Point taken Colin. It's hardly of major importance- I'm just pleased we're no longer doing short corners! I'll give it a rest, especially since nobody seems to remotely agree with me on it The difference between Reid struggling to get in there and Keane is that Keane was competing with Jermain Defoe, a very highly rated striker, and Mido, another highly rated striker who has been in particularly effective form. Besides, Keane actually won his battle for a place, despite that competition. Reid has managed 8 starts all year, although this is partly due to injury, with no naturally left footed competition.

Surely, 80 is an exaggeration? Suppose for argument's sake that half of MGP's corners are shots. Nelsen hasn't scored all season. If MGP used all his corners to put it in, mathematically speaking he still wouldn't score, but let's assume he got 1 goal as a result. Pedersen, with a bit of chance, could've scored one this season, maybe two, from corners. Do you disagree?

Ok. Do you think ANY team scores every dozen corners? Except maybe Chelsea, with that bugger Terry blasting them in. It's not like he shoots EVERY corner he takes. Yet you're saying we've bagged two from normal corners, one from this. Hardly seems like it's cost us too dearly. Can't contribute to the stats for corner goals mind, perhaps someone else can. Obviously no, he wouldn't be shooting if he didn't think he could score. If he doesn't for much longer, he's bound to give it up. The point is though, Hughes wouldn't be letting him shoot from them if he didn't think he could score them. I reckon he's come pretty close a couple of times, and we could conceivably get one anyway if the keeper doesn't handle the pressure well if it drops into the box after a poor tip (That makes it a must against David James!).

Not sure you're listening mate. He's displayed a talent at it from an early age, and one imagines he must still be doing it in training. The problem, as Bellamy11 pointed out, is the keepers are better at dealing with it at this level. We've never been a team that prolifically scores from corners anyway. You think we score every dozen corners do you? Cos we don't.

I think it'll be Newell who we get next. Done a great job at lowly Luton so far. Interestingly, on my game of Football Manager, Mark Bowen was the man the board appointed after they sacked Hughes. A Brum fan claimed to me recently that Bowen is the brains behind Hughesy. Reckon we'll get Newell though.

No, I'm explaining WHY he has tried it. It clearly hasn't paid any dividends this season, but at least it's not as bad as players who take short corners!! All I'm saying really is he's been trying to score from corners because he's actually bizarrely good at it. I imagine he's been knocking a few of them in in training against Big Brad, or Sparky would have told him to knock it on the head by now. Perhaps it's time for him to knock it on the head, or perhaps he's just been a bit unlucky. Sometimes players who are great at scoring from free kicks have a season where very few or perhaps none go in. I admit to being a little perplexed as to why MGP can't usually whip especially good corners into the box considering how good his placement of the ball is in general. Though, one explanation might be that we lack a bit of height in the team, so perhaps he just can't spot midgets like Bellers and Dickov!

You know why he takes those 'silly shots from corners'? He once scored (I can't remember the exact number) 4 or 5 goals DIRECT FROM CORNERS in one youth game. You won't be annoyed if he puts one in, and realistically how often do we score from corners? I'd say he's come close to bagging goals from them on a number of occasions. In fact, I'd say throwing Kuqi right up near the goalie for those corners would probably be distracting enough to enhance Gamst's chances of scoring. Or Shefki might even nudge it in himself. Of course, the problem is that requires us to play Kuqi!

Bizarrely enough, it's not an entirely impossible scenario. Spurs' last two games are perfectly loseable (Bolton at home, then West Ham away). Arsenal have Sunderland away (That'd be their win), City away is tricky, Wigan could potentially upset them at home. Of our remaining games, we should take City, and if we suddenly regain our form we can do Charlton easily enough even at their place. Then sure, there's Chelsea, but they'll have won the league by then. Course, I wouldn't place any bets on it, but I like the optimism!!! However, I'm very worried we could let it all slip and get zip. I hate the anxiety this part of the season brings!

I concur. Every man and his dog might have predicted us to finish in the bottom half, but I never thought that would be our fate. I was always expecting top half, so if we continue playing this crap for the last three games, we'll have met my pre-season expectations- nothing more nothing less. As for my recent expectations...grr..

Utter ballcocks. Why hasn't anybody else just come out and said this yet? I don't think there's any need to go into detail about it, but if we sold Pedersen for 1.5 million this summer, I'd want Williams to be sacked, instantly. I'm not saying cashing in on him is necessarily a bad idea, but if we flogged Pedersen for that, the whole Premiership would take us for mugs forevermore. That's less than we bloody paid. His form is faltering lately- so what? Do you think that suddenly makes him useless? No, he's just off the boil, it happens to all professional players. He was toss when we got him, but Hughes changed his game around. Pedersen has played almost every game this year, and lets not forget his physical prowess was one of the reasons he played poorly at the beginning. So many games have taken it out of him. For somebody whose board name is 'blind devotion', you're very very fickle. No offence.

