ClaphamFox

What rumours?

After Saturday's game Rowett was pretty adamant that away points will mean nothing if we can't win our home games. He knows that home draws won't get us out of the mess we're in. I think he'll go for it tonight.

Well you've said it yourself—Ayew gets into the matchday squad because of the lack of other options. Despite his limitations, Daka is essential to the way Rowett wants us to play because of his energy and willingness to chase lost causes. If we try to make him run for 90mins every game he'll probably end up doing his hamstring or something and then we'd be properly buggered. Ayew comes on to preserve Daka's fitness. However now that JJ is fit, it opens up the possibility opens up for Mukasa to slot in for Daka when required so we may see less of Ayew—unless of course there is some truth in the conspiracy theory about his contract....

Ayew is the opposite of a Rowett style of player. He won't start him unless circumstances force his hand, and even then he'll probably look at other options first.

I think you might be very close with this. He'll want to bring James and Mukasa in but won't want to drop Skipp or Winks, so the logical move is to play James further up (even though that's not his best position) and Mukasa as a winger (where he can play). The only question is whether Mavididi or Fatawu drop out. I also suspect we'll see Lascelles from the start tonight.

You should read the QPR forum…

Nolan gone.

He was brilliant on Saturday—not just in his own performance, but in how he was constantly cajoling and organising his teammates. He's been our best player since returning to the team under Rowett. We are desperately short of leaders on the pitch and at the moment he is doing that for us. All I care about is staying up, and we're a much better side with Winks in it at the moment. Right now I couldn't care less about his issues with previous managers.

Winks is probably the best player in his position in the Championship, so not exactly in the same category as Thomas and Mavididi....

Listened to about half of the latest one so far. Really enjoyed the interview with Henry Winter, which reinforced the view that many of us have that we have basically fallen victim to the perils of hereditary rule. We had a strong and charismatic leader who died in tragic circumstances, leaving control to his decidedly less charismatic and far less capable son. Dynastic succession is no way to run a business, as the KP group discovered before they booted Top out of the CEO role there. However I also agree with Henry that Top won't walk away given his emotional bond with the place that houses his beloved father's statue and memorial garden. An interesting tidbit on the appeal against the six-point deduction—Henry suggested there was a 'bit of tit-for-tat' going on there, which did not surprise me at all as I suspected it at the time. However it wasn't clear who he thinks is doing the titting and who is doing the tatting...

Who do you think JJ comes in for?

Nobody is suggesting that a continuation of that points average will lead to anything other than relegation. What some people are pointing out is that Rowett has had a tough set of games to start with and he has only lost one of them. There has also been a very clear improvement in defensive shape and resilience in those three drawn games. It won't mean anything if we fail to back it up with home wins, but it is a start.

I disagree. He will be sold this summer for considerably less than we once assumed we’d get for him. Then, after a period of adjusting to a normal club environment in which standards are are set and there a consequences for failure, he will begin to thrive and will eventually become one hell of a player.

Steady on, old chap. Some of us are just a bit more optimistic, that’s all…

In Rowett’s first four matches we’ve played three of the best-performing sides in the Championship so far this year. In two of those games (Middlesbrough and Ipswich away) virtually everyone on the pre-match threads were convinced we’d get thrashed, yet in both cases we got a point. I think people sometimes forget just how low we’ve sunk. We’ve been utterly horrendous in three of the past four seasons—our decline has been so spectacular it will be studied for generations to come. Rowett has come in to one of the most dysfunctional environments any manager will ever face and had to play three of the division’s best-performing sides in his first four games—and lost only one of them. This is clearly progress. It won’t mean anything if he doesn’t start winning games in the much easier run of fixtures ahead, but he’s instilled some resilience and stopped the rot. It surprises me that some people don’t see that this is a step in the right direction.

Three of our four points were gained in the past four games under a new manager, and two of those points were gained against teams in the top three at the time. Your analysis conveniently ignores the fact that Rowett has undeniably made us a lot more resilient—we’d have lost all three of those games under Cifuentes. Whether he can build on that platform to improve our home form remains to be seen, but taking a 10-game perspective that includes the fag end of the Marti era and King’s ill-fated cameo is a little misleading.

It's no coincidence that our worst run of the season has come during Jordan James's absence. After the 1-1 draw with Wrexham we were 14th (and even taking off six points for the later PSR deduction we'd have been 17th). His return is a major positive. Rowett will get us clean sheets. Maybe not tomorrow, but probably in one of the two home games after that. It's what he does. I'm not saying we'll definitely stay up—just that relegation is not inevitable, as some have suggested. Rowett's time in charge of us won't be defined solely by last week's loss against the current best side in the division, no matter how demoralising as it was.

I wish mate

No they haven't. They played well for Rowett in two away games and then badly in one home game. While the optimism that followed the two draws was clearly overdone, the pessimism following the home loss (against the Championship's best side this year) has also been overdone. There will be more good games and more bad games, and more sharp mood swings among the fan base, before the season ends.

He's clearly lacking match fitness, for understandable reasons. But I thought his positional play and reading of the game looked better than Okoli's last weekend. He needs a few games under his belt but I think he will prove to be an upgrade on Okoli.

Rowett's had his first full week on the training pitch to get his ideas across without the distraction of a midweek game. He's also got James and Lascelles back. 0-1 Rowettball shithouse incoming...

Less than half that.

It seems the clubs voted for it.

It’s probably harder to walk away when you’re from the town and love the club. Sometimes emotional attachment is more powerful than professional pride.

Not necessarily. The argument that ‘he worked in the finance department during the mess so he must be responsible for it’ is basically guilt-by-association dressed up as analysis. It’s an easy assumption to make from the outside, but that doesn’t make it accurate. If an organisation has been drifting toward an iceberg for years, someone inside it warning about the danger isn’t responsible for the situation simply because they were on the ship. And if that same person is later promoted and helps steer the organisation back to safer waters, they probably deserve credit for the recovery rather than blame for the previous mess. The club could easily have appointed someone from outside just to avoid the optics of promoting internally. But optics aren’t competence. If the club were in a healthier place, promoting someone with Davies’ local roots and strong work behind the scenes would probably be welcomed. Instead, the reaction seems driven largely by the fact he comes from within the KP group. That may be understandable emotionally, but it isn’t necessarily fair to him.