Thanks I will be there, everyone is good at something! Seriously, though unless I have got the wrong beer, it really was like drinking polluted seawater, and one pint made me really ill...I finished it off out of sheer stuid defiance but it was awful... I take it you have had a better experience with this brand, which doesn't surprise me as the one I drank was so bad it had to be off, no one could put that stuff out and stay in business!

Cruzcampo is the most God awful sewage-like pig swill I have ever had the miserable misfortune to drink...I had a pint in Lanzarote and only finished it out of sheer alcoholic defiance but it tasted like out of date seawater, please don't tell me it's disgusting flavour has reached our wonderful shores?!!!

Anyone who disagrees is only lying to themselves? Gee thanks for telling me what I must really be thinking, Adolf. Anyway, sweeping extremist comments aside the divorce anology is a good one. However the correct anology would be that Lucash is like the partner who leaves a relationship for someone 50 years older and a millionaire, and then states that love, not money is the motivating factor (a bit like Anna Nicole Smith and the 89 year old Texan Billionaire). Of course everyone has the right to leave a relationship, or a team, for any reason, but it is the blatant lies that really grate people, not the fact that an average player has left. The public will always hate figures in the spotlight who mislead them, purely for the fact that it is dishonest and disrespectful, be it sports stars, actors or MP's. I also happen to think I am 100% right, but anyone who disagrees is perfectly entitled to.

Never rated Taylor, lacked courage for a centre half and poor in the air for a big man. Better than Henchoz maybe but not in the same Class as ooijer or Zurab, not in a million years.

How come Berbatov's contribution includes all his cup appearances and goals, while McCarthy's only seems to include his Premiership stats? Surely this would have affected the outcome? Or maybe the lazy professor realised his study would get more attention if a player like Berbatov form a "big" club came out on top, rather than McCarthy, who at the quarter of the transfer value of Berbatov, was pound for pound, a far better signing. The figures have been totally manipulated. Talk about Lies, Damn Lies and statistics...

You can take this Sun article with the same pinch of salt as the original Benni one...WHAT £8M asking price? Hughes has said he isnt for sale so once again the lazy jounos have just made up a figure!

I completely agree Alan, and won't be booing anyone, I never do. But sadly as we all know there are plenty of morons at Ewood, and boo they will, given any opportunity whatsoever.

I think some sort of official response from McCarthy or the Club denying the rumours would have been a good idea, given that we have an important game today and we need the crowd to be backing the players not feeling discontent with them. Unless he actually is going...

For a start I would like to go on record as saying I have never once criticised McCarthy this season and hope he stays at Ewood for a long time. However I cannot understand what players are thinking when they do these kind of interviews. Could it not have waited until after the Reading game, given that it could cause unrest with the team?! McCarthy seems like a bright bloke and knowing the trash that the Sun regularly spouts out I would really like to believe that somehow the comments were taken out of context, or manipulated in some way, but it seems unlikely. I can fully understand why Benni wants Champions League football, and that he is unlikely to get that at Ewood, but why say that you are happy to stay if you are not? Better to keep quiet in my opinion. If the Sun is causing trouble and perverting McCarthy's words then I hope he is speaking to his lawyers this morning. Once again I reiterate my position, I am a big McCarthy fan, and would love to see Lucash get relegated tomorrow, but with regards to their respective comments to the press this season, who has really let the fans down? At least Neill stuck to his guns.

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I can't believe what short memories people have on this board, and also some of the nonsense written. Dunn IS a central midfielder and I am sure thats why Sparky has signed him. He HAS played in that position alongside Savage before and finally just because he is a different player to Tugay (which he is) doesnt mean he cant slot into our midfield perfectly well. A fit again David Dunn is worth a fair few goals and assists a season and for that he is a cheap gamble worth taking...

Yes it is frustrating that us season ticket holders seem to be the ones that are the ones that subsidise the club but the fact is that we dont have enough fans to keep the club afloat in the current climate under normal terms. So if we want the club to be self subsidising, we have to accept that we have to bow to the ignorant masses who dont attend the matches on a regular basis and make the issue of attending our games as attractive as possible, be it subsidised transport, or whatever... I fork out my cash the same as most of you do but at the end of the day it is the club that matters so no matter what level they have to sink to to get fans in lets roll with it... I got married this Xmas and mised the Uefa game against Nancy yet still bought a ticket as a gesture of support. Many of you would have done the same yet we are a rare breed, so accept the fact that the none diehards need as much encouragement as they can get, be it subsidies or freebies or whatever...we all have a common good so I believe that as long as the season ticket holders are not penalised for being so, then lets all work towards the cause of a full Ewood...

