It's really not looking good for the big club. Boro will stay up they've got a heck of a lot of talent and have put on some stunning displays this season, against United and Arsenal for example, as well as some shocking ones like the more recent Arsenal game. Also if they get their injuries sorted it could help a fair bit too. Brum don't have the potential imo to produce such performances. If they do there's been no evidence of it this season. I really though WBA were going to get relegated but they too have started putting in some good performances recently Spurs and Wigan amongst them. As for Pompey they've got enough cash to see them through. Woryingly for Bruce he needs at least 2 of the three teams mentioned to have a slump in form. The chances of that happening are very slim indeed

Is he playing up front or in midfield?

Maybe a tad harsh, although I think Neill is better than you make him out to be. (Admittedly he hadn't always produced the type of form he was capable of.) I'm not trying to make out that he's bad I just don't think he's exceptional as the other three - arguably four with Zurab are. I acknowledge that he's good and I'll admit age does come into it, were he 24 say, with room to imrpove on his good ability and form, then i'd be more than happy to let him develop up to the level of the others. Not top of the list for replacing by any means, a new striker and Tugs replacement come first.

Blackburn really could be a good side, but there are just one or two players who simply aren't good enough, and I'm quite willing to name names: Steven Reid Michael Gray Andy Todd Shefki Kuqi Now I'll grant you that Gray isn't in the class/form of our other 3 defenders )which includes Todd) that is to say excellent, and ideally we want someone at the same level as these three are performing, however Gray is doing well and is a good rather than excellent player. Is he good enough - look at our defensive record. Ok I'd like a new younger improved left full back but to be honest Gray is more than adequate cover based on recent performances. Saying he's not good enough is laughable based on the fact he hasn't let us down. There is a difference between the ability to improve and being good enough. As for Todd he's been one of main centre backs in what has been an excellent defence. I don't understand how he can be not good enough. Kuqi, name a third choice striker you'd rather have for his wages/fee. Granted he shouldn't be main striker, but is he good enough for a place in the squad - easily as boro will testify and he gives us an option that no one else does. Yes we can improve in terms of a second striker to partner Bellamy but Kuqi has more than justified his signing with some crucial goals. As for Reid, for what it's worth my oppinion is he's worth his place in the squad and is good enough to be one of three rotating central midfielders, for the following reasons. 1) Look at how much he has improved under Hughes - from playing everywhere uncomfortably to looking like he actually belongs in the position. 2) He's still time to improve and based on how much he has already, that's encouraging. 3) There are games when his style of play is much more needed than Tugs creative flair (and vice versa). Look at when he came on against Manure for a very recent example, he made us a lot tougher in midfield. 4) Some performances recently he's been fantastic, as good as anyone imo - Pompey 1st half and Wigan 2nd half are examples. Keepijg it up for 90 minutes is another matter though. 5) Tommo's shooting as well as one or two others is equally erratic and not been highlighted. Theres much more to Reid's game then just shooting - unlike for example MGP who seems to provide mainly goals but little else. In this respect the pair compliment each other in the team. I don't think we should see him as a replacement for Tugs rather as a different option that the manager has available. In these terms Reid is certainly good enough as the dependable workhorse midfielder. I notice all the players play unattractive games. Todd, Kuqi and Reid can sometimes look unpleasant to watch, yet this does not mean they are doing a poor job. For more 'attractive'/skillful footballers such as Bentley and Emerton for example it could be argued a lot more strongly that hey don't pull their weight and aren't not good enough.

