I agree. Derbs makes finishing look very easy whereas Roberts makes it look very, very difficult.

So why have an Academy then? The thing that gets me is that we have been told for ages that we have the best academy facilities bar none, yet teams like Villa and City (both above us in the league as I type this) have been bringing players through from theirs, into the first team, and successfully so. It clearly can be done, and more often than one player every five years, which is what we seem to be averaging. While I don't agree with everything Rover6 says, he is absolutely correct in the fact that Derbyshire would not have had a sniff of a run in the team but for an unlikely set of injuries. Without that, any demands for Derbyshire to play would have been met with the same ridicule he gets over his calls for Treacy etc. for whom two minutes at the end of a Carling Cup game was hardly a baptism of fire.

How that Downes fellow keeps his job is beyond me - we can't keep quoting Duff and Dunn as signs of success of the Academy. Since they broke in, what, 7/8 years ago, its been Derbyshire, and he did his developing at 'Arrod rather than the famed academy. And I don't accept the 'it's difficult' argument, City are doing it.

The Axe has improved tremendously in the last 12 months. I thought he was a more than adequate sub for Savage yesterday. One or two misplaced passes, but he makes himself available and linked play up well. A good tackler and a much better header of the ball than anyone else in the middle. I have no worries about him.

Keep 'em coming WB - I remember that game like it was yesterday. Due to the Riverside being closed, I was in the Darwen End enclosure enduring a hailstorm of coins from the Villa lot - well worth it though

Didn't he make his league debut away at fulham and bag a couple?

We've had three black Champions League winners in our team and apparently all of them were lazy! I'll bet all of them cover more yards than Simon Garner ever did. Perhaps players who have scaled the heights have a different playing style than the more mundane whitey's we've had up front. Cole, Yorke and Benni would have been found out long ago if they were deliberately not trying. Hughes of all people with his own playing style and the wonders of Prozone would be first on the case.

While I was underwhelmed by his overall contribution on Saturday, the fact is that he did just this the one time it mattered when Savage broke through on the left in the first half. Benni lost his marker and was ideally placed. But for Savage's crap ball, Benni would probably have scored and potentially been the day's hero. He is the best in the Prem as a predatory scorer in and around the 6 yard box. He thrives from the low cross played between the last defender and the keeper. He needs Bentley and/or Pederson to be delivering those and he got none. It would be nice if he did other things but he doesn't. If we don't play to Benni's strengths, he won't deliver, just like if we had played high balls to Bellamy. Get low crosses into the 6 yard box and he'll get 20 goals. Punt it to him with his back to the goal and he'll be useless.

I am of the opinion that having professional referees is at the root of the problem. Now its how they make their living, not unnaturally they seek to advance in their profession. Advancement is signalled by the number of top 4 games you get, and the match reports of the top 4 managers has some bearing. In the days of Alan Hardacre, complaints by a manager about a ref would automatically ensure they got that ref for their next important game, and then a few more as well. Now, the opposite seems to be the case.

Utd having a waiting list of 14,000 for season tickets was simply bad business - un-exploited demand. Utd have increased their capacity more than anyone and can still use increased prices to balance supply and demand. Good for them: Old Trafford will still be full next year and Ewood will still have acres of empty seats. I seem to recall predictions that the Glaziers would be miserly with Fergie's transfer budget - maybe it's being paid for by increases in income the previous management were leaving untapped.

I thought Dunny should have played yesterday in place of Tugay, but I was surprised by how much more he brought to the team. A midfielder who could tackle, dribble, pass and shoot - haven't seen one of those for a long time. On the evidence of yesterday, Dunny and Reid in midfield for next season.

Hmmm, Personally, I would have thought that a player bought in Januaury would have been able to put in a full shift by April, no matter how unfit they were at first. Henchoz came to us unfit but was putting in good performances quicker than this, and he's several years older. I had an open mind but am now beginning to doubt

Me too. In fact I was thinking it watching Spuds front 2 tear Bolton apart: can't imagine Benni + anyone doing that. I think he has one assist all season.

I found this City Academy article interesting. Not only for their apparent success, but some of the things that lie behind it. No turnover of coaches, which would appear to be in contrast with ourselves, and I also like the running total of transfer fees over running costs, which we don't know for BRFC. Maybe it's just me being out of touch, but sometimes I feel like I know less about my own club than I do about most others.

25 yard run up and a trickler that barely made it into the 6 yard box - is that the one you're thinking of?

Couldn't agree more - lock the thread and throw it away. How an average player like Neill can generate 50-odd pages amazes me.

...and a much bigger difference between Dunn's idea of 'fittest ever' and 'Hughes standard fit' I like the comments Hughes makes on the official site, along the lines of, 'It's the fittest I've ever seen David and we might be able to get him in shape to be involved in a few weeks or so.' i.e. 'Christ, I'd forgotten what a fat pig he is!"

I am expecting his side of the story to be another Cashley Cole-type whinge about the board takin' bleedin' liberties by only offering around 1 million a year.

His posts are funny though - the one in the LET made me laugh out loud. Bring him back!

