den

IIRC, the academy was seperated from the rest of the Ewood set-up a couple of seasons ago. The idea being that when managers are changed, it doesn't have a detrimental effect on the academy. This is meant to bring more stability to the youth system.

Is Andy Taylor good enough for the first team?

Rover6, one more go from me - when you say he deserved squad experience, do you mean he should have played first team football? If yes, it's because someone else like the "reasonable" Darren Fletcher made it at Old Trafford. Someone BTW, who has more talent in his right toe than Andy Taylor has overall.

Oh not again. What do you mean when you say he deserved squad experience? Do you mean he was, or would have been good enough for the first team? Because if he wasn't, he shouldn't be in the squad. - and please don't reply with "neither was so and so".

It wasn't criticism of Treacy, it was an observation. Would you disagree with those observations. As for Mokoena, you wont find any comments on here saying what a good footballer he is. Some people think he occassionally does a good job in the last 25 mins or so, when we need to defend a lead. Trouble is, that you use Mokoena as a benchmark football wise, to judge another players ability. That's absolutely crackers.

I guess that's based on the "because it hasn't happened yet" theory.

No contract offer yet. Apparently he would like another season.

Yes, so now you see, that playing in some junior international side doesn't mean sod all, does it? It's the only evidence that you ever put forward for the inclusion of any youngster.

Your first two sentences stand out Rover6. You use those kind of stats to push youngsters forward for the first team. Treacy in the form of his life for the irish U21s etc. When it's someone not good enough, that means nothing, when it's a youngster it means everything. Just an observation, no malice intended.

Discussed here. Birdy is still around. He's involved in the running of Ewood Blues and can be found in the Aqueduct pub. Ste B might be able to help you contact him. I went to Norwich and to West Ham when we drew 3-3 in the cup. John Byrom hat trick.

Just for the record, why?

I can't give you an exact answer, but LCD HD TV's run at a higher temp than CRT's, - they have a much higher power consumption - so keep well away from radiators.

Ooijer declines Dutch return. Underrated player IMO, it appears as though he had plenty of options in Holland.

Fantastic.

Any chance of getting him to do a Q&A for the site?

We could have kept those lads and pushed them into midfield against Bolton. They have all the credentials: 1] they're young 2]

Your point was this "So he has to make to with trialist,loans and freebies and hope that they are any good." You put McCarthy and Rocky into that catageory then, fair enough. Why did you laugh at Rocky?

He wasn't past his best when we signed him - and that was your point. and Rocky?

McCarthy, Santa Cruz? - to name just two. That's an argument that Souness used to put forward in his last months - we can only get youngsters or players past their best.

What you must remember about skyHD, is that you only get the HD channels, that you pay for on the normal package. IE, you only get sky movies HD, if you already subscribe to Sky movies. Likewise, you only get skysports HD1&2, if you subscribe to sky sports. Having said that, I DO subscribe to those channels, thus I can watch HD TV all day long. As Biddy says, BBC HD is excellent. Sky1Hd is also excellent. On top of that you have SkyartsHD, Two HD movie channels, 2 Skysports channels, Discovery, Nat Geo, and the history channel - all in HD. Using sky anytime, you also get first viewing of quite a lot of the HD films. You can make use of the planner to record any HD programmes that you might have missed, so all in all, there is quite a lot of content. It's also fair to say that not all of the HD channels actually show HD content 100& of the time, but hopefully as time goes by, the HD content will increase. There is also Bluray, via a Bluray player or PS3. [or HDDVD]. As I say though, I can watch HD all day long if I wish. Get a good TV though. Get one that shows 1080p with 1:1 pixel mapping. That means there will be no scaling done by the TV, hence a very stable, noise free picture.

Blummin eck Rover6! Surely, for a player to be useful to the squad, he must be able to perform to a good level in the premier league, whenever called upon. That would make him premier league standard, - wouldn't it. What are you trying to prove now? Lot's of us have said Gally [for instance] isn't premier league standard. He's played in the prem though, so do you reckon he's prem class, - or what?

The only thing I can say to that is, - if rovers were looking for players good enough to get us out of the championship and into the prem, I would pray that Gally wasn't one of them.

It doesn't matter whether he has cost us next to nothing Philip. I was questioning Hughes judgement in this case. Gally wasn't and will never be, good enough for Prem/ championship football. There was absolutely no point keeping him at Ewood.

Which just goes to show that all managers make mistakes. Most people on here didn't think he was worth a new deal, for some strange reason, Hughes did.

North End bottom of the league!