Bellamy out is a blow but arguabley this is a game we can afford to miss him for. I'm sure Bellamy would've been very keen to show souness and shearer what he can do though. As it is Newcastle don't like physical forwards and I've never seen such a jittery defence, so Kuqi and Dickov should have a field of a day. My main concern is how many players will have an eye on the semi final and thus not be playing flat out. Even subconciously I'm sure such a big game must have some affect on players in this game. Hopefully everyone will play out of their skins to cement their place in the team on wednesday, but it could also have the reverse effect. I'm thinking rovers should really win this one, even at their best newcastle are an unbalanced (if talented) team, and with the amount of injuries they have they shouldn't have too much to offer. Even the in form Given shouldn't be able to stop us winning it. However this really, really must be absolutely Souness's last chance, any later in sacking souness and a new manager won't be able to shift in or out any players. So very concievably this could well be sounesses last game, which is a tad worrying to say the least. Every time he should get the boot he somehow manages to avoid it, he's been in the last chance saloon so long they're thinking of naming the bar after him. With Souness teetering on the edge the chances of him getting a result must be magnified and the chances of another lucky escape must be pretty high. Coupled with a semi-final appointment next wednesday for us I can see it being 1-1 with Dickov for us, Shearer for them, and Souness somehow avoiding the sack for a bit longer.

Reid back in the side and puts in a magnificent engine room performance to make it 1-0. Bellamy works his socks off knowing he has a holiday booked next saturday 2-0. Bring back Emerton for the inconsistent Bentley and Reid in for Tugay. It'll be physical and lets wait till the gaps start opening up before sending Tugs on to do his magic. Todd and Nelsen as centre backs as more able to cope with the physical side of the game. Think this is Kuqi's type of game but he wasn't that great against manure. It's a tough one which striker to leave out. I'll leave Dickov on the bench as he'll be needed more next saturday and wednesday.

Agree. Surprised no one else has mentioned this. Nelsen as captain - I personally think he would make a better captain, in terms of consistency and personality as others have mentioned, and the fact he's automatically first choice what with the performances he's been putting in. Todd not good enough to be captain is wrong, he is good enough especially based on the past 2 seasons. Take as an example Tugay. I think people have forgiven him having an imaginary friend and rovers stuck with him because of his performances in the long term for rovers - form being temoprary class being perminant. However ther is a storng case of their being someone better - Nelsen. However it'd be harsh to strip Todd of the captain for doing nothing wrong. Another headbut blip and it may be justified but at present he should on balance remain captain. Todd not good enough to be in the team??? He was awesome vs United, he's been decent all season with only one or two minor blips. If that's the not good enough criteria theres a whole host of players who've had a dodgy game should be shipped off to siberia - bentley, emerton, kuqi, tugay, reid, neill, gray, dickov...

Can see why he has signed for bolton, prem team, managers rep with damaged goods, stay in area, and the absolute and final last chance at premiership football. Having said that I'm not sure it's a good move with Boltons style of play and the fact he won't be first choice. He'd have been much better moving down a division and regaining his form that way. This way it'll be a lot harder, the odds of him succeeding are minimal and it'll most probably be a waste of another 6 months for the lad. To be honest Hughes knows about strikers, his judgement on Stead nad Kuqi for example went against popular trend, so if Hughes doesn't think he's good enough anymore, then I'm happy with the decision to let him go to anyone, it won't damage our chances. How many cheap strikers are there out there? Not many and Bolton need to boost their squad numbers what with the African Cup. As a pus fo us it also frees up a bit more wages for Hughes to play with. As it is I hope it works out for Matty, even at Bolton, though preferably not at our expense. Hopefully he'll begin to regain his form and someone else will nab him off Bolton at the end of his short term contract.

I'm still not entirely sure what to think of the game, aside from shoutimg myself hoarse. Disappointed that we didn't win based on the first half display, relieved we didn't loose based on the second. At times we really weren't at the races, but then niether were united who for all their possession and attacking dominance in the second half produced few threats. Have rovers failed to capitalise on a poor manure performance and thier chance to win the tie, or should we be encouraged united showed so little when offered to them so readily? Tugs, Kuqi, and Bentley were all disapointing. Kuqi was out of his depth but that wasn't too surprising, Tugs had one of his offdays which was gutting, and Bentley was just far too inconsistent. Worryingly we gave the ball away too much, and when bellamy did break no one was fast enough to get up the field quick enough to support him. On the positive side the defence however did well. Gray struggled for pace with ronaldo, but made an excelent defensive header to a dangerous cross as well as a few other nice moves. The rest of the defence was fairly solid, and bar the goal are centre backs handled United well. A big improvement is needed if we are to progress to the final, but rovers are capable of playing much better than that. And at 1-1 we are by no means out of the tie.

