Saturday was a bit nerve racking. As much as I think McClaren is the wrong man for the job I'm certainly not in the "let's get beat and he get's fired" camp as England should be at the Euro's, it will be a poorer tournament without us and I'd never cheer for my own country to lose. We got very very lucky, not just with Israel's win but with Croatia's loss. I think we will win at Wembley, even if it's because Croatia take their foot off the gas as they are through. It is also a sad testament to the perceived quality we have in England when an out of sorts Beckham and 3 reserve strikers are ready to play. Without Owen or Rooney there is nothing up top. The French, Dutch, and Italians have an embarrasssment of riches up front, we should too. We got lucky and have another chance at the prize. Hopefully the 3 days of flag waving, bulldog spirit cliche's, and players stating that this will be the biggest game of their careers they'll actually deliver. Drop Robinson for Carson, Hargreaves for Lampard, and have Beckham as super sub. If we need something late on Beckham will come on create some magic as it will fit his legacy.

Oh dear. As usual England brings out the frustration in me. Why bring Beckham back? How many games has he played lately? Granted that ploy has worked in the past; Davor Suker for the 1998 WC and Ronaldo in 2002; they both came in fresh having done nothing and used up all their energy with the national team - shame about Owen though. Lurch is up front having played 20 minutes all season. However I think he is good foil for Owen. As for Lumpard, I can't believe it. We all know he's a star performer for Chelsea, we also know he can't do it for England. Chelsea play a different system than England, his game suits it. His game does not suit the speed and disclipline of international football. To quote McClaren on Lampard's inclusion; Different personnel? Try playing Bentley then, or some other squad player who never gets a kick. I will defend him for a second. The FA cup final from 2001 or 2002 was on the other day (Arsenal-Chelsea) Lampard ran the show, I didn't see the game at the time and watching it later I was impressed with him.

Not unless you're from Liverpool.

Oh Dear, Sparky has done it in another thread. Call the PC police. Jan's attempts at proving the racism angle were laughable. Theno's ramblings were on message for him but didn't help Jan any nor did it make sense in replying to this particular discussion. Benni McCarthy is class, his work rate is monitored on Prozone, the manager looks at it and makes his own conclusions. I seem to remember last season Benni saying he runs more now than he ever did, imagine that.

I've just read some absolute drivel. Some people have no idea. McCarthy is getting an absolute slating. He didn't have his best game but didn't get any service. As EIT said, he's a box player; we never got in there. USA, I'm surprised at your diatribe, it doesn't read like you. AESF is just stirring the pot as usual. Azuri's Mourinho-McCarthy 2 fingered salute love-in is plain silly, and Jan's accusations of criticism because of his skin colour alone is stupid. People didn't like Cole becasue he moaned all day. Yorke didn't like the manager and was playing for a paycheck. Roberts got some abuse the other week because he was seen to be in a huff in the UEFA game. Nonda wasn't good enough and kept missing sitters. People don't like McCarthy because he doesn't run like Dickov (but scores loads more goals). USA you mentioned team spirit. I once played with a lad who was the laziest barsteward ever. He rarely trained, never ran much on the pitch, but won us more games with his goals than the rest of us combined. As a team we took his limitations and lived with them, our team spirit was fantastic; maybe Rovers' players think the same?

This makes a change for this board; a bit of optimisim. However I do think that 65 goals from our strikers alone is too high. Didn't Clive Allen score 50 for Spurs a few years back though? We're looking very good so far, I just hope that they all get along and we'll see the benefits.

What does everyone think of England's chances against Estonia? We should win easily but I'm pushing the boat out for a boring 1-0, 0-0 game with McClaren saying how wonderful the formation worked afterwards. What are the odds on Lampard skying one into the crowd?

I thought I'd resurrect this seeing as we are all posting about the good season Rovers have had. Page 16 onward has most of the doom and gloom spouted after our first game, Kei's comment and lifted quotes summed up the feelings of some nicely. Take some time and you'll find some other quality posts.

It was no surprise to me that I was bang wrong in my predictions of an easy win; that's why I don't gamble. We beat a team from a country with a population less than Blackburn 3-0, so McClaren storms out of a press conference because he was miffed that the press as having a go. Terry whined that it wasn't fair that the fans barracked the team, and then Hargreaves came out this morning saying that the boss turned into Mr. Motivator at half time to turn it around. Add to this Lampard's bad wrist smokescreen and subsequent stories of him spitting his dummy out and you have the makings of a dysfunctional football team. It's all utter bo!!ocks. England played badly against a bad team hell bent on winding England up, in bad weather. Gerrard saved his boss's job for a while. Hopefully his performance will finally wake up the powers that be that Lampard is a spent force as a starter. Will the "football people" agree though? Whatever your personal thoughts of Alex Ferguson are you cannot argue that the bloke is a terrific man manager. He gets the best out of Rooney every week. England get the petulant Scouser; a breed of player we've all enjoyed playing against at some point.