Not as clear as we thought then. Perhaps if he meant per seat sold, he would have said 'per attendee'? Anyaway, thanks for looking it up and I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in hearing the clarification.

Where did I say I didn't believe him? I was only trying to work out how it could be so, and the implications that come from it. Since we must have a mountain of concessions to get down to 13 as an average, that surely points to a lower percentage of wage earners in our crowd than in most others. Therefore, as a % of disposable income, I don't think that on average Rovers is as cheap as is being made out. Therefore, it is naive for people to keep bleating on about the public not doing their bit. And therefore we will always have a lower gate income than most other prem clubs apart from Wigan, Pompey, PNE if they come up etc. Boo hoo hoo. Isn't life unfair. Thanks to the massive disparity between Sky income and gate income, our total income deficit versus the likes of Charlton is a relatively small proportion of the total - probably mostly made up by us finishing higher, and them having to completely rebuild a ground from scratch with no sugar daddy signing all the cheques. I just can't stand this victim mentality where fans of BRFC, of all people given the Walker era, are bleating on about being disadvantaged.

9876 posts certainly counts as a head on gale; isn't there much else to do out there? Given that no-one on here would have come even close to predicting the 13 quid seat yield, I fail to see why your 'estimates' should be given any credence at all, especially since you are as unbiased as anyone else on this board in your constant berating of the Blackburn public. It would be interesting if we could somehow conceptually validate the 13 quid number. For that to be the AVERAGE number, then for everyone that pays 15 - which was the rock-bottom boro/Bolton price remember, then someone else pays 11. For everyone that pays 20 - and there seem to be quite a lot who do: TND boasts about paying that in the Riverside as evidence for how cheap it is - someone else pays 6! For an away fan who pay 30, three home fans pay 7. The only way this could be true is if we have a completely disproportionate % of kids/OAP's to grown ups - which would actually tie in with my very infrequent observations when I attend. That being the case, the cost burden is falling on either the income of the parent(s), presumably along with their own tickets, or on OAP's out of their meagre pensions, making it cheap for neither group. The fact is that we ARE a town team, and don't have Charltons 2 million fan base (thanks for the estimate there Philipl - I wonder where 1,995,000 of them were when they played at Upton Park), so all this bleating about they get more money than we do makes not a jot of difference. As I said earlier, since we have different circumstances, we must have a different strategy, which means we cannot and should not see 'competing' purely defined by income level. Especially since when we had the money in Souness's day, the vast majority of it was pee'd away on ridiculous fees and contracts so fat that no other club could be persuaded to take them over.

It would do if it were based on fact. Evidence that Charlton rake in an extra 7 quid per seat than us??? And aren't they the club that put on free transport from deepest Kent? Usual 'estimated' nonsense dressed up as gospel that we've come to expect from our Maltese accountant

Yes...but, unlike those clubs, we have had a brand new gound (well, 3/4 of one), brand new training ground and brand new academy gifted to us while they have had to pay for theirs out of revenue/borrowings. Aren't both Everton and City massively in debt? Servicing costs on debts of 70-80 million would make a huge hole in their extra gate money, if not wipe it out altogether. If we have a much lower cost structure then that is more due to Jack's historical investments. Just focusing on income differences is like arguing that no-one can compete with Proctor & Gamble because they have higher sales than anyone else. We CAN compete depsite lower incomes, but only if we have a different strategy. We more than most cannot afford to sign million pound annual contracts for donkeys such as Matteo, so I was delighted to read that Bentley was on a miserly 15k/week. As long as we have a manager who gets more hits than misses when taking punts on these relatively unknown/cheap players, then we will be fine despite missing out on some gate income. I'm happy to leave the clubs with higher cash flows p!ssing it down the drain splashing out on the likes of Owen, Baros etc; which is probably what we would also do if we had it.

They are, but and maybe will continue down the same road, but overall I think major league sports make more of traditions. Thinking of the Toronto Maple Leafs: no green and yellow sponsors logo on the famous Blue and White, old players highlighted every game, retired jerseys in the rafters, an opening video steeped in the history, national anthem before the game, players out in the community, players wives charirty organisation etc etc, plenty of grudge matches vs the Flyers, Bruins, Canadiens and our recent nemesis, the Sens, pantomime villains like Brashear - much more of an atmospheric experience than a visit to Ewood these days. Football has turned suppoprters into spectators - the difference being the passion which consists of history, traditions, and emotions; all of which are conspicuous by their absence. 3pm Boxing Day is virtually the only semblance of any tradition left. We have a greater history than virtually anyone, yet you wouldn't know it by attending a game at Ewood. Special for those of us who already bleed blue and white, but not very special to the occasional supporter. Last 8, maybe, last 4 certainly. But last 32 is only the equivalent of the 4th round of the FA Cup. Who plays for Bayer Leverkusen? If they were playing in my back garden, I'd probably shut the curtains. On Boxing Day, no-one had anything to do, many had the whole week off, and probably had many fond memories of Boxing Day matches from the past. 3-2 at t'Turd, even trips to Halifax seemed a lot more special than any other games. If the outcome is wide open after the first leg, I'd hope we get a lot nearer 20,000 than 10,000, but without 8,000 Scousers, it'll still be half empty.