Monday morning reading comments after a loss always brings a smile to my face. No matter what happens there will be plenty of posts made by people with blue and white specs on, and a couple of idiots ones thrown in for good measure. As far as the game goes, we were beaten by a very good side. We didn't help ourselves by playing far too much long ball on a slippery surface, but we worked hard and kept United at bay for long periods. They are a very difficult side to play against: Rooney, Ronaldo, Giggs and Saha are all flyers with or without the ball at their feet, stopping them can be near impossible. Unforutnately their skill may never be appreciated by many as they are blinded by the fact that they play for United. They are great to watch, but not when they are tearing past Rovers players. Couple those 4 with Scholes' passing and any team will be in trouble. Why did they buy Carrick? We have 3 certain 1st teamers out, a left back playing with an injury, our left winger now has a broken rib, we've lost 4 in a row, we're not supplying anything to the forwards; it's all pointing to us beating Spurs on Sunday.

I'd love to have him. Although I've satated mroe than once that he shouldn't be playing for England he is still a very good player; one of the best England has produced in the last 15 years. His attitude is great, his workrate and fitness are phoenomenal, and he's not had many injuries (metatarsal aside). He would be Tugay's ideal replacement. He started off in central mid, he can finish there. He can sit in and pull the strings, score free kicks, and look like the continental. He will end up in the MLS, his academy is in LA and his wife is a big fan of stardom, but at 31 he still has too much to offer for a two bit league. If he comes to Ewood he will be the star and can prove to the whole country that he's still got it. He likes Mark Hughes, and I think I read in his book that his wife and Posh are good friends; she helped Posh settle in Manchester and was really nice (not my words). Wages wouldn't be a problem. Lonsdale would go out of the window and Adidas would make our kit whilst chipping in. We'd be on TV worldwide each week. Sign him up.

Academies rely on the strength of talent they bring into the club. You can have all the facilities in the world but if the players using them are not up to scratch in the first place it's pointless. There is some recent research saying that players kept on after they've finished their academy years more than likely played more unsupervised football (see street football) growing up than the ones that got released. This backs up some arguments. Rovers find it hard to attract the top tier of youth player because of who we are; Dunn was easy because he was a local, as was Beattie. Duff is one of a long list of Irish players who started to trickle into the youth system once Jack Walker's money came around. After that, or even before, our youth set up hasn't been the best.

They also got rid of Rino Gattuso becasue he was deemed no good. Then they couldn't function without Bazza Ferguson the free kick taking average player. Very strange indeed.

I saw some selected highlights. What a farce. Drogba falling everywhere, Carvalho booting everyone in sight, Marquez acting hard. The biscuit goes to Deco; he dived, feigned injury, got booted then squared up to Terry. He should get a 10 game ban.

More logs for the gate debate fire: Article on falling crowds. Just a summary of what everybody says really. We get a mention as do the usual suspects of pub TV, standing, high prices, and overzealous stewarding.

Would we have seen comments like this about Emerton 2 months ago? I doubt it. What was the thread; "Bad news - Emerton signs". How fickle we are. I do like the mark II qualifiers though every time Emerton is now mentioned. We are also atop the lack of discipline league if Sunday's commentators are to be believed. Do we get to keep that too if we win 3 in a row?

I think corner taking is bad across the league. I put it down to players trying to be too fancy with their delivery. If you watch Henry, Lampard, MGP and Co. take one, they try to strike a ball to give it as much spin and curl as possible, like a free kick. However just like a free kick they frequently go anywhere but where they should. What happeend to the days when players put the ball in a dangerous area and let others attack it. They can all put a ball where they want to, why try to be fancy?