Cheers. Wasn't aware of it and can't remember reading/hearing about it anywhere before. Does it count for any part of the ground? Can you swap stands? ST looking more and more attractive.

Fantastic report well done to all those concerned. The biggest issues for me as a potential ST next year when have job and income (hopefully!) would be: 1) Being able to change your seat if you bring a friend. Ususally go with family but if were going with other people - which happens to 3/4 games that you can swap seats to sit with them. 2) Student tickets/University and college discounts - baffling why individual young person/student tickets aren't available. I know for a fact that a fair few of my uni friends would be interested in joining me if the prices were a bit lower - even before the Hughes revolution. 3) Parking. Woeful. It must cut down on the older age of support in particular. 4) Singing areas would be nice and help generate a better atmosphere. Aside from this the reasons for declining interest in football sky, matchday prices, lack of competition and players taking fans for a ride are all sentiments I heartily agree with although not too sure what club can do about them.

Similar problem, although have got ticket in the end. For games like this you need a previous history of buying a ticket. Now since I normally go as a family my dad books the tickets, thus despite going to most home games and a couple away each season for absolutely ages I've no history on the database. When I go with mates it's normally on the spur of the moment to less attractive games, paying cash and getting the ticket an hour or so before the game. Hence despite same surname and postcode they weren't altogether convinced, and in the end I gave the phone over to my dad (thankfully he was working from home) and I can pick up the ticket if I've got a letter of authority from my dad. A lot of hassle. Also it's annoying that I won't have a history for getting tickets to other high demand games if my dad doesn't book the tickets for me, which is becoming the case on a more regular basis.

Bad draw. In fact only by getting a big team, other than birmingham, could it have been worse. West Ham will definately think its winnable, in fact it's their only real shot of glory. Not a team I'd want to face in this situation. Added to which two semis may well give west ham the edge. Would take a draw if offered and get them back up here.

Nope just the one as my family have either gone back to uni or are working. Going with a couple of mates but they've got STs and had booked their's earlier (again Blackburn end 2 together but done last saturday). Was willing to sit anywhere and was expecting a pretty poor seat. Glad its in the blackburn end as next to no chance of infiltrators.

Row twenty five seat one hundredish.

The interview on radio rovers with our fitness coach was particularly damning and a timely reminder of how far we've come. Best quote was the rather diplomatic 'Reid, Emerton and (can't remember the third maybe Bentley) have never reached anywhere near their full fitness potential'. With regards to Souness crippling us, on paper, he left us with some good foundations at least in Friedel, Todd, Reid, Dickov, Neill, Tugay, Pederson, Ferguson all of whom only began to realise or refind their best form after Souness had gone. For a crippled club that's a fair chunk of the team to be going on with. Add in the likes of Emerton, Enkleman, Gray as well as a good youth set up and the squad is becoming halfway decent. Sadly the other half was absolute rubbish on high wages and long contracts, and gave limited options for Hughes in terms of who he could play and who he could bring in. Even so it's interesting to note that Hughes kept us up, in the end fairly comfortably with only three additions. It goes to show what a difference managers can make with any group of players. Newcastle are trying to get this out of favour french defender to bolster their team - doesn't sound like a transfer that'll set the world alight.

Soz but got ticket today. I've got the whole luck thing sorted now, new lucky outfit complete with my new xmas lucky away shirt - 3 wins out of 3 so far - how can we possibly loose? Chuffed to get a good seat in the blackburn end 2 days prior to kickoff, although the implications from a rovers ticket sales perspective its a tad worrying.

