Saw Iron Maiden live at Meadowlands in New Jersey on Friday night - awesome. Got tickets for their Twickenham show in July as well - can't wait to see the show again.

Cheers OJ. We popped in to the Strawberry Duck at Entwistle yesterday afternoon - lovely "proper" pub and the food looked excellent (even though we weren't dining yesterday). Will certainly be back there - 7 mins on the train from Darwen ...

Do you actually know anything about the guy? I'd say to get where he's got to has taken a remarkable personality. Interesting reading on Avram Grant - Avram Grant's family haunted by Holocaust Chelsea Manager Avram Grant's proud father

Tried a couple of "weekend lunchtime" pubs since moving to the area a few weeks ago - namely the White Bull at Ribchester (which was excellent) and Red Lion at Blacksnape which was very good. Rosins at Hoddlesden is on the list for the future. Don't want to become reliant on the printed guide books though - word of mouth is worth more IMO - so anyone got any good suggestions? Off the beaten track / back of beyond boozers welcome.

It was outstanding - we will also be going back there very soon!

Trying this on Friday OJ - looks great. Thanks for the tip.

He managed, for the umpteenth time in his PL career (it was ok when he played for us!) to not give away a penalty despite two blatent offences - the shirt tug followed immediately by the handball. It is extraordinary how he gets away with it time after time.

If you don't mind a 15 mile drive, then The Talbot Inn at Chaddesley Corbett is a fine public house. Drop me a pm if you do plan to go there.

We ate at Zinc in Manchester a while back www.zincbar.co.uk review here - however it has since changed ownership from Conran to Individual Restaurant Group. Certainly couldn't complain at the time and I doubt it's changed format too much - it's a bit poncy but hey it is Valentines Day!! However I like the look of both Paul and Ozzie's suggestions, and I'm looking forward to trying both in the near future!!

Is there a Grooby for MISSING THE POINT?

12 months on (near enough) - have Rovers had value for money for the £2 million spent on Dunn last January? Would it have been better to wait until the summer and get him for nowt (given that he hardly played until this season in any case)? Or should we have just let Big Fat Sam take him to Bolton and spent the 2 million quid somewhere else??

Good point Eddie. You should remember it. And read some of your own posts from when you've been unable to defend an untenable point of view and people haven't had a problem telling you!

From The Guardian's "Northerner" - I'm considering vegetarianism :ph34r:

Yeah - depends what you're looking for! Garner = right bloke in the right place at the right time, and will never be forgotten. If you're looking for "one of the lads" on those terms - probably the closest match is Paul Gallagher - as "local" as Garner but from the other direction, and never fazed by mixing with the fans when maybe he should have known better. And not good enough for the level the club has moved up to.

Rev - he was second in the scoring charts to a 30 million quid freak in the Chelsea circus last season! That kind of achievement comes with maximum effort and superb all round play. Nobody has been short changed - but some people need to realise that there is only one Alan Shearer, and for the rest of our Rovers supporting lives we will have to make to with the best we can get. 19 other PL clubs would love to have been "shortchanged" by Benni last season.

Great posts which sum up why McCarthy is so important for Rovers. His detractors have gone strangely quiet! He has something - that extra special bit - and none of our other 5 strikers (inc Gally) have it. I always supported Nonda because he could do the unexpected when it mattered - Benni can also do that but he has the awesome scoring record and all round game which Nonda didn't have. Benni's amazing moment of tricks and movement down by the BBE/JW corner flag (right in front of me and clearly many others) = the memory I will take away and keep from yesterdays game. That's what you pay the money and suffer the 11 hour journey home for - pure magic!

There's no logic in what you write. Just because some naff journalist thinks there's "a clause" isn't a reason to drop our best striker - as evidenced by his two goals against Vetra. Both excellent finishes, and whilst the other strikers we have do add something to the blend, McCarthy is clearly the most accomplished of the lot. You simply don't cease playing your best players when they are playing well, especially at the top end of the pitch - even if there are clauses and newspaper articles galore. The guy scores goals, so as long as he's at the club I want him on the pitch.

I'm not sure who that rant is aimed at, but IMO you're making the hole deeper. This is a messageboard - how can anyone reading "know" you other than what they learn off your posts? Fleecing a novice at poker hardly puts you in a good light. How about helping him to learn the game rather than nicking a fiver because he's a newbie. If you take up boxing and your first training session is with Ricky Hatton, would you expect him to treat you like a novice, or visit you in hozzy two days later and say "sorry mate, your fault, thought you knew the rules"?! As for Henry, he cheats at cards for sure. Horrible attitude, arrogant sod. Good riddance. I certainly won't miss him in the slightest.

