just a thought- i dont think anyone has mentioned this before...

I believe the Cricket Field Stand holds somewhere around 4000-4200 in total- yet we have been given 3800 tickets.

therefore- i assume they must be having an area of seats closed off, probably between the away end and the Longside?

unfortunately, as i have to work in and around dinglesville, if this is the case then the numbties will claim these are seats we failed to sell- even if all our 3800 tickets are snapped up.

anyone know if this is true?

It won't matter in the grand scheme of things because regardless of a sell out of not you can be assured that in years to come burnley fans will believe we failed to sell out and the they had 10,000 stood outside.

Thats just the way it goes....

lol gav im in the office and one of the dingles said to me there was a half mile queue today .I just laugh me bollux off!

Surely the only place in Burnley where there is a half mile queue is on the motorway...outbound, of course. ;-)

Hagen..

Should have been Rovers property..

Erik Bjornstad Hagen, right? He was a god in CM 01/02 and I seem to recall him having an interesting tussle with Shearer during a uefa game a couple of years ago.

It's time for Neill to be dropped and Matteo who was just as bad yesterday.

Neither of them can defend or pass.

I recall wondering where the FBs were every time I saw a 'Boro attack on MOTD. Not a good sign!

Surely if there's 5 in midfield and 4 at the back there should be someone, ANYONE, out wide when we are defending!

I don't like the fact that Jemal has become our second striker.. I'm desperate to see some more muscle and aerial ability up front, Dickov/Jemal doesn't give us enough of that IMO. (even though, I did not see the game yesterday..)

Stick Jansen or Stead up front with Dickov, and let Gallagher or Stead out on a three-month loan with the possibility of bringing them back if needed.

It really can't get much worse can it? We're not producing enough! While Dickov does a very good job, he's not the Beattie/Shearer-type to volley in a great goal on his first chance of the game either.. so give him a partner who can do a job in the air, that means either Stead or Jansen - and let Emerton / Gamst loose as wingers.. Mokoena/Savage in central midfield should do the defensive job, with a great pair (Nelsen/Todd) at the back!

This sounds very reasonable, seems to be well conceived and does appear to give the side decent balance!

I know there’s not too much room in football for superstition however i am admittedly a bit superstitious, does any one ells agree that Souness may have jinxed Johnny Stead at the end of last season when he said in an interview he did not care if stead never scored another goal in a rovers shirt!

Nah. Lady Luck never listens to Souness...

C'mon Rovers! Pull it out of the bag!

yup Gally on  for someone.

only striker on the bench is jemal!

Garry Flitcroft

Jemal Johnson

Peter Enckelman

Nils-Eric Johansson

Steven Reid

With the injury woes of 'Boro I thought we'd play 2 up front.

An inexperienced JJ on the bench ahead of Stead and Gally seems unusual too. Are they injured?

Friedel

Nelsen Todd Mokoena Johansson

Emerton Tugay Savage Pedersen

Dickov Jansen

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.

If Tugay plays we'll lose. He's not good enough.

I'd like to see the seats at the front of the stands sold cheaper, especially in the Darwen End. They are always empty and the view isn't great. In addition, at the moment, you can have a good crowd on, but when you see MOTD that night it looks like your playing in a morgue.

Savage looked more of a threat in the first half than Ferguson did in 18 months. Thompson wasn't good but then he was never going to get the space he thrives on in a 5 man midfield. Not sure what Mokoena's best position is?

It'll be interesting to see who Hughes opts for in centre midfield against Boro. Savage likes getting forward, so I wonder if playing him alongside Tommo would be too attack minded.

BTW: The commentators on the radio were saying that Tommo stormed down the tunnel on being subbed - did that really happen?

He took his time getting off the pitch and did disappear, not convinced he stormed but maybe Manchester Blue could see better from his perch....

He knew he had played badly.

He just spat his dummy but he didn't go down the tunnel. Clearly wasn't happy and it was all reminiscent of McAteer to me. A player who thinks he's much better than he really is and can't see any faults. If he would just do the simple thing at times it would be great but instead he always tries silly things that rarely come off and end up with us losing the ball. A very frustrating player at the moment.

I think that if Thommo was angry it was probably with himself. He had a poor game and I think he knew it. He probably wanted to stay on to try to rectify the situation. There's no harm in a bit of passion.

I believe the refs jurisdiction extends for 30 mins pre and post the game. Should every Chelsea player receive a booking for removing their shirts?

I dreamt that Stead scored a cracker last night. Looping cross from wide left (not sure if it took a deflection). Centre half flat footed as the ball drops over him. Not anther defender in sight. Stead controls with his left thigh and wacks the ball past the keepers right hand from just inside the area. Oh, he's at the B'burn End too.

You mark my words...;-)

Is it me or is every time Tugay gets the ball shortly followed by audible groans from the crowd...

When you mean 4-3-3 are you including wingers as being part of the 3 up front? So that for me that would still be 4-5-1? Or do you actually think that they are playing alongside each other.