Let's not put anyone through the torment of seeing a Rovers fan say Shearer should have gone to Man U please.

Campbell broke his nose. He'll be out for at least a week, anything up to 3. Nice setback for the Gunners.

You're funny.

Agreed, although you're a harsh git. Brom will get battered unless Arsenal rest er, their whole first team. Seriously though, they'd have to rest quite a few. 3-1 to Arsenal I reckon. Everton could get something from Tottenham though. If we don't win either of our next two games though, its curtains to the Champions League, and time to start worrying about Bolton catching us.

Off the top of my head, the massacre of up to 400 Vietnamese, many of them unarmed civilians, by US troops, at My Lae. The atrocities committed also included rape and sodomy. As far as I'm aware there was never an official apology issued to the Vietnamese people by the US- the only thing that happened was a single US lieutenant was charged. Think he served a few years or something.

Well there was no other way to deal with it as it was coming over really. It was the sheer execution that makes it a brilliant goal. I feel the Pedersen one is a little overrated because of the team move it involved. These awards get credited to the goalscorer, so I really think it should be about the individual brilliance. And for individual brilliance, it's Bellers' first against Pompey. The run from in his own half capped off by one of the best finishes you'll see when it looked like he'd been pushed away from a goalscoring chance.

Who the hell is Song Billong? Apart from that, and I don't think I've heard of Djourou, why is it surprising? Or was that why? Hmm, spose Diaby isn't all that either.

I voted for someone else. I'd prefer that we look for a top foreign manager (ooh, controversial). One with plenty more balls than gutless Sven though. If England had a man I thought had the calibre for the job, then I'd take them. But the only candidate mentioned who I think might come close is Fat Sam, and frankly, the man irritates me so much I can't even begin to consider that possibility. I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I don't give two hoots whether the manager is English. He isn't part of the playing squad. How far do we take this insistance on being English? Should the kit man be English too? There's a reason there are no limitations on the nationality of the managers of the national teams. FIFA don't feel it matters anyway. I'm also not averse to exploiting the loopholes that have shown up in the rules to get essentially foreign players into the national team. Did anybody have a problem with Lennox Lewis winning an olympic gold, and the world heavyweight title for us? The fact is we already have a one hundred percent English team, and with that, I want us to win the World Cup. If we win it with a foreign manager, its not like people are gonna say things like 'oh, Italy won the world cup, not you' if we have an Italian manager.

Haha, true. But that only works when suing your employer- so Dahlin could've used it against us. I can see it now on the ad... 'I was idly- that being the operative word- going about my job at the training ground for Blackburn Rovers. At lunch time I ate one more pie than the fifty I was accustomed to, and my spine finally gave out. The club failed to warn me that being an overpaid, lazy git and eating too much of their canteen food might end my career. I won £2 million in compensation and screwed the club yet again.' Makes you wonder why he didn't do it...

Fabregas, since you asked. 'Maybe steal a late winner'? Being a bit harsh on Pompey there. At home, they can match anybody right now.

Medical evidence strongly suggested that the cause of the injury was in fact degenerative disc disease and insurers Avon, Eagle Star, AGF and IC Insurance highlighted a clause in the policy which excludes disablement attributable to arthritic or other degenerative conditions. Mrs Justice Dobbs ruled that Dahlin had clearly suffered an 'awkward fall'. However she added: "I do not consider the evidence of the fall puts it in a category of something so very different from what one sees regularly on the football pitch." (From skysports.com)

The lesson we should learn is this: let's not bother insuring our players anymore (although I'd have liked to see what 'pre-existing conditions' they'd have blamed if the lads' plane had been struck down by lightning! God, perhaps?)

Yes we did, but Beattie didn't leave because he hated the manager and they didn't get on. If there is a buy back clause, it will have stated a price. And that price will be more than the 5.5 mill we paid for him. And I certainly don't want to pay that price for Mr Sicknote.

That's what I'm worried about. Anybody know if rather than getting us cash, this will now cost us some? I think it sounds pretty ridiculous how the case went. Wear and tear 'can be' a contributory factor doesn't mean that an unrelated back problem was a pre-existing condition for a new one. Preposterous. From what I know, we should have won the case. Then again we certainly shouldn't have had that much cash from Dahlin! It's not like he was worth that much to us.

Anybody know, does a history of being a Rovers season ticket holder (But not this season or last) enable me to get a ticket for the game? I've been to about half a dozen games this year, but not kept the ticket stubs...