Prof. I'll wager a greater percentage of the population of Darwen can be found at Ewood on a Saturday than that of Blackburn.

We must name our price and not budge. That price MUST be in excess of £5million.

If we had multi-millionaire owners creaming that amount of money away from our team I would be most unhappy.

Would you care to name some of these "foreigners in our reserves earning 30k per week who dont wanna play for us"?

At least he is finally moaning in the right direction (i.e. at Savage and not Blackburn Rovers).

what was the magic number last season?

Last season all three relegated sides finished with 33 points, so 34 would have done.

Everton were 17th on 39 points.

Yes, I accept that. I really don't think we have to worry, though. There are more than three teams in this league that we look much better than. I honestly can't remember a Premiership season where so many teams (4) have so few points at this stage.

If we take "the way things are going" literally...

Norwich - the team currently occupying the third fatal relegation slot - have accumulated 16 points from 23 games, at an average of 0.696 points per game.

At that rate they will accumulate a mere 26.435 points - let's round that up to 27 for argument's sake.

Three more points for another season in the Premiership?

Wait til you've seen them play, for crying out loud!

They have over fifty international caps between them, so I don't think their experience can be called into question.

I've always thought he was a decent player. Many had written him off before he'd kicked a ball, and a lot more wrote him off when he booted Dugarry. I'm glad to see he's finally winning folk round.

all the women in Birmingham are ugly

Nonsense!

Some are quite attractive. Then they speak...

Was the Boro game the one Short came on when we were losing 4-0?

Short came on after 63 minutes (just after we had conceded three in 14 minutes).

Talk about shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.

You would think if Football was "logical" then the following would apply:

String team1 = "Spurs";

String team2 = "Boro";

String team3 = "Rovers";

if ((team1.beat(team2)) && (team2.beat(team3))) {

team1.willBeat(team3);

}

, but we all know that one of the reasons we love football so much is the unpredictable, "anything-can-and-will-happen"-ness of the sport.

So basically what you are trying to say is that footballing success is not commutative.

Nissa - only 3 "what you doing"s in the match

Three points!

Goals!

A clean sheet!

An away win!

Off the bottom!

Out of the relegation zone!

Another penalty (converted)!

Praise the Lord!!!

I was responding to Hughesy's post above, Stu.

Obviously the two strikers who will pick themselves are Dickov and Gallacher (provided Stead is still out).

Just weighing up options given that Bothroyd, Stead and Jansen are all likely to be unavailable for the next game. As Djorkaeff is injured it looks like the front two will pick themselves...

Dickov

Djorkaeff

Emerton Reid

Ferguson Thompson

looks pretty threatening to me.

On a related note, what has become of Youri Djorkaeff?

Couldn't he play behind Dickov and in front of a midfield without Tugay (Bazza/Flitty or Bazza/Thommo)?

...wearing nice clothes to games...

Nice?!

'do a Souness'

Back in five minutes, boss. I'm just off to do a Souness.

Tried and tested candidates only please...

My biggest fear is that the successful candidate will be tried (by the brfcs.com kangaroo court), hung, drawn and quartered - before a ball has been kicked.

That would mean we've appointed Houllier or Glenda.

Bobby Robson for me.

He would command the respect of the players for sure.

I reckon he would take the job just for the chance to prove a very pertinent point to Fat Freddy.

Everton also wanted him!

Oi! Moyes! Find your own pigging players and stop copying us!

It's like being back at school.

I think there is substance in the McCarthy-Everton link. The player claims he was all set to make the move to Goodison, but Porto pulled the plug at the eleventh hour. He made no mention of us. It wouldn't surprise me if it's GS who is telling porkies.

I thought he was on a performance related wage anyway?

You mean we haven't been paying him anything???

I do just remind you all that the team who are bottom at Christmas have NEVER survived.

I'll start worrying about that when it looks like we might be bottom at Christmas. Not a situation I envisage.

Having watched the game on Saturday, I would say that Kanu only looked really effective when he dropped back a bit (c.f. Yorke in the second half). He showed some fancy skills, but he certainly didn't lead the line.