Sorry, reported on Rovers Official Site

It turns out that Benni was in the stadium at the end of the match, but had dressed and gone up to watch the end of the game. He was also playing with 14 stitches in his leg. After his poor start to the season, he's been playing really well and I don't understand why anyone would want him to move.

Hmm, I've no idea what would happen if the Irish bandwagon went into the Euros. I'm sure everyone would enjoy it, though . I was, of course, stereotyping, don't take it personally! Well I suppose my point is that that figure seems completely unrealistic. 1 billion from where? First, a significant percentage will still watch any high-profile or interesting games. This is true both here in the Republic and in the UK - there are a lot of football addicts. Second, the assumption has been made that the worldwide anglophone audience watches because of England. I feel that that's a bit of a leap. With many of the major players still making it, the competition is still more than high profile enough. Not that anyone doubts having mad dogs and Englishmen (it's a quote, not aimed at anyone!) at the competition would increase revenue, but as I said, the level quoted seems ridiculous.

You are kidding, right? Sometimes that auld English arrogance comes out of no-where. The fact is, that even without Englands involvement, a significant percentage of viewers will watch Euro 2008, if only to say "we could have beaten them." And the qualifying nations have quite the television audience, as well as passionate and committed on-site fans. F-all people care that the England bandwagon won't be rolling into town. Unless, of course, you have reputable figures to back that up.

And how many injuries? Is this a "pay me or I'll get injured" blackmail?

More praise for Sparky from Ian Wright, who reckons we could make the champions league, and is apparently rooting for us to do it. I like the way he's "former Burnley and England", no mention of where he really made his name. Those dingles....

I agree. I think that he's coming on in leaps and bounds and is no longer recognisable as the player with a shovel for a foot that he was. I'm still worried about his tendency for making ridiculous challenges, though! He's still young, and will improve further.

Hold on - Cyprus are a decent team, holding Germany to a 1-1 draw and (embarrassingly for me) destroying Ireland 5-2 at home. They can play explosive attacking football, and aren't kicking boys by any stretch of the imagination. Toshack should go because he's damaging welsh football, but not because they lost to Cyprus.

I was thinking more like using Wikipedia or other sources to double check any dates, rather than anything else. For Roque, we can just link to his official homepage!

I updated the squad list. Praise me! Seriously, though, what's the story with player updates? I'd have to refresh a lot of the details, and the most likely place for that is "teh intarweb", so do I need to credit the sources, etc?

In the Community Shield, I noticed that Chelsea in particular tended not only to crowd the referee but to physically bash into him (while holding their hands out and arguing). This is _not_ on. The players that do it should be sent off immediately. Refs really get my goat sometimes but it's a difficult job and the way players react so aggressively must be hard. Sure a bit o' cussin' or holding the hands to the head, but screaming at the ref and bumping him? Or Van Persie's petulant punching of the turf? Gotta go.

HAHAHAHHA, the link was this. but on the off chance, I changed the "manchester_city" part to "blackburn" to get this this url and it worked fine. Someone noticed the mistake! Edit: the board doesn't like full links in plaintext and won't let me post it. sorry!

okaaaaay, that's very weird. It's tagged as a Manchester City story. Lets go burn the Times' office....

nope, it'll be 5. See his scoring record for Bayern!

That this season? If so, then the waiting list is probably gone this season, then. Which makes me happy They did have 14,000 on it not too long ago, though (or at least claimed they did).

It was a case of supply exceeding demand, and the costs of generating the extra capacity to fulfill that demand were considered too high. Not bad business, strategic planning! They could also charge more without damaging attendances. Their pricing structure this year is nuts, though, and it's going to drive people away. Having to pay for tickets to cup matches if you're a season ticket holder? As extra? At least add in the price to the ST and say that the cup games are "free"! For the first time in a long, long, time the waiting lists for old trafford have dropped significantly. It's not hard to see it happening again next year, with a 3rd increase in a row in ST prices and some other nutty pricing (maybe they'll start charging for banners, or if you're not wearing a United jersey?) They've had a very good relationship with their fans, and it's been a strength to the club. It'd be stupid of them to waste it. Long live "member-owned" clubs, huh? I wonder how difficult it would be to go back that direction sometimes. Probably wouldn't suit us, though.