Laugh all you like pal, laugh your way to a half empty stadium every week as well. As much as you might like to deny it, declining attendances isnt just a Rovers problem, its an issue for 90% of clubs, its just that the size of our club means it hits us earlier and harder than the rest. My point was that ticket prices cant be reduced much further so there must be some other way of attracting fans to the ground on matchdays... Fans still have to buy tickets, the club merely facilitates their decision to do so using this idea. I would rather have 30,000 of what you call "freeloaders" filling Ewood every week, spending their cash on tickets and the rest, than sticking with the just over half capacity we currently have, all of which have paid full whack, and hopefully none of which will go in the club shop to buy reduced or sale items in the fear that they too may be accused of being freeloaders. You cant just make people come to Ewood if they dont already, there needs to be a hook. Its isnt prices, it isnt finishing 6th so what is it? What do you suggest...hypnosis?

I posted this on the BRISA website a couple of weeks ago but have had no response, either because people didnt feel it was a good idea or because no one bothers to go on the site anymore... Anyway, I would be interested to hear peoples opinions... Hi, not sure if anyone actually still visits or reads these pages or not but I heard of an idea recently which may be of interest to the club in relation to attendances, and thought going through these channels was the correct way to air it. Rovers have tried lowering pricing and have improved the product (ie finishing 6th) but still the public does not respond. We already have the lowest priced tickets in the division so maybe we need to look at a different angle - how easy and convenient can the club make it to get to the game. If 50,000 people lived within 10 mins of the ground I suspect attendances wouldnt be a problem Completely by coincidence I read an article in an in flight magazine about 10 days ago saying how Bayer Leverkusen fans can use all public transport on match days free. I havent checked the validity of this but I could see this being something which Rovers could emulate to their benefit, with a view to increasing attendances. Basically, on production of a match day ticket fans can get on trains and buses to and from the ground on a match day. The club would have to negotiate this with the train and bus people but hopefully the local council would be willing to help. (The public v private transport angle could be used. Rovers in environmentally friendly transport pledge etc etc...) Normal bus and train services would run, ie there is no need for a football "special" service, it would just make it easier and less incovenient for fans to use them. As the bus station is right next to the train station on the boulevard fans could hop off the trains from places such as clitheroe, bamber bridge etc and straight on to an Ewood bound bus. It has long been felt that if Ewood had a train station, it would make going to the games more attractive. That cant be done but this is probably the next best thing. Buses leaving the ground could be given traffic priority by the police to get people home quicker. To fans living closer to the ground this may not mean much but I feel if it is presented in the right way it could really help attract floating fans from the peripheral areas. We have excellent transport links, particularly on the trains to such places so why not utilise them better?

Didnt we play Man City at Ewood in our red and black kit? Possibly 93-94 season?

Jansen played his best football at Palace? I seriously doubt it. Even taking into consideration his accident and subsequent loss of transfer value, he was a great buy for Rovers. His goals fired us to promotion and continued to flow in the Premiership. Prior to the 2002 World Cup I would have valued him at £10 million easily, and if only Sven hadnt had a characteristically bizarre change of mind at the last minute, he would have gone to Japan/Korea, and arguably done a job for England up front or on the left given the chance. Had this been the case then the scooter accident would never have happened and Jansen would still be firing them in for us, if not for a bigger club. (He scored in the Worthy Cup Final too...I think I know who got the better end of the deal - I take it that Palace spent the massive transfer fee on building a sustained Premiership force did they?)

I suppose giving him a pen would help him to sign the new contract!

BBC's Garth Crooks has named Schwarzer as his keeper in the Team of the Week. Must admit I have seen nothing of his performance, but surely Friedel has to be in for the two penalty saves, even if he didnt touch the ball again all game?! Can anyone enlighten me as to whether I have my blue and white tinted contact lenses in again, or is Crooks still the BBC's numpty, "token" pundit he always has been?

Wouldnt want to bump into Brad Friedel on a dark night!

Not that its a formation which I particularly like or think works in the Premiership, but the staff we currently have at the club certainly lends itself to the idea of playing a 3-5-2 formation. We have a number of central defenders on the books now, no obvious left back, a right wing back in Brett Emerton, a couple of hard working central midfielders, plus the fact that everyone would like to see Bentley playing in a hole behind the front two... Would really be surprised to see HUghesy implement such a formation, but you can see the logic...it may also suit Tugay's role a little better, maybe in Europe?

