Steve Dunn. Wasn't he the ref at our last encounter? wasnt he the only person not to see molenaar's two handed shove on dahlin in the 4-3 loss?

i'll go with your formation lechuck, except flitty for tugay if the latter isnt fit. realistically however, we will never get this line up tomorrow. although i feel that he's still our best option alongside dickov, hughes apparently doesnt, and so matty will not even be on the bench (as per usual). that i'm pretty sure. prediction wise, it looks like boro's gonna be playing a whole bunch of kids... so hoping we can sneak something from the game.

taken from the dingle board: I'm saying that Blackburn were our rivals, but in footballing terms how long is it since we were in the same division? PNE are much more relevant rivals, and have been for years. Just like on the Turf - too many people singing antiquated songs that they don't even know the right words to (it should be 'will we play', not 'till we play'). even they accept we're superior

we have zero creativity. zero! impressed by the hustling, but the lack of real quality is telling, very telling and depressing. to play 451 effectively, the lone guy upfront has to win the headers, and dickov just can't! can someone please point this out to hughes?! and to round off a bad night, duff, who had handled himself extremely well i thought all night, had to kiss the rouble badge before throwing his shirt into the chelsea crowd. sore.

i dont know how many chelsea will score, and i don't wanna predict. but i'm sure the score line will start with a big fat 0. so the best we can do will be a goaless draw. but with individual matchups like duff & robben vs matteo & neill, jemal johnson and MGP vs terry and gallas... i'm not at all optimistic. not at all. that means: rovers 0 - chelsea ??? (more like whatever they fancy)

shilito, ferguson, emo, bellamy will be fantastic, but only if everyone's happy. right now, my preferred option in an ideal world will be ferguson in a straight swap for bellamy. however, if ferguson is still here this time tomorrow, then there is a chance he might actually realise that this club is ambitious and going somewhere, and give it a real go. i wouldnt mind starting afresh with him, but he has to assure us fans that he's worth it, and more importantly, want it.

our good friend souness just paid me 15m for MGP marek jankulovski and emo for me. heh.

just heard steve bruce's prematch interview on tv. basically, thought he doesnt sound all that confident about bellamy signing for them; bruce just said that a fee's been agreed, and bellamy had to make his decision quick, and that he will know where to get bruce. don't want to get my hopes up, but he doesnt sound too convinced. but if emo's going to newcastle as a make weight for bellamy, i wouldnt be too upset till the details are known. meaning, if emo goes and we end up paying something like 1m for bellamy, i would think that's a good deal, meaning emo's valued at 5m. however, if he goes, and we end up paying anything above 2.5m cash, i'd be pretty upset. fact is, emo is replaceable, with thommo suitable for the right wing, as well as reid. am i the only person here who thinks that whilst emo's improvement since last season has been tenfold, he still isnt quite that good?

personally i don't think that the money will come from the insurance claim. if we pull this off, i'm more inclined to think that its a 'cole' style of financing, and that its a special release of funds for what is essentially an emergency situation. more likely, while the 4m insurance claim might have gone towards sparky's transfer kitty for next season, it will now go back to the trustees' fund. but whatever, i don't really care, as long as we land a decent striker. and kudos to the board and sparky if we pull this off. and not forgetting, mr savage, who must have had a friendly chat or two with his welsh mate.

bring on burnley or the winners of brentford vs hartlepool. then let man u or boro get newcastle, and arsenal get chelsea!

disgusting end to the game, but in all fairness, neither side deserved to win it. i thought the referee had a good game, and made only 1 wrong call, which unfortunately cost us the game. the neill handball may have evened up the penalty, but diouf really should have been sent off for diving instead. more worrying though for us, was that today's game highlighted 2 points. 1st, our attack. basically, its no dicky = no bite. i never realised that dickov was so important to us till today. however, this game has shown that without him, we are absolutely impotent in attack. his haressing, his holding up of the ball and laying it off and all around play was sorely missed today, and i think this is evident to all who watched the game. also, what in the world has happened to matty? surely he can't do worse than stead, who looks absolutely bereft of confidence, and also out of his depth. johnson did not make a big impact, and looks much too scrawny. also, his shot when put through seemed to be the wrong decision - the angle wasnt the best, and savage was steaming through the centre. had he pulled it across, we'd have scored. 2nd point though, might be a little more controversial. i have seen mokoena against portsmouth, cardiff and now bolton, and i must say i have yet to be impressed. somehow i feel that without nissa, the defence just isnt as steady. mokoena's positioning might be alright, but his heading and clearing ability isnt. mokoena simply lacks nissa's strength in clearing headers and generally dominating the air and area around him. i thought that with todd and nissa, we had a regular and genearlly steady, almost rock-like centreback pairing. why did we have to break this up?