That line up should have played last weekend against Israel. I forecast a big win albeit against tripe. Will Lampard be dropped because of it? No chance.

In all likelihood we'll batter Andorra tonight, and we would do playing like World Champs or not. What this game does is give McClaren a stay of execution and also more fodder for the press. We win 8-0, the press say we should have done. A scrappy win and the knives will be out, but McClaren won, the team managed to score, so he'll stay. I want an England win as it's 3 points which will put us closer to the top. Other teams will drop points on the run in. We need as many as we can get. If the Lampard out story is true and we do win it still won't give McClaren the idea that Lampard should not be in there because of the oppostion. If Rooney scores some will still not be happy as it was done against the part timers. This game came at the wrong time for the ousters, it is a no win situation for all involved. We won't know if McClaren has managed to do something until Russia/Estonia in June. It was interesting to hear captain patriot John Terry banging the same passion drum as he was last time out saying that he would "play for England for nothing". Did he mention offering his match fee to charity though? That would be a nice gesture wouldn't it?

Getting rid of McClaren would only half solve the problem. We still have underperforming players, no natural team balance, nor a bonafide striker who can hold the ball and wait for reinforcements. The sad facts are that we've not had a left sided midfielder since Waddle and Barnes. Barnes consistently underperformend for England as he claims he was made to do all the silly work he didn't have to do at Liverpool. Nor have we had a decent target man. Now I don't mean someone who can head the ball on from long balls, but someone who can get the ball into feet and bring in midfielders. Kuyt in today's game would be good. Earlier examples are Mark Hughes and Kenny Dalglish, both not the biggest but could hold and bring in others with their clever play. Most yonger English strikers around are the speedy type who like to get on the end of things. Could Dean Ashton do a job? McClaren is widely repsected as being a good coach. We all know that it doesn't always translate into being a good manager. The England primadonnas need someone they can respect and at the same time be a bit scared of. Terry Butcher anyone? He's free.

Never as not one of them can take a decent penalty. What has hurt is the constant nearly's that have occurred over the 20 years I've really followed England. 1986: We were never going to win against a rampant Maradona in a hot South American country but Maradona's hand ball gives folk all the ammunition they need still today. 1988: Shocking. 1990: Semi Final, unlucky. We missed penalties. But people argue that Gazza lost his head after Buchwald dived and got him booked. 1992: Shocking. 1994: We didn't even make it, very shocking. 1996: Should have won on home soil, but we can't score penalties. Another semi-final exit. people forget that we were very lucky to beat Spain on penalties. We lived for years off the demolition of the Dutch. 1998: Second round exit. Beckham sent off and Campbell having a perfectly good goal disallowed for jumping near to their soft keeper= cheated. Again we can't score from 12 yards. Verdict, we were hard done by but not cheated, but we'd never have beaten France or Brazil. 2000: Shocking. But we beat the Germans. 2002: We made it through the group of death, boring the other teams out. Murdered the hopeless Danes, then played like dog dirt and got beat off 10 man Brazil (the eventual winners) thanks to Beckham dodging out of a tackle, a Seaman special, and inept play. 2004: The diving, faking, cheating Portuguese put us out on their home soil on penalties after Campbell had a perfectly good goal disallowed for jumping near to their soft keeper = cheated. Again we can't score from the spot and we had flapper James in goal. We would have bored ourselves out in the next round anyway. 2006: Such promise, but such awful boring football. We were robbed because the diving, faking, cheating Portuguese had Rooney sent off then proceeded to try to not concede rather than score because they knew that they would score more penalties than us. England knew that too, that's why they tried to play attacking football. However it all went south when Lampard, the bloke with the most shots in the WC, stepped up scared as hell and missed again. We have at times been on the wrong end of refereeing decisions, but the only facts are that England never score more goals than the opposition during the game to win, and as a result it goes to penalties where we are useless. England have some good players, but have some that are not up to it. To compensate for that we need a strong united team spirit and dogged coaching. Unforunately we do not have that, and will not for a long time yet as the media and inter club rivalries amongst players takes a bigger precedent in this country.

