Of course football over 100 years ago wasn't the same, but if the players from that generation were born in this generation then they would still be top players now. They would have access to modern facilities and training methods and they would still have the natural talent that made them the best players of their generation. From reading the reports and looking at a bit of Rovers history, it seems that Forrest wasn't only the best Rovers midfielder of his generation, he was also the best in the country. Something that could never be said about Sherwood.

Everyone is obviously entitled to vote for who they want, and talk of deleting votes is just pathetic, but I find it staggering that people are still using the "I can only vote for people I've seen play" argument. Read what people have said, look at the stats on the past and present players, and then make a judgement. If you still think Sherwood (or any other modern-day player) then fair enough. But don't just discard all the older ones.

Is this the same Mark Hughes that you slagged off mercilessly when he was appointed manager?

Tony Parkes has been a fantastic servant for Blackburn Rovers and I'd like to thank him for all his efforts. Time and time again he stepped in to manage the club when managers had been sacked, and on almost every occasion he achieved stability within the team and got us the results we needed. A one club man in the days when they simply just don't exist anymore. I sincerely hope the club organise something to allow the fans show their appreciation of Parkes. After saying all that, I can't help admiring Hughes for making such a tough decision. It shows he has a ruthless, cold streak and that he's single-minded about improving Blackburn Rovers Football Club. A new manager must have his own team around him who he trusts and has faith in. If Hughes wants someone else to join the coaching staff then so be it, it's the manager who will stand or fall by his decisions. Finally, whoever leaked this information to the press is a disgrace and clearly doesn't have the best interests of the club, the manager, or Parkes at heart. They need to be weeded out asap as far too many stories about the Rovers seem to be getting leaked to the press recently.

Where about is it? It's on Rochdale Road about 15 minutes walk from Victoria station. Here's a link with a map. Marble Arch pub.

After re-reading Colin's excellent guide I'm going to visit the Marble Arch before the match. I've heard loads about it and I've never been before so it will be a first. Nuclearsox and myself should be there from around 12:15ish if anyone wants to join us.

I voted "don't care" but I don't really feel that it summed up my true feelings. If there had been an option that said "don't care but I'm sick of all the numpty's currently spamming the board with sh1te requests like this, or who our feeder club is, or doesn't Jay mcEveley look like Freddie Flintoff, or whether aquascrotum caps are good etc, etc, etc" then I'd have voted for that instead.

Well, at the time of writing Sherwood has only got 1 vote out of 18. For what it's worth, I voted for Forrest. I'd have put Forrest, Latheron and Batty ahead of Sherwood.

A quick update after our weekend in Norwich. The hotel we stayed at, the Sport Village, was an odd cross between the hotel in the first series of Crossroads and the one featured in the Alan Partridge series. The sporting facilities looked good, the staff were very friendly, but the rooms were poor and dirty. I don't think I'd stay there again. We found a couple of good pubs on our travels. The Bell in the centre of Norwich is a big Wetherspoons but it seemed to have a good atmosphere and wide mix of people in it. Just round the corner was the Gardeners (I think) which was more commonly known as the Murderers! Don't be put off by the name though, it was a good little pub. The "official" away fans pub was The Compleat (sic) Angler which was fine apart from the plastic glasses. The walk from there to the ground took you through "The Riverside" which is a new Docklands development with lots of new bars and restaurants. We stopped off here at another huge Wetherspoons pub, Lloyds, that was packed and all that you'd expect. The concourse at the ground itself was far too small and it took me the whole of half-time to get from my seat to the toilet and back. No chance at all to get a beer in. I did have a pre-match pie though and it was far better than the usual fayre you get at grounds.

The article in the NOTW was an extract from Berg's new autobiography. Could be worth a read.

Nothing much to add after reading Bellamy11's excellent match report. Good weekend, the team should tremendous spirit after going a goal down, and we fully deserved our point. Dickov was superb in the second half (after being very poor in the first), and Ferguson ran midfield as the game went on. Oh, and Bothroyd's a knob.