It's 4 - 5 - 1 when defending, and 4 - 3 - 3 in attack (wingers push up).

Same as Hughes used for Wales?

I'm not 100% sure we've got the right personnel to work it in the Premier League, but it's worth looking at.

Well done Johnson!

C'mon Rovers!

Ferguson due to hold showdown talk. He thinks rovers were asking an unreasonable sum.

L.E.T.

He would be better advised to ask Murray why they provoked him into asking for a transfer, then wouldn't/couldn't pay the fee.

This is disgraceful!

got my rovers shirt with 'SAV' and his new squad number on the back. It's amazing what you can find out with a little bit of a search.

Go on then spill the beans, what number is he wearing?

SAV

31

Is there any logic in Sav selecting No. 31?

Why not 3 or 30.... or even 32

Apparently it's coz we bought him for 3.1 million, and he doesn't mind rubbing it in.

Didn't he pose with number 44 on his shirt?

This might put a few noses out of joint, but I'm glad Tugay isn't playing tomorrow. He's a liability and has been completely anonymous when he's played recently. There's always a massively increased likelihood that we'll get overrun in midfield when he plays and in a local derby against the type of side that Boltion are it would be a recipe for disaster if he played. JMO.

However, given that he's not playing I think it is more likely that we'll win, and maybe even dominate certain passages of play.

We need to win this with our approaching fixtures. I think that in 5 weeks time we will be right back down there and these are the games we need to win.

Yes, with forthcoming fixtures and the fact that all the sides below us will be watching this fixture, after a weekend when they picked up points, we really need the win.

3 points for us will have double the demoralising effect on the lower echelons as it would effectively negate any gains they have made over the weekend. That's the plan anyway.

I'm not able to go as I've broken my foot and strained tendons in it too. Very painful, but at least I'll still be able to watch it on the box.

Dan Lad

If fit Bothroyd must play as Gally and Stead are simply far too lightweight to play against Boltons back 4. (lightweight being OK if accompanied by trickery or pace but neither of em has any of that either).

It says on the Rovers website player profile but that Gally is 6 foot 1!

I've been trying to judge whether that is an exageration, but it's difficult when he's stood next to Dickov ;-)

Similarly Thommo is down as being 10 stone and MGP 11 stone. No-one ever says Thommo is lightweight, though. The exact opposite, in fact ;-)

More creativity from the website team?

Dan Lad

I know Neill has played left back a couple of times in the last few seasons, how did he do there? I obviously prefer a left-footed player there (If Gresko could find the form he had while on loan here that'd be great), but it could be an option. Or maybe Nellie can play there too?

For Gresko to find the form he had whilst on loan we'd need to sit Duffer in front of him!

After Duff left he quickly started to look a weak link and that resulted in even more pressure from the opposition down that flank. He lacks pace and sometimes seems to want to do too much cynical shirt pulling rather than just winning the ball.

That said he may now blossom under a different training regime. I do get the feeling that the players seem to be emerging from under the big, black cloud that was the Souness 'training' system. I can almost picture them blinking in the sunlight and thinking 'Hey, it turns out I'm pretty good at this football malarkey!'

I think I'd prefer Gray or Jay at LB ahead of Neill. His forms improved (see above) and I don't want him put back by being played out of position.

All in all, given that MH has promised playing time to Spector we could see him slotting in at LB on a fairly regular basis.

MGP doesn`t seem to have a right foot(see goal) but boy does he have a left one(see goal).

Didn't he score with his right?

I feared the worst when I heard that Tugay was in the starting eleven. Am I the only one to have question marks over Tugs?

I listened to the game but it's difficult to get a feel as to how well the players did. With reference to the lads making their first statrs it sounded like Nelsen was strong in the tackle and very solid, Mokoena got his foot in and knows when to make a 'clumsy' challenge. There was a spell in the second half where the commentator must have said 'Nelsen wins the ball', or 'great challenge from Nelsen' or 'they couldn't get passed Nelsen' about five times in a minute..or so it seemed. I'm looking forward to seeing the new lads on Wednesday.

It all sounded quite encouraging even if we didn't put the game safe. I'm looking forward to seeing another MGP goal. Well done, lad!

Stanford is not in the Ivy League.

It's a stunning University, anyway. Fantastic campus and fabulous weather! Slightly different than Blackburn in Jan!

I hope he settles in OK.

Dan Lad

apparently the peter jackson motm is given out by.... the manager. i read it a while ago that souness used to select the sponsors motm and dont see any reason why that would stop with hughesy in the fold.

Souness used to be able to decide the Man of the match by virtue of the large number of games he viewed from the stands, maybe. Thankfully Hughesy doesn't seem as inclined to get involved in that sort of thing.

It could be a welcome relief to playing league matches whilst at the wrong end of the table. I hope Hughsey tells all the lads to go out, relax and show Cardiff what Premiership football's all about. I'm not advocating taking it easy, more enjoying the game and showing that we have the edge in class. Of course, Cardiff could turn it into a kicking match, but I suspect we could show them up even more if they try that.