I didn't see the game and it sounds like I did the right thing. I saw Rio Ferdinand's interview later on and he did the usual "we'll get it right" routine. I hope so as it doesn't look good. Why play SWP? He can't get a game for Chelsea, how can he be sharp for international football? I've talked myself hoarse the number of times I've called for Lampard to be dropped. He doesn't have that bit extra to be good at international level. He's ace at Chelsea when he gets half a pitch to tee up his passes and shots, not for England though. England never do anything because we overhype the team, put too much pressure on whoever the manager is, rely on one or two players to carry the rest, and most worryingly we continue to develop technically substandard players.

Neill went for the cash. His agent, West Ham, or both came up with a good speech to endear him to the locals. Dropping the WC winners in there can't hurt, even though it happened over 40 years ago now. He mentioned in one interview that he was impressed with the Chairman's vision for the club; no doubt that's why he had a relegation release cause put into his contract. Good luck to the lad. He's making double the money, we made a profit from him 6 months before his contract ran down, and Hughes turned him into a decent Premiership defender. I think it's time to shut this topic down. The lad is no longer a Rovers player and as such we should not bother with him. Having said that as soon as anything is in the press about Dunn (not now), Duff, Bellamy, or Souness this board lights up like Blackpool illuminations.

How are we feeling today?

It looks like we are still in for Warnock. Is he a left back? We don't need a right back as Super Emerton has made that spot his own. I think Neill has done well. He used to be useless but Hughes turned him into an all action defender. His distribution can be suspect, his tackling a bit industrial, but overall he's been very good for us since Hughes took over and has been very professional all season long. If he wants to leave for silly money I won't hold a grudge, I don't for any player that leaves Ewood, after all if I was offered the same job at a different firm for double the money, I'd be off.

That is what winds me up. It's not what he says but the fact that he tries it on periodically and that we get a few rope danglers latching onto it. We'll be fine. Hughes is a top class manager, we'll get our injured players back, maybe a new face or two in January, steady progress in the UEFA cup, and a mediocre if below average finish in the Prem come May. As for Pardew, it was only a matter of time. Shot shy strikers and new ownership made it easy to clean house.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the tripe you post. What makes it worse is that people jump on the bandwagon making for some very frustrating reading.

Is this a serious post?

A comment on Chelsea -Arsenal. Did Lehmann and Drogba both get booked for diving? That "altercation" was the comedy moment of the season for me; Two 6'4" blokes falling over like they'd been shot when touched. This should have been an edit but I pressed the wrong button.

I can only comment on what I saw; that being the goal highlights as for the first time in weeks we were not on TV. Their first was not offside, neither was the second. Henchoz should not have been sent off. Pedersen's goal was a good strike. Their third was a bit of a calamity. Who was the idiot who slid in and missed Martins on the half way line? Why didn't he just hold him up and wait for reinforcements? A below par crowd, a listless performance and the fans are now openly talking relegation. From what I've seen this season we are nowhere near last season in performances. Injuries, and if truth be told some under par signings, have turned us into a bad side. We look toothless up top and leaky at the back. I do think that we will hold on and not go down but it is going to take some real resilience over the busy Christmas period to make sure we go into 2007 without having to fight. 4-5-1 please to stop the rot.

Brockhall first opened to training in late 1994 during the magical championship season. The land was bought earlier with the pitches laid down very soon afterwards as Dalglish wanted to make sure they were top notch when they got there. At first everybody trained at the same site; pro's and youngters used the same facility. Now there are two locations at Brockhall, the pro's and the academy now train separately; something Hughes likes. I do think that in order for the academy to improve we have to find local players. By local I mean East Lancs. If there are more kids playing football in the area we have a better chance of finding the next Dunn. Getting Liverpool, Manchester, and Euro cast off's wont do us much good. Unfortunately the youth team suffers from the same problems as does the 1st team; Mido didn't want to come to us; neither does the next Mido.

Scrapping the Academy won't do BRFC any good. The club tries it's best to get the best players and make them into 1st teamers. Phillip is right; 95% (probably higher actually) of young footballers do not make it so how do you judge success? I've never met Bobby Downes, so I have no idea what he is like. I do know that football, especially youth set ups, are full of yes men and the 'right' faces. We've had a pipleine to Ireland since the early Dalglish days. Gary Talon was the first then more and more started coming over. Has one other than Duff made it yet?

Middlesbrough are an advert of what to do with an Academy (McClaren gets some kudos here). West Ham have years of tradition and a massive catchment area. Club size is irrelevant. The academy system is the better option; nice pitches, gym, food, kit, opposition, location. But if we don't have local players able to fill it we will have to eo elsewhere and gamble.