Planning to get ticket tomorrow. Hoping there are some left. Maybe it's years of watching rovers but every time I've gone we've been screwed out of the win by manure cheating and some of the most intept refereeing I've ever seen. Can we beat them? Absolutely we're good enough, but factor in the bias and manure will be that little bit too strong. Added to which this is their best (only real - Chelsea Liverpool and the mighty Burton Albion are still in the FA cup) chance of winning a trophey, ironically the game is arguably more important to manure and rfw than it is to rovers. A trophey might just save RFW's job. Hughes has a fair few dilemas - I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for the world at the moment. Hughes has some crucial choices to make. 1) who to drop out of his centre backs. I'd perhaps favour a Zurab-Nelsen partnership as Zurab is a bit more pacy which could make all the difference with fat boy and horse face, and todd didn't look too comfortable against Furlong let alone rooney. 2) Left back - I'm hoping it's going to be Grey but I'm a tad worried that Hughes might favour Matteo and a bit more defensive stability. Hope not as he was dreadful against QPR and any of Uniteds wide players will skin him and his poor distribution might hamper our attacking play. 3) Centre mid - to defend or not to defend? Reid's been in good form, but Tugs passing could mean the difference to Bellamy. However we really need to keep it tight defensivly and with Scholes as our nemisis it might be prudent to have two defensive mids to keep better tabs on the ginger wizard. 4) Right mid - Emerton or Bently. Niether have set the world alight. I'm guessing he'll go for emerton as bentley's been disappointing of late. However Hughes may be unwilling to break up a winning formula in midfield and keep Bentley in. Emerton imo will offer better protection defensively. Safe to say it won't be Tommo. 5) Strikers. Bellamy obviously but Dickov or Kuqi. Kuqi's passing is appalling and as other posters have pointed out this could make all the difference to giving Bellamy the opportunities he thrives on. Dickov is also imo a far better poacher, and a bit sharper around the box (although not one on ones). However without Kuqi our areal threat is weak and that plays a massive part in any game. Added to which Kuqi's presence may scare Rio and co into gifting us a goal or two. Even with our current form I can't see anything but a rovers loss. We're in good form so it'll be from some dodgy reffing that costs us. 1-2 United Pederson for us Scholes and Rooney for them.

Another good day out, although such wins aren't as satisfying as when we beat teams with a bit of class (Burnley excepted). Rovers were in second gear the entire game, and had we not had a host of important fixtures coming up and thus put out our best 11 and told them to really go for it I'm fairly confident we'd have won by the 8/9-0 margin. As it was we have a few important games coming up, leaving Hughes with a tricky decision of how many players to rest, at what pace to conduct the game and so forth. Rovers did it brilliantly - they held plenty in reserve and still ran out comfortable winners. Tommo and Matteo should never get near the rovers team again. In Tommo's defence he seemed to be trying to hard, as for Matteo he looked average against a very poor team - when does his contract run out? No scout would be daft enought to recommend him to their club. One family member who hadn't seen them all season commented that Matteo looked to have put on weight, and after a rather impressive and interesting interview with our fitness coach on radio rovers I find this all the more worrying. Zurab showed his skill on the ball whilst Neill was again excellent. Bit worried that Todd got a bit rattled by Furlong occasionally, hope it was because he was avoiding getting injured/booked as Rooney will provide a much tougher challenge. I haven't seen the reserves this year and Peter seems to have grown a lot since I saw him last. Very impressive performance, although not getting carried away it was against an awful QPR side. Overall Rovers did exactly what they had to do, here's looking forward to what we can do with all guns blazing on Wednesday (albeit against marginally better opposition .)

Hughes would find Nelsen's long lost cousin who fortuitously plays left back, replace the 4/5 squad players we've lost all for a combined wage which is lower than that of Matteo's, find some random creative midfielder from Siberia who proves to be the new Tugay, and steals another Newcastle striker by exchanging Owen for Douglas. Seriously I'm not sure whether rovers could sustain a squad to cope with champions league football as well, even with champs league money, but loosing our squad players is a definate advantage be it the current or top 4 scenario as it gives Hughes much more room financially to get who he wants into the club in the summer.