You can shout all you want FLB, but if we go down this season I, for one, won't be blaming Hughes half as much as Souness. Well Scotty I do hope you will let the messageboard know when you have finally stopped blaming Souness for everything that has gone wrong since he joined, after he left and (hey, what the hell) before he joined as well. It could just about be the most anticipated post on this messageboard for 2007...'Exclusive! Scotty says Souness no longer to blame!.' Alternatively (and feel free to call me damn crazy for thinking this if you wish) the people at the club now could take responsibility for their actions and earn their pay packets without forever whining on about the people before them. It's a bit like a new government blaming the previous encumbants for their own mistakes and incompetence. It doesn't wash. If we are relegated this season there will be a hell of a lot of other people to blame as well as Souness. Although no doubt they'll try to palm off their own inadequecies onto him... ...at least, the rubber dinghy men will. Good grief. Of course people at the club should take responsibility for their actions and I've not heard anyone at the club whining about Souness or anyone else. If you want to block the previous year out of your mind that's fine. I'm not going to though. Hope that's ok with you. I don't think you should just ignore the fact that Souness left us with a team that has a severe lack of quality up front, a completely unbalanced midfield, inconsistent (at best) defenders, players who clearly weren't as fit as they could be, and a lack of pace and flair throughout. If you expect Hughes to come in and sort all that out straight away then you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

Ok, Manchester Blue and myself should be arriving at around tea-time tomorrow. Does anyone know a pub where we can all meet up? That Wetherspoons one seems as good as any. What time is everyone else getting there?

If you don't bother to vote then you can hardly complain about the result can you?

Yes I know you do 1864 and I certainly have never doubted where your loyalty is but I feel in this case some people are in danger of blaming Souness and Souness alone for things that were only partly his fault. If Souness had left a year or so ago when Spuds were after him he'd have been a genuine contender for 'Greatest Manager Ever'. Yes, it sounds daft now but still... It's not the point though. We certainly have at least an equal squad/team than the likes of Everton, Palace, Norwich, Southampton etc. It ain't on Souness' watch anymore, Hughes has now been here long enough to stand on his two feet and take the responsibility that he is being paid a hefty wage to take. Although he was dealt a bit of a crappy hand to start with we should still stay up. If not, Hughes, the board and the players should line up to beg our forgiveness before Souness does. The guy is yesterday's man, let's forget about him and play to our potential. As for safety...let's do this thing. Best way for us to do that is to.... FORGET GRAEME BLOODY SOUNESS! You can shout all you want FLB, but if we go down this season I, for one, won't be blaming Hughes half as much as Souness.

Why is this even being discussed? Our best players in the last three games have been Reid and Emerton who occupy the right and left wing spots respectively. Neither should, or will, be dropped in the immediate future - so no MGP. Still it's probably all to do with some sort of appearance related fee.

Yep.

