known negatives. Let's see if Eustace will leave. Let's see how quickly the new signings can get up to speed. But there's no reason to be too down about going out to a Premier League side.

You would hope that Eustace has learned from his experience here and will not make future job decisions based on promises. Read the lay of the land. Look at past behaviour. See past managerial treatment. You can also look at Derby and see that they may even have an ownership change in the future. It's a big risk. A leopard never changes its spots and all that...

That's fair, but we also can't undersell what a decent job this is overall. There are only 24 Championship jobs, most of them include absolutely no hope of promotion. We have consistently flirted with the idea of making the playoffs. Is our club a mess? Yes. Are our owners awful? Yes. Can you believe anything that you're told from senior leadership? No. But, we still have a decent squad (I think generally better than it gets credit for on here most of the time), find ourselves in the top half of the Championship, and are doing well enough to be raising his profile and demand. Any sensible person would see that it would be worth sticking out the last few months and reassessing your situation in the summer. JDT left because he knew we were done last season and because the Sweden job was one of the best he could have hoped to get post-Rovers. Eustace would be leaving with an outside chance of promotion and for a job that is, by any objective assessment, worse than where he currently finds himself.

It's a very long game that comes with huge risk. It would also be something of a desperate move considering the fact that he is likely to be linked with most Championship jobs. He will have the opportunity to jump ship over the next 6-8 months for a better job.

That would be great. Sign me up now. Been immensely impressed by how he speaks about football and his club. Obviously hard to judge the quality of the results and how success in Ireland translates elsewhere, but nothing but positives about him so far.

I would be somewhat stunned if he went to Derby. As chaotic as our club is and as much as he may feel let down by our transfer business and false promises, he still has a chance - albeit a small one - of getting a club promoted. At Derby he has a chance - a fairly significant one - of being relegated. It would be an insane career decision. Getting promoted to the Premier League would be rocket fuel for his career. A guarantee of being linked with every top 6 Championship job in the future and the possibility of establishing himself as a Premier League manager. Relegation with Derby would be a major setback to his career and he would at best be hoping for a midtable Championship job to bounce back. Now, things might change if Derby take a bit of time to make their decision and we lose 2/3 more on the bounce and he feels like the playoffs are gone.

Have I changed my mind on if we should have offered him a new contract in October? No. It would have been ridiculous. Do I think we should be offering him a new contract now? I think the offseason would be the time to discuss an extension.

It's a bit of a tricky one. I do feel sorry for him, but I'm not also sure how the club could have handled it better. We didn't complete our signings until the very end of the window (that's a topic for another day) so we couldn't be certain that we didn't have space to register him until there was only a small bit of the window left - not long enough for him to be moved on. They could have had a conversation with him ahead of time and informed him that he would not be registered if a certain number of players were signed, but then you run the risk of not signing those players and having a disgruntled player who knows that he's not really part of your plans. The club make a mess of a lot of things, but he is just an unfortunate casualty in this situation and one that can't really complain that much given the fact that he has had such extensive injury problems.

My big issue is how long he spent appealing for the handball. He made the initial gesture, that's fine, that's normal, but he then made a second gesture as play continued. This undoubtedly meant that he wasn't in the ideal position or footing to then save a shot. We don't have VAR. Why would you appeal once the decision hasn't been given?

Agreed. Dennis is the type of deal that you may only get on deadline day and it is an argument for why you need something left in reserve. But most of our dealings could and should have been handled in the first week and that may have resulted in 2-5 more points from our January fixtures. That could prove crucial.

Probably a CM away from this being a pretty decent window. Of course, I would have loved to see us spend a bit of money, but I'm also aware that loans are not freebies. Bringing Denis in won't be cheap - although I'm sure his lack of playing time means that we aren't picking up much of his wages. How fit is he? Time will tell. We don't really have that luxury, but have to hope that he can get up to speed and add a component that this side has been desperately missing. We also have to cross our fingers when it comes to our central midfield options. We have 3 viable options there. We can't afford injuries. Can't afford suspensions. We have midfielders who have a tendency to pick up both.

Over 180 minutes against a good team we would rely on the opposition misfiring. You look at our results so far against the current top 6 and we've not done super well. We've scored 5 and conceded 7, but we've also been on the back foot. I don't think xG is perfect, but we've created an average xG of .87, whereas our opposition have created an average x6 of 1.48 (our season average is .97, so, unsurprisingly, the good teams are creating a lot more chances against us). We've actually been fairly efficient, as an xG of 6.07 has resulted in 5 goals (although that includes the Weimann strike against Burnley). Our well-drilled defensive unit has benefit from some slight profligacy, with an xG of 10.37 only resulting in 7 goals. The sample size is so small that you can't read that much into it, but it's still an indicator that we would be up against it if we had to play 3 matches against top 6 sides.

If we find a goalscorer then we'd have an (outside) chance. I'd struggle to see us beating any playoff side over two legs as it's difficult to rely on them misfiring for 180 minutes and we will find it hard to score the 2-4 goals we would need to go through.

We aren't getting mentioned much in the French press when it comes to Mohamed leaving Nantes. The big stumbling block appears to be that they want a transfer, but most clubs interested in him just want a loan. That's seemingly a no-go for Nantes - and would also make it unlikely that he finds his way over here. Latest reports (from the last 24 hours or so) have indicated that Nantes may have decided that they're happy to keep him. The concern with him is his mindset. He doesn't feel wanted at Nantes and so wants to leave, but if they decide that they want to keep him and convince him that he is a central part in their plans then he may be happy to stay. No doubting his talent. He'd be the best goalscorer we would have had since Rhodes.