I don't think you can underestimate the impact that Hughes has had on the team - they now regularly put in displays that we haven't seen since the glory days of Duff, Dunn, Cole and Jansen. Agree. The man's a revelation he's slowly turning misfits like Pederson, Reid, and poor performers like Neill into quality players, is excellent in the transfer market and so often gets his tactics spot on. Makes me wonder how well Hughes would have done with that group of players - 6th under Souey - Champs League under Hughes ? Undoubtedly. Assuming Hughes has the experience then that he does now. These days the financial gulf is too big Rovers don't have enough resources to get a champions league place. Top six is within our grasp within the next year or two though.

If souness is to be sacked it has to be in January to a) give the new person time to turn things round and time to bring in a new face or two to add a bit of balance to ano otherwise talented squad. It's a pity Owen couldn't have waited for a week or two to get injured, as otherwise Souness might have stayed out the seaon dragging Newcastle down further. As it is he'll be gone within a couple of weeks. As said previously without Owen they really don't look that promising.

I'm not sure I've ever seen two halves where the team has been completely different. In the first we were awesome, mentally to shrug off a goal that should never have been a free kick, to come back and dominate the first half so convincingly. Reid was majestic in the first half, everything a central midfielder should be whilst pederson really showed the other side of his game with some good harying and a few crunching tackles. Even Matteo was running about a lot more than usual, everyone seemed to be fighting for their places. The only disappointments of the first half were Bentley who was too quiet and Matteo who's passing is a big let down, and that seemed to frustrate the other rovers players. Zurab really showed how class there was one great sliding tackle from behind in particular which epitomised his quality and Kuqi was winning 90% of all the headers he was going for. The second half... The only defence could be that they were tired, and many of our players do rely on a high energy game. Kuqi looked knackered after 70 mins and should have come off sooner. The tireder he got the fewer headers he was winning and his touch went from poor to terrible. Worryingly his understanding with Bellamy seems poor, compounded by his lack of passing ability, although for a free transfer we cannot expect too much. Reid is so hit and miss, two halves of the past two games he's been incredible, a match for anyone, in the other two halves he's forgotten how to pass. More consistency and he'd be in the Nelsen bracket in terms of importance to rovers imo. The ball watching in the defence was worrying although Portsmouth are a poor team and really if you don't punish performances like our second half display then you're asking to be relegated. On the positive side was Bellamy's good performance, although I wish he'd lay off Kuqi, despite his justifiable frustration. Also dispite being poor we still had the better chances, Savage and Emerton both were unlucky not to score. Finally, it's a cliche but the sign of a good team is they can play badly and win, and rovers these days can consider themseles a good team. Maybe the second half is the reality check the team needs to prevent complaceny setting in. There seems to be a real desire at the club and everyone is fighting for their place - things definately are on the up.

Yep, I'm sure - well fairly sure - I didn't imagine it. I think it's on the promotion campaign video as well.

Bit harsh on some of those players. Bent was excellent for us in division one and never got the chance with us in the premiership (why Souness why?) Having said that he's done well with everton and ipswich in the prem so I think we can safely say he's a decent premiership player. In fact his leaving is one of the first things that really annoyed me about souness. Not sure why Yordi aka the big spanish guy gets on there either. He was cheap, on laon, did his job and bagged a couple of goals. No world beater but he didn't rip us off. Even Blake and Ostenstad did their bit for us and made some contribution. Both scored a few in the first division winning us some crucial points, however in both cases I'm inclined to think it was a purple patch for both of them. However they certainly didn't do enough to warrent their high fees and wages over the course of their rovers carear. As for Blake why did he always celebrate his goals by taking his shirt off and getting booked. The first time is understandable but he must have got booked 4/ or 5 times for it - the guy must have an IQ of a glass of water. As for the rest don't get me started. Maybe Grabbi should get on there too. Totally agree with yorick about Kuqi - as strong as an elephant but with just as much ball control. I like him though and he's a top class attitude and goal celebration.