I see that in pursuit of his desired silverware Barry managed to get himself sent off in the 'crunch' game at Fir Park against Motherwell. Maybe the pressure of playing in front of 10,210 fans for his beloved Rangers became too much.

I phoned up this afternoon and couldn't get a £45 ticket in the upper tier of the BT stand. At least we must have sold a few thousand!

Am I right in presuming that trains from Cheltenham and Gloucester that don't change at Bristol run direct to Cardiff and are thus unaffected? Edit - with hindsight that appears a stupid drunken question. I've got a large PDF of UK rail lines and routes and they are direct.

Warning, I went to Bristol before the Worthy Cup final with 4 other lads and it was an absolute nightmare getting in pubs. Unless you had a West Country twang it was couples only in most pubs. Disagree ! Going round Bristol was like a night out in Blackburn before the Worthy Cup. There where over 30 of us (2 mini-bus loads), had no problems at all, great night had by all. Will be doing the same again, Saturday night. Strange, we struggled in any of the bars in the main square area and ended up in some back street Aussie bar full of Spurs fans.

Warning, I went to Bristol before the Worthy Cup final with 4 other lads and it was an absolute nightmare getting in pubs. Unless you had a West Country twang it was couples only in most pubs.

So if the game kicks off at 5.15pm it won't finish till 7.05pm. Get back in car at 8.00pm not be home till past midnight. Nice one FA. Let's make them play 200+ miles away at 5.15 Numpties

Backhanders then.

[RANT] I know it has been said before but what an absolute sham to have the semi-finals at the Millenium. If you drive there and back on the same day it's a good 8 hours minimum round trip. Alternatively you could stop over and add another £50+ to the expense of the weekend. Throw in tickets at £50 and it becomes a bloody expensive do. For the final fair enough but it's a semi FFS. The semi is a game that should be played at either OT, COMS or VP with the teams remaining. Has the FA actually given a reason as to why the games are in Cardiff? It's not to enable more fans to see it because you can get nearly 70,000 in Old Trafford. IMO it's for the £££££££'s to pay the wages of the tactically naive Sven. The FA have made a good deal about moving the FA cup draw to monday lunchtime for 'tradition'. Where's the tradition here. What a joke. [/RANT] BTW, of course I'll be there. Are semi-finals settled on the day now or can they go to a replay?

I have to say though apart from missing the foul for the winner I thought Collina and his 'assistants' were very biased against Chelsea. Any nudge by a Chelsea forward on a defender was a free-kick but that wasn't the case the other way round.

Not sure how true this is but someone has told me that UEFA only allow 4 clubs per country into the Champions League. This means that if (a big IF) Liverpool were to win the competition this year they would qualify and Everton would miss out even if they finished 4th. OOOhhh nasty.

I'm not saying anything about the salaries of the two police forces. StuWilky pointed out that the Wigan rates don't applied to the policing of BRFC games. You doubted that the figures would be different. They are.

Dave Whelan is quoted today as saying Wigan got charged around £45,000 for their policing of the Leeds game from GMP whereas Preston only got charged £7,500 off Lancashire Constab when they played Leeds. Not a big difference is there. But then again you only refer to Wigan when it suits your own agenda.

Good result but let's not forget - the gap is closing

Hmm very even first half. Everton only real chance came when for some reason Mokoena, whos playin in midfield, found himself centre half against Bent. He was outpaced and lucky bent didnt dive as he tried desperately to bodychekc him. Fortunately Brad knows that for all Marcus' strengths deft finishing isnt one of them. Apart from that very little Toffee threat. The first Carsley free-kick was a joke. Not sure how Nelson was expected to get out the way of Bent. Still don't know where our goal is coming from. Our best chance seems to be MGP's corners from the right.

Just backed Morten for the first goal at 14/1. Hopefully if by a miracle we get a pen he'll wrestle the ball off Dickov.

No i already knew that to be honest. So why ask the question then. If you were trying to use irony or sarcasm you failed on both accounts I'm afraid.