I watched the game on Fox with Sky's boxing commentator giving us a history of West Ham for 90 minutes. It was bad to listen to, but they were the story not Rovers. The vast majority of us predicted a loss, probably the most accurate total ever, but it's still a kick in the teeth after watching it. As usual I have my own views that conlfict with some on here. Michael Gray was very sub par, defensively he was very shaky and never helped our attack with his constant long ball tactics. Peter worked very hard but didn't look to have that bit extra a winger needs to make it at the top, maybe a run of games could help (it was said on TV that MGP wasn't injured just dropped- it sounded like someone had been reading the MGP hides thread). Tugay wasn't up to scratch either, probably because Mokoena didn't give him much help. I'm not blaming Mokoena for Sheri's goal. Watch the reply, Teddy's run was great, he completely took Mokoena out of the equation. He might be 40 but he's a clever sod. The second goal should be the one we are complaining about, not because it should have been a goal kick; that doesn't excuse bad defending. It's now 3 goals in 3 games conceded off corners, that smells of either a lack of coaching or a lack of application; most likely the latter. We have lost 8 points because of it. (I didn't read Capt's post before writing this). Zurab needs to grow an inch, it glanced off his head backwards to create the first and he flicked it on for Mullins to score. Ooijer played very well.

A couple of friends of mine went to watch a Durham cricket match shortly after he missed the penalty in the playoffs that kept Sunderland down. Gray was there pie eyed causing allsorts of problems. Allegedly. Could that miss still haunt him?

Please translate Bob. I can only finds snippets but it does look like Ray Stewart scored 76 penalties, and missed 10, in his West Ham career. In 1981-1982 he scored 10 alone.

I'm English. Or was that a joke?

Do I not get any credit here? From the BBC: Ray Stewart Hard-tackling Scottish international who made 431 appearances for West Ham and scored 84 goals(76 pens) before joining St Johnstone in 1991. Managed Livingston and Stirling Albion before moving to Forfar in February 2003. Sacked in 2004, has recently been working as a chauffeur.

You'd think that there would be plenty of bandwagon Billy's jumping on this one. We are playing the current league champions in a knockout game with loads of tickets available. If we were closer to London would they bring thousands? How many would Man U bring in the same situation? What about us? Is it me or do Rovers fans not really care about Chelsea. They are fast becoming the team of choice for fans over here.

Yep, April 12th 1997. Flowers saved it. The beauty of the internet. Apparently he also missed against Liverpool one time.

As much as I hate reverting back to my doom and gloom heritage, I'm with the majority. West Ham have lost 9 in a row, half their team will be out, their chairman is going bananas. Pardew is hanging by a thread. It's on TV. We'll get beat.

I only have memories of Garner/Howard Gayle onward, neither of them were special so Shearer gets the nod. I remember one game when McAteer was being interviewed on the big screen and commenting that Cannonball Carsley was the best penalty taker he'd ever seen.

Have we ever had any good penalty takers? Shearer scored a good few, but I even saw him miss. Whoever takes them has to have confidence in what they are doing. Pick a style and go with it. Who are the best penalty takers ever? For Rovers I'd probably take Shearer - he always used to go top left. Other clubs? Ray Stewart was a left back for West Ham and he just pelted the thing, I don't know if he ever missed one but it looked good when he ran up. I also rate Le Tissier, Cantona, Van Basten, and Zidane. The first 3 used to wait for the keeper to go then put it the other way; very clever (Cantona missed one for Man U by completely sending the keeper the wrong way and hitting the opposite post). Zidane was just class and put it wherever the keeper couldn't get it.

To me it does. He "got it wrong" based on what? TV replays? Your view from the stands? I think that the fact that he was in the right place gave him the best chance he had of spotting anything. If he was unsighted we'd have more rope to hang him with as not only did he not see a goal, but the clown wasn't where he should have been making it even more cast iron in our minds. He gave what he saw from the best position he could have been in (bar being on the goal line). Did he cheat? No. Did he do it on purpose? No. Should it have counted? Maybe. Until instant replay technology is installed in Premier League football we will have to rely on referee's opinions, as we have done for over 100 years. They are not always right, but they do the best job they can. Someone has to be the scapegoat and the referee normally gets the nod, only yesterday it should have been Neill, McCarthy, and Roberts for their errors. This is a Rovers board full of Rovers fans who feel hard done by and like a moan at the best of times. Losing a local derby to a horrible team whilst missing two penalites makes it harder to take. If it was the other way round (Bolton having the chance) everyone on here would be saying that it was never a goal.