Article in stuff.co.nz about the Admiral. Love the caption under the picture! He's apparently now the best paid New Zealand sportsperson, and they reckon he gets paid the same or more than the entire All-Blacks squad! I suppose that it just goes to show how ridiculous football wages are. Don't mind him getting paid it, though unlike some others I could mention (I'll freely admit that it's a Rovers bias, too )

Calling Dwight Wille an ex-rover is a bit much, I'm pretty certain he was only here on loan, and from an affiliate for a look-see at that? Good list, though, groo. Saw Jeff playing in the Conference play-off final, shame he lost. Great game, though. Was also SURE I saw Gresko playing internationally recently, but it doesn't seem quite right, and I can't remember where...

Most of the footie rivalry words don't have a history like "f-ing jap", in fairness. Not sure about the Pie-Eaters one myself, but most of them are a play on words related to the clubs name or nickname . For instance, "Mank" means kinda horrible, so Manchester people are "Mancs" - it sounds the same. Same for Spurs to Spuds, spuds meaning potatoes, and ManU to manure). The rest tend to be references to either a reference to a television show (like Dingles and Scousers) and/or something related to the perceived stupidities of the area. I'm from a (small) city charmingly nicknamed "Stab City". Nice, huh? Not that we really care any more. Also, culturally, the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish have a certain admiration for a clever insult. The more elaborate, the better! So sense of humour counts, too. Take this charming song about the Dingles - a reference to the inbreeding. "Yer mum's yer dad, Yer dad's yer mum, You've got webbed feet, You're Burnley scum." Insulting? Hell yeah. Clever and funny? Hell, yeah! Now stunts referring to some incidents are a bit out of line (in my opinion, folks) such as the waving of inflatable spitfires in a very well hosted world cup in Germany. But that's just my opinion. In summary - football nicknames don't quite equate to racist abuse, which is what you're talking about. Incidentally, I'd like to mention that I visited Japan last year, seeing Yokohama, Tokyo, Kamakura, Kyoto, and (oddly) Maizuru. I had a great, if somewhat expensive, time, and found nearly everyone to be extremely friendly and the country to be both beautiful and interesting. I'd highly recommend it if you're planning a vacation and can afford it. I'd love to go back and visit Osaka, Hiroshima and basically all the rest!

I'm not. It's his choice, and he's made it Are you really "all for it"? you don't sound it, but that's ok, it's your opinion. A player withdrawing from England squads for all sorts of reasons is hardly unusual, maybe it'd be more palatable if he'd lied and said he was injured? He did. And Mark Hughes did. Pearce was asked multiple times not to include Dave, but he did anyway, trying to use patriotic blackmail to get a player who has proven himself at U-21 and in the premiership this season to play in a tournament he didn't want to. This has been going for some time. If it was OK, why was Pearce "defending it" It's all politics. If it was about winning the tournament at all costs, Rooney'd be there, along with many others including his former own precious boy - Micah Richards.. But they're not, and why? Because they're full internationals playing for teams that England can't afford to ###### off, or players England don't want to ###### off. The Mirror fair play to them, have a good write up that mentions Pearce's rabid defense of Richards not being active for the U21's. Bentley wasn't called to the pre-tournament training camp in Spain, hadn't played in ONE qualifying match, and was a surprise inclusion. Long and short of it is that Pearce is being inconsistent and unreasonable, and has now hyped it up to the point that it could damage Bent's career, because he wants to help is own career after the shambles at Citeh. Well, F-em, for me, he can play for us as long as he wants, and 'Psycho' can go swim the Atlantic.

Interesting, David Platt mentioned tonight that England are like Spain. Lots of players that play brilliantly in the league (and Jenas) but when it's all in the pot, someone forgets the salt and pepper, and it isn't quite right. Shame really, you lot should do better. Don't worry about all the rubbish in the paper, you still have to play Russia twice and Croatia again, if you win all of your remaining ties, you'll comfortably qualify. I watched Estonia last night, and I'd be very surprised if they scored. They're not very good, frankly, it should be job done. One of the problems with the English national team is the press frenzy. If anything goes right, they're the best team in the world, and if anything goes wrong, or even looks like it's going wrong, heads must roll. It takes time to build something up, even with a decent manager. Which McClaren isn't, but there you go. If Lampard ever gets out of his habit of playing really poorly for the national side, or just gets dropped, things will improve immensely. It's too important a position to be carrying someone at.