I don't think that's an option at the highest level phil - it certainly shouldn't be in the minds of the players. Every game has to be approached in the same professional manner. After all we wouldn't want our players going into crap cup games or crap league fixtures (eg against Derby, Sunderland and Brum) thinking they can play "within themselves" would we?? Otherwise Rovers will end up being embarassed by the PL whipping boys but firing in hattricks against the likes of Man Utd ... ... Ah

Summed yourself up in a nutshell - well done.

The person to blame for all this is the idiot McLaren. The communication between him and Pearce clearly has been non existant - or even worse it's been counter productive against the interests of both the player and the senior and U21 England causes. The TV commentry team made much at the end of the U21 game on Tuesday night that the players would all get a few days off to relax, and then meet up again today (Friday) to head for the tournament. If the idiot wasn't even going to put Bentley on the bench against Estonia - despite him being the natural replacement when Beckham came off - then why the **** did he drag him to the back end of Eastern Europe for no reason, rather than sending him home for a few days off with an instruction to join the U21s today???? I'm quite sure Bentley wouldn't have taken the action he has if he'd been treated with a modicum of common sense. I feel really sorry for the lad, because his England career has been derailed by the bad management of the idiot McLaren.

Managed to bag tickets for this before they sold out this morning ... They rocked Earls Court - Brixton will just be awesome!

Tut tut indeed Captain, and here are the tutting stats. Goalscoring - ranked by % of chances converted 1. Gilberto Silva - 10 goals - 31.2% 2. Keane - 11 goals - 28.9% 3. MCCARTHY - 18 GOALS - 28.6% followed by Doyle - 13, 27.7% ... Viduka - 14, 27.5% etc etc ... Drogba - 20, 18.5% ... Ronaldo - 17, 11.7% And just in case that's not enough, here's the on target accuracy 1. MCCARTHY - 63 ATTEMPTS - 58.7% ON TARGET 2. Defoe - 72 attempts - 54.2% on target 3. Berbatov - 82 attempts - 53.7% on target followed by Henry - 78, 52.6% ... McBride - 73, 52.1% etc etc ... Drogba - 108, 43.5% ... Ronaldo - 145, 46.2%% Now raw statistics cannot be the sole indicator, but at least they provide a comparison. And what is indisputable from these numbers is that McCarthy is the real deal. The big names at the big clubs get more chances (I posted 2 weeks ago that Drogba has a massive advantage over McCarthy because of the players behind him). CORRECT - Drogba 108 on target attempts = 20 goals ... Ronaldo 145 on target attempts = 17 goals ... BENNI 63 on target attempts = 18 goals!! And he's third in terms of % of chances converted, behind a reserve midfileder who hardly gets any chances and the best Irish striker ever .. who shares his PL place with Defoe!!! Benni has played 50+ games and yet maintained an awesome level of performance. Captain - I know you love a whinge and you've been on Benni's case for a while. I'd like you - and others who are on his case - to simply own up that you've had a misjudgement. The Sun is trying to sell this player from under us in typical media fashion, and too many people on this board want to take the cash. You can't buy players like McCarthy every day - just ask Stuart Pearce. He's the best striker at Ewood for a decade, and the number one priority this summer is to make bloody sure he DOES NOT LEAVE ROVERS!

That was without doubt Dunn's best game since he came back, and if there's more to come like that then I'll be absolutely delighted to have been wrong about him. As American mentioned, a dozen or so of us sat round a table in Sam Platt's after the game had a straw poll MOTM vote, and Dunn and Emerton got 4 votes each, closely followed by Nelsen and Warnock. One swallow doesn't make a summer however, and I'll hold off raving about the new Dunn until he's managed to put in a few more shifts like that one. If he does then we might yet sneak the Intertoto spot - which I think is really important to keep the positive momentum behind this club going. Either way next season will see an interesting battle to play in midfield when Savage and Reid are fit again. Dunn will need to play like he did yesterday to get close to the team. And Jan - do stop going on about "agendas" - you're making yourself look silly. You're the only one who switches support on and off and boycotts Ewood when you don't like who the club is employing - if that isn't having an "agenda" then I don't know what is.

I've said throughout that we should only have signed him on a free and on an incentive based package. That people are prepared to give him until "well into next season" to see if it's a decent signing or not conveniently rights off £1.5 million and nearly a years wages. Can you imagine the stick Warnock would be getting if he'd showed up and performed like Dunn has? He wouldn't be getting months and months to come good. On a free, it could have been an ok signing for a squad player. £1.5 million was money very badly spent - that's what I find so annoying - hardly a bizarre agenda.