frosty

The best you can do is probably the videos that show every Rovers goal from the promotion season and the first season back up. He scored some beauts especially in the promotion season. If you type in ‘Blackburn Rovers goals 00/01’ then it’ll come up. Not ideal but I suppose he’ll also be able to appreciate how good Duff, Dunn and (in the 01/02 video) Tugay were too!

Agree. The start of this season does have a Souness 04/05 (03/04 for a lot of it too) and Bowyer 15/16 sort of feel to it.

Rovers have tweeted saying all adult sizes of the third shirts have now sold out, with another 'small delivery' expected in the next few weeks. They couldn't have got many in at all if they're all gone already.

Seen Skrtel mentioned a few times now but he's having a medical at Atalanta (who are in the Champions League rather than bottom half of the Championship...!).

Yeah, that Rotherham game was our best overall performance at home in the first part of the League One season. Hull at home last season springs to mind apart from that, 2-0 up in 20 mins against an in form team, we won the ball back high and didn't let them have a sniff all game. Would be nice to see it more often though yep.

Doesn't hold back there does he. Resigned by the time the clocks go back is my prediction - probably earlier.

Indeed. Cardiff were there for the taking, they didn't do anything under Solskjaer in the Championship and he was out of a job a couple of months later. Bowyer left Dunn, King and Marshall on the bench that night instead of really going for it, and as you say it just set the tone for what was to come. Fingers crossed for a good display and win tomorrow!

Yeah, we've got new seats too so we're due new cards. Fingers crossed they arrive tomorrow.

19th for me, very odd.

Any ST holders who've got a new card for this season still waiting for it to arrive? Renewed about 3 weeks ago. Don't like it when it gets this last minute....

Struggling to come up with predictions for the top end of the division. Cardiff and West Brom you'd fancy to be top 6 due to their squads and (especially for Cardiff) managers, probably Fulham too due to their attacking talent, though Parker is an unknown. Apart from that it's anyone's game. Anything could happen to Leeds - but they lost loads of games in the second half of last season, are supposedly weak at centre back and upfront, while Bielsa's second seasons at clubs have had a tendency to carry on where the first left off (i.e. on a downward spiral).

Other than on paper, can't really judge at the moment until we're a decent chunk into the season. We probably had a lot of jealous glances when we signed Murphy, Etuhu and Best at Championship level. Downing, Johnson and Gallagher might all be brilliant or they might all contribute nothing - more likely somewhere in between of course. Don't really know much about where other teams are weak either. Even if fans of other teams did look at those three and think 'Blackburn could be decent this season', they might not realise how desperate we are for defensive reinforcements.

Hope so, but it isn't as simple as that unfortunately. Palmer for example played quite a lot when Huddersfield got promoted and also played a bit at Derby who came 6th that season, and his loan to us only lasted a few months.

Agree with that, can't see the league being all that strong this season to be honest. Not expecting much from Huddersfield either. You'd imagine WBA and Cardiff will be up there. Quite hard to call apart from that - after all, none of last season's top three were in the top six the previous season (with Norwich and Leeds both bottom half if I remember correctly) so it's wide open.

Indeed - this is still one of my favourite ever Rovers shirts. How hard can it be!!??

Dann was awful in the Premier League for us. He got smaller when he jumped and we didn't keep a clean sheet until March of that season. He looked like he wasn't bothered most of the time too. Granted the club was a total shambles and we had he who shall not be named as 'manager' getting rid of all our good, experienced defenders and replacing them with youngsters or absolute jokers like Bradley Orr. He’s clearly been much better at Palace and had some good seasons there, but I’d be surprised if he ever came back here.

That was Bury supposedly, not Rochdale.

Bennett will be in there somewhere, plus if he does intend to play three centre backs then we need much more depth there - those three you have at CB are our only senior CBs (and that's counting Williams, traditionally a LB). It'll be 4-2-3-1 I think.

He was excellent in the home game v Brentford, that save onto the bar was amazing. They must have seen enough raw ability over the two games (albeit almost all good attributes only in the first) to decide there was enough to work with.

I think one person did and they only compared the sales, saying we need to have a replacement lined up like we did in Robbo when Brad left. I don't recall anyone wanting to sell Raya before these links emerged either, in the second half of last season every second post seemed to be people saying we need experienced competition for him.

I thought Gallagher was alright as well, albeit it's over two years now since he last played for us and haven't watched him since. If he does sign though what happens to Brereton? Third choice striker - and we only play one up front? Assuming neither him or Gallagher are considered as 'wide forwards', of course.....

Rated him a while back at Norwich, haven't seen much of him since, hopefully we can get a good year or two out of him. Davenport looked decent when he grew into the game v Swansea on the final day, and that was his first league game for a year. So Travis, Davenport and Johnson as our main three CMs sounds good, Evans will probably stay so he can be fourth choice......you'd imagine Smallwood will leave.

It wasn't a penalty for me. There was 'contact' but that's only because her foot hit the defender's leg as she pulled her own leg back to strike the ball. The defender was just running and didn't make any kind of challenge - harsh to be penalised for that.

Would be disappointed to see Raya leave, at just 23 and after one full season at this level behind a soft-centred defence. Interesting to compare his two performances v Brentford last season. He was superb when we beat them at Ewood, that save on to the bar was one of the best we've seen at Ewood for years. Away from home he conceded 5 and made a horrendous decision to come out for the goal that made it 3-2 - but Brentford obviously saw enough over the two games overall to think he could be a very good keeper at this level with the correct coaching (presumably they have an experienced GK coach......). Doubt it'd happen anyway but would avoid Fraser Forster, remember at the time a couple of years back thinking how bad he looked before he got dropped, palming simple shots straight to strikers and taking an age to get down to low shots seems to ring a bell. Looked poor v West Ham too at the end of last season. It may have been his first game for 18 months, but there's probably a reason for that.

Bennett will be here and he's very rarely injured, so he'll be starting. Especially with Nyambe being at the AFCON and therefore returning to training late - RB will probably be Bennett's for the first few games....