I was surprised by today's team. Switching back to 4-4-2, dropping Gray and Matteo (for McEveley and Johansson), restoring Tugay (for Flitcroft), bringing in Bothroyd (for Djorkaeff) - all very interesting, yet my first thought was to worry about the lack of a ball winner in midfield. And for ten minutes or so all my worries were fully justified. Liverpool bossed the opening exchanges with Baros looking lively and Liverpool's midfield overwhelming ours - they could have scored twice before they did. However, the goal they did score was more down to our shocking defending than any great Liverpool play. A long ball found Riise in acres of space on the left as our defence pathetically tried to play off-side. Riise ran unopposed towards goal and scored with a sweet finish into the far corner. You could question Friedel's positioning but it was a very well struck shot. We'd talked in the pub before the game about the importance of the first goal so it was obviously a sickener to see us concede. I think the whole of Ewood sat back and thought it would be a case of how many Liverpool would get. Hang on a minute though, the team started to fight. They snapped into their tackles, they harrassed their opposite numbers, and they showed a touch of quality on the ball. Instead of feeling sorry for themselves like they had in the last two weeks they started to show some pride and passion. It was no surprise at all when we equalised. A ball from midfield found Dickov intelligently dropping deep. His turn was terrific and his ball down the left channel to an on-rushing Emerton was exquisite. Emerton's first-time cross was perfectly weighted to find an unmarked Bothroyd - who duely applied the finish. A really great team goal. Now it was all Rovers. We pressed Liverpool all over the field, gave them no time at all in possession, and frequently caused them to panic in defence. From one such moment, just before the interval, the ball fell to Emerton 20 yards out and he passed the ball into the far corner of the net. A fantastic finish. 2-1 at half-time and well deserved. Before I move onto the second half though a quick word about Cisse. A completely innocuous challenge has left him with two broken bones in his leg and, looking at the pictures on television, I'd say it's got to be doubtful whether he ever plays again. All the best sir, hope you recover soon. I thought we looked comfortable at the start of the second half. We controlled possession and looked the more threatening side going forward - in fact I couldn't see how Liverpool were going to score. Cue McEveley. What on earth was he doing? Emerton won a free-kick around half way. McEveley, unbelievably, passed the ball square straight to Garcia, who played a great ball over our non-plussed defence for Baros to run onto. Short is quicker than he looks but he's not as quick as Baros so it was no surprise to see Baros run clear one-on-one with Friedel. What was surprising though was seeing Friedel rooted to his line to the point where Baros eventually scored from no more than five yards out. Close him down man. Anyway, in a game that ebbed and flowed throughout, now it was Liverpool's turn to be on top. For the next ten minutes they controlled the game and looked like they might force a winner. For the second time I thought it was almost inevitable that Liverpool would go on and win the game comfortably. But no, back we came again. Stead replaced Bothroyd, not sure why because I thought Bothroyd had done well, and the Rovers started to get back on top. Short had a header cleared off the line, a well-worked free-kick saw Dickov produce a great save from Kirkland, and Stead had a terrific shot again well saved by Kirkland. With ten minutes to go it seemed there was only going to be one winner, and it wasn't the team in red. I'm not sure if it was our lack of fitness or something psychological but we seemed to sit back at the end. Liverpool sensed this and they started to push for the winner at the death. Fortunately though, after a number of corners and crosses across our box, we survived and got a precious point. Most of the team were terrific today. Short and Johansson looked as solid as any centre-back pairing we've fielded this season. McEveley was solid defensively apart from the one glaring mistake. He doesn't offer as much going forward as Gray but he's a better defender on today's evidence. Tugay and Ferguson in midfield worked their socks off and Ferguson in particular was class at times on the ball. I'm used to Tugay's inconsistency now but it really annoys me that Ferguson doesn't play like he did today every week. And while the two of them aren't the most competitive in midfield we can cope when were at home because they have Reid to cover for them. Reid was great again, he's been one of our best players in all three games since he came back into the team, and today his workrate, tenacity, and commitment were second to none. Reid was the one player I saw trying to lift the team immediately after Liverpool's equaliser. I'm starting to really rate him. Dickov worked tirelessly as ever and showed touches of quality at times, and Bothroyd on occasions looked like the centre-forward we've been missing since Jansen's accident. Stead came on and showed terrific desire. He really wants that shirt and it's great to see. Special mention for Emerton though - he was magnificent today. He ran at their full-back constantly, showed great pace, his workrate was fantastic, and his finish for the goal was top quality. Our man of the match by a mile. Negatives? Friedel was dodgy for both goals, especially the second. But his performance was nothing compared to Neill's. What on earth does Neill have to do to be dropped? He gives us nothing going forward, he can't pass, his heading is awful, his positional sense is just scary, and at times he looks like he simply can't be arsed. I don't just want him dropped - I want him to be punished. It was like he was single-handedly trying to lose us the game today. All in all it was a good point today, we'd have all settled for that before hand, but we could easily have got all three. I worry whether today's team is solid enough to play away from home, only time will tell, but at home it looks like we can sacrifice a bit of bite in midfield for some extra creativity going forward. All our excuses have been used up now though. We've finished our hard run of games and the next few fixtures are against teams who will finish mid-table or lower. We have to pick up some points quickly but I'm a lot more confident we will than I was this time last week.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Sherwood wasn't even the best midfielder in the Championship squad. Calling him one of the greatest midfielders Rovers have ever had is just laughable.