The SP in The People is reporting that Ryan Nelson is concerned that after his year is up next january he will be unable to get a work permit. Nelson is quoted as saying "I have always had work permit issues because New Zealand are not in the top 70 (world ranking). It's stopped me moving in the past. The Government opened up a loophole where pro sportsmen within Commonwealth can get in (for a year). I don't know what will happen next time' Our ranking won't improve too much because we don't play much international football. I can't find any links on the web and don't know when the quotes were made. They could have been just after he signed. I'm pretty sure Rovers could pull a few strings to get round this but if they couldn't it would be a catastrophy after what the big man has shown on the pitch so far.

I'm still confident we'll beat the drop but accept that after the next 4 games we could be in or around the relegation zone. However I've been through the fixtgure lists and have identified late April as being crucial (yes I know thats bleeding obvious). We play Palace at home on Wednesday the 20th April. Then our next three games are City (H), Birmingham (A), Fulham (H) whilst Crystal Palace face Liverpool (H) , Newcastle (A) and then Southampton (H). Keeping in mind that before we even play Palace we face Southampton (H) and West Brom (A) then if we go down it really would be a disaster.

No

There's some twaddle appearing on here. I'm not going to write a response to everything that I find laughable but a couple of quick of my viewpoints. As someone said regarding the postal order incident - if it kicked off with bottles and stools flying over innocent drinkers. On a normal friday night the culprits probably wouldn't have got a custodial sentance. They should do though. The fault is that the law is too soft on those on a Friday night kicking off - NOT that they are too hard on those kicking off loosely in the name of football. So it costs a ridiculous amount of money to police football matches. The alternative is to give in and let all these idiots run free (and if that happened a lot more would come out of the woodwork). I've never been close to the ground and seen any major trouble for a long while. I don't think for one minute this is because hooligans 'fight away from the ground'. It's because the matches are well policed and they can't get away with it near the ground. Agree with Tris over the Rugby thing though. They should get hit hard. I've been to Haydock before now and seen about 15 scousers kicking off behind the stand. This isn't Horse Racing holliganism. It's people getting lashed up and kicking off.

He's been sniffing around trying to get the discussion going in this direction whilst trying to keep respectable. Although he despises violence he's all too keen to comment on it and what 'allegedly happened'. OrigLongisder - theres plenty of other forums full of mindless, lying scum around on the internet. Why not go join one of them and leave this thread to get back to talking about how poor we played during the defeat of our local mid championship dwelling rivals.

Stephen Reid only played about 15 minutes across the two games. He looked direct and lively last night which is something that no other midfielder had managed to do and he set up the goal with a surge over the halfway line. He also managed to chase a dingle off the pitch at Turf moor whilst the police and stewards just watched. Not a bad cameo appearance!

It just shows how the accoustics can sound differently. Sat in the Blackburn End for the first half and I seriously couldn't hear anything from the Darwen End until they scored. I couldn't beleive they were so quiet. Yet all the Clarets at work (and on the t'inter) think we supplied no atmosphere. Strange !! Back to the game and the statistics confirmed what I thought. Burnley defended well but didn't play well. They were just relying on our punchless strikeforce not being able to score. Unfortunately, and as Liverpool found to their cost last Sunday, if you allow teams loads of possession - even when it's outside the box - and don't relieve that pressure eventually something will fall for the other team. This happened twice last night. I have to say that although I was beginning to get concerned about penalties I didn't really think we'd ever get beat last night. Cardiff looked a far better attacking side. Before the tie I was a bit concerned with about how good we actually were and how good Burnley were. Now I've seen both games I know that the worry was unfounded.

Middle block lower tier BBE. That was by far the best atmosphere since VE day. Electric. There was a spell in the 2nd half were we couldnt pass to our own men where we went quiet but apart from that superb. We played poor but look at the match stats. We deserved to win.

Just drove through Ewood. Uncle Jacks is currently the only pub openly open.