Or how about this for an anology if it helps... Being Chelsea or Pompey etc is like being the guy who goes to Las Vegas for a week, taking his life savings, before blowing the lot on roulette, cheap hookers, drugs and the rest, before crawling home to his Mrs with his tail between his legs, bankrupt and with a considerably shortened life ahead of him. The kids want nothing to do with him, go to live with an uncle and it takes the family generations to recover. Rovers are the guy who works hard, saves up, goes out for a few good beers every Saturday with his mates, has a holiday every year with the Mrs, before retiring early to his Villa in Spain to play golf for the next ten years, mortgage paid and with no debts and regrets...maybe a nice litte pot left over for the kids when he croaks it. (Burnley are the guy who never went to school, never earned a penny, lived in a cave with his sister for his wife, before eating her and his odd looking kids and popping his clogs in an unmarked grave, forgotten and mourned by no one! )

The last couple of posts are spot on. Rovers are Rovers, if you dont like it you may as well follow another club, such as Chelsea, or Barca, or the Harlem Globetrotters... Even if the club were given £100 million to spend on players in the last transfer window, I would put my mortgage on us not winning the league or maybe even finishing in the top four. All we would have is an even worse case of overpaid, souless Prima Donnas, sucking more cash out of the club. No one likes that happening now, so how would we feel if the players were on twice as much? I would love to see more top players at our club and have been (quietly) disappointed with the activity over the summer, but at least we are a steady, honest club and that counts all the more every time we win, or nick a draw with a last minute equaliser, or go on a cup run before getting knocked out way before the final. The Walker years were all the sweeter because they were the Walker years and not the Abramovich years, or the Bill Gates years or whoever, because it was about a lifelong love of football that funded it, not a billionaires latest craze. Chelsea, Man Utd, Spurs, Liverpool, Arsenal, Pompey, West Ham, Aston Villa and Newcastle etc will never ever recoup their money and for at least a couple of those clubs it will spell doom ultimately. We all know that the current financial climate of the Premiership cannot be self sustaining, regardless of what TV deals may be struck. I enjoy going to Ewood every week, regardless of whether we are going for the title or not. The alternative is having a few years now of multi billionaire mercenaries, and a false belief that we are really enjoying it, whilst never reaching the pinnacle of 94/95 (as 90% of these clubs never will) and then the club going kaput, leaving Saturdays for gardening and taking the wife shopping. Or we can carry on as we are and we will be fine for decades to come, and our grandkids can enjoy themselves moaning in the pub over a £20 pint of lager about how unambitious we are, then asking their Dads who Portsmouth were...

At least when we had our turn we actually won something! No matter how much money these foreign sugar daddys plough into these clubs most of them will finish up empty handed. Also at least Jack was a fan. It may not seem much to some but we can at least be proud that whilst we had a financial backer, we never sold our soul, like Chelsea, Villa, Pompey amongst others and even now West Ham with their new signings have done. Even if Jack was still here and bankrolling us, we probably wouldnt get near to winning the title, instead we would be flogging millions just to get near where we finished last year on a shoestring... In time there could be 20 foreign billionaires in control in the Premiership, but someone will still finish bottom. It may actually work out that all the money clubs end up taking points of each other and see games against ourselves and other "poor" clubs as less critical. Maybe we can continue to go quietly about our business, picking up points, and lets just see where we finish in comparison to all the less well run clubs who are mortgaging their future for a fruitless crack at the present...

I have a 94-95 home and away shirt fully signed by the Championship winning side, including a full film of photographic evidence to back it up. It was part of a prize in a charity auction to spend the day at Brockhall meeting all the players and staff, share a meal with them and watch the first team train, barely 2 months after the title was won. I would never sell the shirts but they are in absolutley perfect condition and with a full set of signatures. Out of interest does anyone own/ has anyone seen anything similar, and what kind of value would you attach to them?

The more I think about this situation, the more I feel that the club needs to be informed how close they came to losing a season ticket sale which was in their grasp, particularly when said sales are being desperately cried out for. (On a separate note I went to the Link machine at McDonalds to draw the cash out. The machine was on the blink and didnt pay out, yet my statement has recorded the transaction as taking place...so that £100 I have to chase now. Not the Clubs fault directly, but just adds to my annoyance at the whole stupidity of Rovers ticket policy). Finally, on another matter, the details of which I am not prepared to divulge on here, I was dealt with very poorly by the ticket office staff, when attempting to collect the season ticket on Sunday afternoon. All in all, I would be very grateful if someone would be prepared to PM me John Williams e-mail address, or that of his PA at least, as I feel that the club still needs to take some giant steps forward if they are to achieve the level of service required to catch up with the rest of the league on ticket sales.