Well, apart from promotion.

Sellars was definately a left winger for most of his time with Rovers and wasn't McKenzie a forward? Clayton is a shoe-in for me but the other one is difficult. Looking forward to hearing from the old giffers on this one.

That's a quote from one of Tris's posts.

I think that's a good point. I've heard people comparing Hughes to Kidd but I think Kidd had far more to work with when he joined us. He had a much better squad, a huge transfer budget, and no transfer window. We should never have been relegated then. Hughes on the other hand has a poor squad, little money, and no opportunity to buy anyone until January. As I said on another thread, if he keeps us up he'll have done a great job.

Just to put this post into context for everyone, most of it is a sly dig at me based on a conversation/argument we had last night on the train back from the Chelsea game. So here I am responding to the bait. First of all, I've never won an award on this site! Of course everyone is entitled to their opinions, just as I'm entitled to call their opinions stupid. Some people though consistently post rubbish designed to be controversial. I normally ignore them but I'm currently in the mood to respond. Secondly, I admit it, I've judged Pedersen after two games. In my defence though, in those two games Pedersen played about as badly as I've ever seen anyone play for Blackburn Rovers. He may come good in the future but there's been no signs of it so far. Thirdly, if you honestly think that we should judge Hughes after 5 games then I'm afraid I've lost all respect for your opinions. Of course the manager gets judged on a different fuking timescale. Hughes may well have made mistakes but I think they are for the right reasons. We've been playing awfully for about a year now, progressively getting worse apart from a month or so at the back-end of last season. Hughes is still judging the players and trying to work out who's up to the task and who isn't. He's already identified that we had no creativity and he brought in Djorkaeff to help. Sadly though, there isn't much else he can do to change the squad until January so he's got to cope with what he's got. Let's get to the crux of it though. Call me blinded by my dislike of Souness all you want, but the team he left behind is a shambles. We haven't got a single forward pairing that looks Premiership class. The fact that Dickov is our best forward says it all. We had a potentially top class partnership at the back-end of last season but Souness decided to break it up. We don't have a single holding midfield player with any quality. We've got plenty of players who look good on the ball but none of them can defend. Despite signing two left-sided players over the summer, neither of them has looked anything like Premiership quality up to now. We've no balance at all and, in my opinion, playing Emerton on the left is about the best option we've got at the moment. In defence, our right-back has been playing terribly for a year but, due to a complete lack of competition for his place, he plays every week. Short, our best defender, gets injured too often. The other central defenders are inconsistent at best. Gray, who looked great most of last year, has been poor so far this season. We have some good players but Souness has left us with a shocking team. I honestly believe that if Hughes keeps us up this season he'll have done a fantastic job. Believe it or not, I'm still more optimistic than I was under the last year of Souness's reign. There were genuine signs of improvement from the team against Villa and against Boro we looked solid until Tugay got sent off. The team's confidence is clearly at rock-bottom and the lack of fight we've shown after going behind in the last two games is worrying. Worrying but understandable. We've got to hope that Hughes can make us harder to beat and that we can scrape a few points between now and January. The we'll see what the manager can do and perhaps then we can start to judge him properly.

Yet you can question MGP's quality as a Premiership footballer after, arguably, doing no worse as player for us than Hughes has done as a manager. Double standards. Haha he's got you there, Scotty! Good grief, the Chuckle Brothers are posting on here now. I'm not sure what's more depressing, Rovers current form or the standard of posts on here following yesterday's game.