flitcroft is long past it in my opnion. he drifts out of the game far too much & doesn't have the legs anymore. get tugay in and lets have a go at them. None of this containment rubbish. pederson, tugay, fergie and emerton and lets give them hell.

they will just be there to try and watch who is coming in for interviews!

Seen as though he gets so many 'scoops' with our club, I thought we could have our very aown 'alan nixon watch' Everytime he posts a 'scoop' it can be put into this thread & we can see how worng he actually was. first up is his story about flitcroft in the starting XI this week. http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/sporttop/tm_...-name_page.html ------------------------------------------------ GARRY SET TO FLIT IN AGAIN By Alan Nixon GARRY FLITCROFT will be brought in from the cold by Blackburn Rovers caretaker boss Tony Parkes - after his row with Graeme Souness. Long-serving Flitcroft was stunned to be stripped of the captaincy and his squad number after a disagreement with former manager Souness. But Parkes will put Flitcroft back into the heart of midfield alongside Barry Ferguson against Newcastle on Saturday, with the chance to prove the new Toon Army chief wrong. Flitcroft was the most surprising of the players frozen out by Souness. Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole and Andy Todd had all fallen foul of the hard-line manager. But Flitcroft came in for the treatment for no apparent reason, although insiders reveal there was a dispute over a going-away party for a player at the end of last season.

Betfair stopped taking odds on that years ago.

JW and the board seem to be running the club a lot better these days, so I'm fairly hopeful that we will get someone we are all happy with. What I would hope will happen is the shortlisted candidates will all present their proposals for how they are taking the club forward in the next 5 years. Key to this, is an overhaul of the scouting network, the running of the acadamy, it's integration into the club as a whole & most importantly the day to day running of the first and reserve teams! Whilst I think mark Hughes would be a great manager, if he comes, it's more likely he'll follow the steve mclaren route and stay in part time charge of the welsh national team. If this happens - will he have enough time to devote to all areas of Blackburn Rovers and take us forward over the next 5 years?

Don't be surprised if Souness attempts to do to Rovers what he did with Rangers. From what I've read, Blackburn fans have been quite understanding about Souness leaving - but I wonder what you'll feel like should he return to snap up Ferguson and some other Ewood stars ? I'll be gutted if that happens, but lets look at it realistically. Souness will have a reported £20 million at his disposal, so I think he will be aiming a little higher than the players we now have. Who do we have that would get in their team? Given has been one of Newcastles best players for years. Someone mentioned on here that they thought he was error prone, but i'd be very suprised if souness went for Brad at his age. Fergie - I guess he would only go if souness sold some of the 10 midfielders he already has at Newcastle. Stead. - no chance. he's just not good enough. They have a lot of money to spend so souness will not need to gamble on players tat may or may not make the grade.

does anyone know why strachan left southampton?

Mark Hughes is not a bad shout. Problem with getting in a manager from the lower leagues is whether he commands enouh respect from the players. Look at what happened to Sturrock.

Brad Friedel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! not with shay there. strachan for manager?

before any of you anti souness people start rejoicing - who the hell are we goign to replace him with? And more importantly - who is souness going to try and nick from us come the transfer deadline in january?

why are you quite sure about that? what on earth makes you say that?

just back from the game and a bit of a tale of 2 halves. first half - we looked pretty solid. we had a job to do which was defend deep and work very hard for each other whilst trying to hit them on the break. it worked for the first half and although arsenal passed the ball around very well - there wasn't the usual panic in the rovers defence. i've not really stood up for nissa before, but today I thought he was excellent. his positioning and control were excellent and looked very self assured. i quite liked gresko at left midfield - we really should have used him more there last season! although he isn't a flying winger - he did his job very well supporting grey, whilst also offering an attacking outlet. emerton - thought he played well today. he's up against one of the best left sided players in the country, but on quite a few occasions beat them both. his end ball wasn't always great, but it seems that his confidence is slowly returning. mateo - go back to leeds. average player who is not improving the team. i'd much rather see douglas given a go. how many times did he simply lose the ball? tugay - played well and ran a hell of a lot. covered more ground than usual and although he gave it away a couple of times - was pretty good on the whole. stead - some very nice control from our usual hoofing up field, but still looks a little light weight. On the whole - what did people expect? we contained them for the first half and the crowd and players were starting to get tetchy. its just a shame we didnt hold out for longer than 5 mins in the 2nd half. need to see the goal again, but didn't we have 2 defenders marking henry? i guess that what makes him world class. i'd keep the same team, but replace mateo for fergie in the next game.