great result, and a good team performance overall. more importantly, another clean sheet! apart from 1 good save, friedal did not have much to do. everybody did well, from stead to thommo to todd, who was magnificent again. overall, very good result, especially coupled with norwich losing. slowly building a gap now between us and the bottom 3, so may we continue moving upwards!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2002390...4602601,00.html feeling worried now. personally, i do think we may have tapped him up, although this isn't unlike what other clubs do. however, given how much this has been played out in the press, should birm actually report us, will we get hit with a points deduction?! god forbid this from happening... please!

yesssssssssss!!! it may be only a 1-0 win, but we were never really threatened at all; brad did not even have a single save to make. i thought everybody played well, but my man of the match has to be flitty. he's looked resurgent recently, and today he was everywhere. every ball that came at the defence, flitty was there to intercept and just hoof it clear. his passing also seems to have improved lately, more precise than i ever remember. and also, another clean sheet! more of the same against villa please.

now that you say it... any chance we sue souness for misappropriating funds? i wouldnt be too sad if we lost ferguson for the 7.5m we paid. he isn't consistent enough for me, and doesnt dominate the game for all 90min, tending to disappear and play well in flashes. if 7.5m means we get a good striker and another decent replacement in midfield, i'll take it. but savage for 2m is steep. if we stay up and savage plays a key role in it, he'd have paid his fee back, but he really doesn't have any sell on value, so this will be another transfer along the road we have taken in recent years.

in this order: defensive mid, striker, centre half

tugay tried hard to, then drew out when he realised that the best he could have done was hack brown down. no doubt it'd have been his second yellow and he'd have been off again. i'm sure if he hadn't already been booked, he would have brought brown down, drew the card, and stop the immediate threat. that said, our defenders actually ran into each other. nissa and todd i think, when brown was clearly running out of breathe. if they hadnt ran into each other, one could have got a tackle in too.

will gabbidon be cup-tied? seems like fate had a hand in the draw though, what with sparky and his welsh roots. here's to a winning start in his first ever fa cup tie as manager and in his homeland as well.

NEJ's a very good centre back, as he has proved time and again. so it's unfair to call him pure rubbish. however, when he gets shunted out to left back, he makes mistakes, although he can put in the odd good performance in that position like he did last week at fulham. he is however, nothing short of a disaster when he gets the ball in attack. the only time he should be involved in an attack is heading them in during corners. other than that, he looks totally uncomfortable, totally lost, and does not know what to do with the ball. so well, i appreciate nissa at centreback, where i think he's among the best we have at the moment, but really, isn't up to it at left back, as its a position which calls for some attacking nous at least.

very disappointed after last week's excellent performance. to be honest, we never showed up bar 5-10min at the start of the 2nd half. everybody seemed to be playing below their best, and there was no believe that we could have won the game at all. oh well, we've got palace next. back to the drawing board, and hope we do well next week. let's hope this performance shocks our boys back into form.

i know i sound bitter.. but i just wish newcastle gets beat every game they play. interesting that another rover old boy did souness in yesterday; carsley with a superb freekick. pity that bent couldnt find the empty net after rounding given, it would have been perfect.

i thought defoe would be suspended too! but apparently, he'll sit out the match against man city in 2 weeks and will be available to meet us. he looks like the only player in spurs' team who will cause us problems, and may be ultra motivated to perform well before his suspension. but given the way our team has performed the last 5 matches, i can at least look to the match with some hope and optimism. besides, we're on tv again! which means i'll get my 3rd live rovers game in a row - something that's really rare here! hope to see the same team as last week, except in midfield where i still have doubts about tugay, who usually follows up a brilliant performance with an abysmal one. if reid is suspended, i would ideally like mgp to step in on the left and emo back on the right, with thommo and fergie starting in the centre. however, i think we'll get thommo in on the right, with emo, fergie and tugay keeping their places. but whatever, i'm not the gaffer. sparky is, and he's producing the goods at the moment, so i'll go along with him. won't predict, but again here's hoping for a sixth game unbeaten, and second straight win! (and i actually believe we can do it...)

there must also be a reason why we were the only team who wanted him... although i did think that he would prove to be a good signing... and still hope he comes good eventually. but time is running out.

we got another pen! dickov was a total pest, and all credit to him for his performance today. but please lay it off when it is the better option in future. i thought everybody played well, wonderful performance, and tugay had one of his better games today. and we even won with matteo on the pitch! let's do the spurs next!

i think nissa was brought on for that last 10min or so for sparky to see if he could handle a real premier league match. recall that after this incident, nissa became our regular centreback and we never saw matteo again. so, you can't say that there was no purpose in this move. also, i'm sure MGP would have got his chance had the team not played as well as we did in the 2nd half against birmingham. we basically bossed the entire half, and thommo's introduction further accentuated our so-called dominance. remember we were on top of them for a very long period, and i think the reasoning here is that hughes felt we could snatch a winner simply on the adrenaline generated, and thus made no sense to disrupt the flow with another substitution. in any case, i thought thommo was brought on out of necessity - toogs was that bad. i'm pretty sure MGP will get his chance sooner or later, but for now, i'm happy to go along with hughes' judgement.