It'll be hard to replace those goals folks. Someone mentioned that he "mostly scores tap-ins", but all that indicates is a good positional sense, a good sense for how the play is going to go, and confidence to get in there and tap it in. He looked almost guilty scoring against Reading on the last day of the season! As well as those in-born talents, he is very skillful. We'd be mad to let him go for less than silly money. Mentioning Podolski - he's unlikely to want to come to Blackburn from his current club, although he'd be a good buy, but in that case, why not go for Huntelaar (Ajax), who'd probably be cheaper! For the same kind of cash as Podolski, we could make a creditable bid for Fernando Torres from Athletico Madrid. Or just go mad and get one of "the next Messi"'s from Barca (Bojan (16) is off on loan, he'll be great in the future). I suspect that these aren't on the shopping list, though. Willams has said that Hughes has some fairly specific targets this summer, and I'd be very surprised if the cash wasn't there to get them. The new TV money means that we can move up a rung on the scale, in terms of wages and transfer monies available. Problem is, us and 20 other clubs in the premiership. Squad wise, we're pretty strong at the moment, so if we do sign people, they'll be young and for the future or expected to make immediate impact. Another striker, I suspect, with Franny moving on. Another attacking midfielder would be nice, and another defensive midfielder too. And that defensive right back, unless there's a good one in the reserves. Ooijer is not fast enough, in my opinion, to be anything more than serious emergency cover.

Even worse, it was actually Jenas for Beckham With Bents sitting on the bench, that was shocking. Jenas then bottled a great opportunity to cross that was tailor made for our Dave. good god, I was sickened, after that I wanted Brazil to open up and go forward, something they didn't actually do at any point in the game. Both the full-backs were under orders not to push up, or so it seemed watching the game. And that's it, no more Lampard. He was shocking, and the only reason he wasn't the worst player on the pitch was Alan Smith was playing.

Beckham has been the single greatest factor in Real Madrids late (but highly effective) run on the title. They're half a team without him. Whatever else could (and has) been said, the man works hard, and plays with his heart on his sleeve. He's also back to full fitness and his forms the best since the season before he left United. I'm quite happy that Bentley will be training with him, Beckham knows a few tricks and David will to well to learn from him. And Well done to David, he's had an outstanding season, and deserves this since christmas in my opinion.

Ah, another one falls to the A) and B ) smiley minefield!!! Having watched Doyle fairly closely this year and last, I wouldn't be sure that he's a flash in the pan. I do wonder how much improvement he has in him, though. He can only get wiler, so we can hope. He also works like a demon all over the front line, which is impressive. Not quite the signing to take us on, I feel. People are all but writing Morten off for the simple reason that they're almost resigned to losing him if Liverpool or Man U decide they want him. It's a problem, because both of those teams have a little "je ne sais quoi" that attracts player. Actually, je sais quoi, they're both successful with large and active fanbases and amazing history. It's hard to fight them off, just like we could not compete with Barcelona for Eidur. Benni, similarly, would be tempted, but not by Spuds or any of the other wasters, he wants success, now. So it depends on who bids. Bentley would be insanse to leave, and he's not insane. Especially now he's been called up to the England squad, I reckon we're safe enough there. Kewell is undeniably quality, but has injury problems. I'd personally love to see him at rovers, but not at the cost of MGP unless we got really silly money for our Gamst. I can't understand those who dislike Kewell (aside from silly hair!). If he's fit, he's devestating, he has pace, trickery, good crossing, shooting, vision and workrate. Dammit, I wish my crystal ball would just tell me what the starting position for next season would be This drives me mad (but we all love it, right). Finally, don't bother reading the Sun. They've never got a scoop that they didn't pick up from the pavement in a park.