Whether anyone likes it or not the ref is the chief adjudicator on a football pitch. I'm not going to have a go at him becasue he had the best view he could have had. In contrast, if he was on the edge of the box and made the same decision I'd be going mental.

Didn't see the game, only selected highltights, so I cannot comment on the performance. What I did see though was a schoolboy error for Campo's goal and 2 awful penalties. Neill was looking at Campo, I think he was even touching him, but as soon as the ball came in Campo jinked and moved, Neill didn't then decided to make a token jump when the ball was nestling in the net. 2 goals in two weeks from crosses were people are not marking properly, I reckon Sparky will be going bananas on the training ground about it this week. McCarthy's penalty was too soft, too close to the keeper, and telegraphed. So what did Roberts do after demanding the ball? The exact same thing. So far this season we have missed 3 penalties, I think a practice session is needed. The ball over the line debate is clutching at straws. 2 penalites should have negated the need to gripe about it. In fairness to the ref, he had to make an instant decision with no benefit fo slow motion replays on repeat. He was in the perfect position to judge, the Bolton defender hacked it away straight away and Rovers didn't celebrate, complain, gesticulate, or shriek enough to make him think otherwise. You can guarantee that if the opposite occurred Bolton's journeymen would have adopted the Man U approach. Allardyce's post match comments were hilarious. He had a go at Jason Roberts for making a meal of it. He must have one short memory as I seem to recall that Diouf blatently dived at Ewood 2 seasons ago (?) for them. The interviewer should have showed a TV replay of that then asked him the same question plus a cheeky one about his son allegedly accepting bungs. A side to this is Martin Jol at Tottenham, he comes out with more sh!te than most when defending his cheating players. He defended Zokora the other week over his dive and then yesterday glossed over Defoe biting the Argie. N0b's.

Lilleshall was a disaster from the beginning. It was set up at the height of England's 1980's long ball era. The coaches who worked there picked the biggest 15 year old footballers in England and put them on the "fast-track" to international stardom. A few made it, I think Michael Owen was one, but far too many didn't. The academy system is pretty new to me as I wasn't in Blighty when it was conceived, but from what I know it lengthened the old 2 year YTS contracts to 3, called them scholarships and made kids concentrate more on football and education rather than picking litter up after home games. Also clubs can have teams at under 8 level which was previously not allowed. I don't think academies are a bad thing, I also think England will also always produce good footballers, it is the coaching that needs to be improved across the board. Too many still rely on what they did when they played (hoof the thing as far as possible) rather than trying to make players better.

I agree with the comments on the idiotic press. I agree that England players underperform on the world stage. I agree that McClaren looks lost right now. I also wonder why Jermain Jenas gets into the England squad consistently. Is his bench warming technique the best around? He shouldn't have gone to the WC and shouldn't be playing now. As for Robinson. If Gary Neville had passed the ball outside the line of the goal a wiff would have given them a corner. Robinson's positioning was bad, he should have asked for the ball outside of his near post. If he'd have done did this there would have been no problems. This is not an issue anymore (well it will be for a while now) but after Euro 1992 (the last tournament where keepers could pick up the ball from a back pass) coaches all over the place were worried about keepers who didn't have the skill to control a ball, so many decided to teach players that when they passed it back to so so outside the lines of the goal, hopefully negating comedy own goals. Keepers were also taught where to receive them. In the years since goalies have become more comfortable with a ball at their feet and this practice has died down.

Looks like a disgruntled fan had a go at England on the way home. The spin in the article is nauseating; the whole thing must have been written by Rooney's PR man. Rooney gives V's to fan?

It looks like Theno used to coach Rover6 judging by his comments.