to me, it is plain and simple that this reeks of souness' own personal bias. he should be professional enough to put the CLUB, US, BLACKBURN ROVERS ahead of his personal relationship with a player. yes, coley's reporting him to the PFA was perhaps 'unprofessional', but out on the pitch, we've clearly seen him be professional enough to fight hard and perform well for the club. in cole's history, he was not on speaking terms with sheringham, but still formed a decent enough partnership with him at manure. therefore, his professionalism is proven. as for senile souness, he's proved to us time and again that once he falls out with you, you're screwed. souness is afterall, the gaffer. if we sell cole, and bring in a replacement of similar class, i'd give souness the benefit of the doubt. however, i suspect that coley will be sold, and dickov will be the replacement. if this is true, then its really a sad day for us. dickov and stead upfront, i would say, plenty of endeavour, but lacking in skill and real quality. for all of stead's goals last season, i still think he is raw, and this season, he might find it much harder to get near last season's form. come'on souey. prove us wrong.

if this is true, souness should be the one booted out.

agree with you 6. and just to draw a parallel to the above, remember nicola ventola? talented, quick, skillful striker who broke onto the inter scene back in the middle/late 90s as a teenager, but moratti's constant purchasing of big name strikers led to him being frozen out and let out on loan to various teams for many seasons. think it seriously hampered his progress. when he first came on, he looked like one of the brightest talents in italy. look what happened to him.

flitty has been a wonderful servant of the club. probably no rovers fan will question his battling qualities and commitment. however, as in life, it is undeniable that we have to move on with the times. to me, this move is just that, moving on with the times. its a fact that flitty was in and out of the team after fergie was bought, and became a more regular fixture only after the latter's injury. so, in all likelihood, with a fully fit fergie, its only natural that he assumes the captaincy as flitty becomes more of a squad player. besides, with all due respect, when you have scotland's captain playing in your team, who would you choose as captain? him or an uncapped squad player? thus, appointing fergie outright makes for a more logical and correct situation. look at chelsea, where desailly was officially club captain but terry was wearing the armband most of the time. certainly, it kind of 'diminishes' the value of the captaincy doesnt it?

i'm not english, but was an english fan until hoddle dropped sutton back in the mid-90s. then, the only reason i supported england was because of rovers players (shearer, le saux, ripley, wilcox) being in the team. after the sutton saga, i never rooted for england again, but still followed your progress through the WC and EURO qualifiers. then, the jansen debacle, combined with a personal dislike of eriksson (he lied to us!), made me root for anyone against you... until the day another rovers player pulls on the english jersey that is. but on the topic, i caught the match live on tv in the early hours of the morning (3am), and i thought that owen's goal was a classic opportunist's strike. but eriksson's tactics of defend, defend, defend was just not on. possession was about 65% to 35% in favour of portugal, and even in the first half, they looked the more probable to score, and it was really no surprise that they eventually did. as for the substitutions, if he wanted to adopt the hoof it up option, surely heskey makes for a better choice than vassell to play as targetman? at least the size is there. at the time, i was bemused by the scholes substitution, but upon realising that it was due to an injury, fair enough. but at that stage, joe cole would have been an option too. putting phil nev in only handed the portugese the impetus to attack even more. on this point, the contrast between last night's 2 managers cannot be more stark. put it crudely, big phil has balls. everyone has to give him that. to have the guts to pull your captain, who is arguably the biggest name in your team off, and replace him with a striker who've played sporadically, and scored only 1 league goal all season against the opponents on the day, takes guts, and big phil was proven right. albeit hypothetically, it is fair that beckham is sven's first name on the sheet. and my money is on sven NOT having the balls to substitute goldenballs should he have been in the same situation. also, i thought your players looked much more sluggish than portugal's. this could be down to the fact that the team has not been rotated. whilst portugal has not rotated all its players as well, they have made their fair share of changes while england havent. players like bridge, joe cole etc havent had a kick all tournament! surely, it wouldnt have been impossible to rotate the players in my opinion. therefore, i feel that ultimately, the manager (sven) has to shoulder the blame, and for you guys to move on, another manager (preferably english) would probably be the better option. maybe then, the team will feature a rover again!

4eva, fully agree with ur point. he's a waste at 7m. but, if it was nearer 2-3m (possibly what's left of our entire kitty, if there is at one in the first place) it would represent a pretty good bit of business for us. that said, i do agree that we have adequate cover in midfield. priority now has to be a defender. cheers!

damn chuffed!!! whilst keeping my fingers crossed... and, assuming that the butt rumours are true... de pedro butt fergie emo the above could be our first choice midfield next season. certainly mouth watering. with thompson, reid, tugay and flitts competing alongside those four, i reckon we could have one of the strongest midfields in the league even... even if the butt deal doesnt happen, we're still pretty well off there... add another centre back (matteo??) and next season sounds really promising!

with the way leeds have conducted themselves, surely they wouldnt mind contributing the other 18k a week? hehehe but then again, if matteo doesnt accept our offer, then i wouldnt lose too much sleep over him anyway. at least we're not being held to ransom.

good suggestion 6! how abt 1.5m and matty + another youngster on loan? we get our man, matty gets his match practice, and i think no matter what u do in training, playing competitive league matches, albeit in a 'lesser' league should do him a world of good. sadly though, if he can't cut it there, we really can't even hope anymore... but if it works out, we get MGP, and by november, we'd have a fully fit matty as well!

lovely interview! thanks for the effort everyone who made this possible. personally never rated filan above tim...