did he score though? dicov will chase defenders more than cole ever did. so what, Andy is still a different class to Dickov just look at their careers that's not in question chris. the statement suggested that souness has messed up getting rid of andy cole & the proof was there in black and white - he made a run and lost possession. Big deal.

did he score though? dicov will chase defenders more than cole ever did.

2-0 26,000 as loads of people who haven't renewed season tickets decide to buy on the day yorke scores both - one with his head, the other a deft chip

fowler???? what has he done for 5 years now? souness is hardly renowned for being the master motivator for players that have lost their desire! fowler lost his when he left liverpool. sadly - a waste of talent

I see souey has come out and said he's not a priority right now. Quite sensible really considering we have our own youth policy. It would hardly inspire any of the guys coming through the system. come on souey - surprise all the doubters and pull of a loan deal for someone with a bit of class!

1. scott sellers 2. colin hendry 3. alan shearer

funny argument about football fans and their loyalty. In all other walks of life, if you paid for a product and got one that didn't live up to expectations - you would dump it and go for something else. Football fans can't do this obviously, but why should someone fork out £350 to go to a game which makes them wound up and miserable for the next few hours! 'Get behind your club' we're told, yet it's not so much 'get behind your club' as 'help contribute to another over paid prima donna's next million' The idea of a football fan following their club through thick and thin was a good one when the cost of going to a match was low in comparison to wages and the players themselves earned a normal wage!

saving it for his book then ;-)

As Cole seems to be the one that has said he can't work for Souness, contary to the press reports, I doubt the Rovers will have to pay anything to get him off the books. JW and GS are not that stupid. They have seen this coming for a long time. I think the reason why they have waited this long to resolve it and not at the start of the summer, is that they had to wait for COle to make the first move.

I've heard the exact opposite martin. Garys days have been numbered for a while, as he has lost the resepct of his fellow team mates. Football clubs are small places and this comes from someone on the fringes of the first team.

what part of his game did he change? top 15 scorers? wow. what an achievement

one last thing. stick cole in the reserves until he caves in his wage demands for his new club and his pay off from us. he won't want to spend the last year in the stiffs. he didnt want to do it at man u and he wont want to do it here. its a risky game, but we should be playing hard ball on this one.

Can't say I'm that bothered about him going actually. Although I am very disapointed with the timings. & to alarge extent - I agree with TND, apart from him deliberately playing badly! As I didn't go to many games last season - I had to get the majority of my news from this messageboard. And if I had the time, or inclanation, I'd be able to go back to last season and count all the messages slating cole up until his 'falling out' with souness. After this episode, I started to read things that said he was running after lost causes and generally putting in 100% - something that he has never really been known for at BRFC. I firmly belive Cole and his agent started to look for a new club in those last 10 games. His record last season was pretty awful. So what if he was our top scorer....it was still a bad return for someone on 55k a week. His record with us was great for 2 seasons and I guess that's what 7.5 million bought us. It kept us up and it helped us to win a cup. But we are in very different times now as a club and more importantly - we have a very new batch of players. We are in new times, so we need to get rid of the old . that includes anyone who thinks he has a divine right to a place at any cost ( todd, flitty, cole all included) And its importnant that cole is sent home for germany now. We don't need his sulking affecting the whole teams preperations. Unless there was a big shift in the board meeting yesterday, I suspect, like others, we'll go after radinski. Miracle mode on..... The trustees have seen the light and realised we need a new hero. they sanction a bid for beattie as we had a % of the transfer fee due to us from beattie anyway, so it should be cheaper to us. he comes and leads us to european glory realist mode back on..... keep dreaming andy