We missed key players today and our squad was shown up to lack strength in depth. Our 3 best outfield players this season have probably been Bentley, Emerton and Savage - two of them were missing today. Add that to two of our best players of last season out long-term injured and Roberts going off early on, well we simply weren't left with good enough players.

Saying that though, we just didn't try hard enough in the first half. I thought West Ham would come out all guns blazing but they didn't - they looked nervous and inhibited. Sadly though we allowed them into the game by being a yard off the pace and passing like a pi55ed-up pub team. Their first goal was a lesson in how not to defend. Zurab was weak as pi55 in attemting to clear the long ball, Gray was caught marking no-one, and Mokoena failed to keep tight enough to Sheringham. Good finish though.

We were much better in the second half. We got in their faces and started to pass the ball, but we lacked options and mobility up front and too often our wide men failed to get decent crosses over. It slowly became inevitable that West Ham would get the second and, sure enough, they did from a corner that shouldn't have been awarded.

Our consolation goal just made me more angry really as it showed what we could have done with better passing and ability. Too little too late.

Gray was shockingly bad, Mokoena was a pale shadow of Savage, Tugay's passiing was awful early on, and Peter, although clearly talented and a prospect, disappointed me. It maybe unfair but I expected him to beat his full-back more, or at least attempt to. Zurab was yet again too weak for a centre-half. We've also been unlucky with the injuries up front. The way I see it McCarthy and Jeffers are competing for one place and Nonda and Roberts are competing for the other. Unfortunately our two target men are injured and McCarthy and Jeffers just aren't a natural partnership. The only players to emerge with credit today were Bentley, Ooijer and McCarthy. The rest were either average or poor.

If we could play our best 11 every week I honestly believe we're a top six team - maybe even a top four team. After that we've got 4 or 5 players who can come in and not disrupt things too much, but then we're struggling. The likes of Peter and Gallagher are talented and promising - and still young enough to make it - but too inconsistent at the moment. The rest though are just not up to it. Gray's finished, Mokoena's a great defensive midfielder in a five but can't play in a 4-4-2, McEverly's never been good enough, and Jeffers needs a centre forward to play off.

Even the top teams would struggle if they had 6 of their first team out, but that dosen't excuse the general lack of effort and professionalism we showed in the first half today. We showed in the second half that we're a better team than West Ham but it was too late by then.

Whhhoooooooo get that.......... Tough talk from the boards regular bullyboy street fighting man! Careful you'll have Col and Gav coming over all cow eyed at your masterful put downs of me.

Tell you what Steven bloody Seigal ........ same question to you. Lets have your alternative suggestions for

1. taking professional football in this area forward.

2. giving us a real chance to compete for the title every season again.

3. to provide regular Champions League football.

4. and for the chance to stop being a bloody small arsed small town feeder club and having the media take the p1ss regularly, and continually lose our best managers and players to the proper BIG clubs.

We are cock a hoop right now and rightly so but at the present rate of progress MH will be lured away before too long and if you cannot see that or are happy with it to happen you are deluding yourself. It's like waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall and for us one day soon the thread will snap. Like it or not we have not the long term resources or staying power of the likes of such perrrenial 2nd Div luminaries like Sheff Wed, Derby, Forest, Brum, Wolves, Leicester, Leeds, Sunderland etc, Jack Walker's wealth took all that away once albeit for half a dozen short years (and has provided a more than useful buffer since). But I for one want it back, preferably and necessarily on a true and sound businesslike footing.

And if you also say that you would rather watch BRFC in the Lancashire combination then I trust you will be good enough to resign from this board forthwith also."

It's amazing how you can tell people to sod off (I quoted you remember) yet when I do it I'm the board bully boy. I can't tell if you're a master of irony or just terminally thick.

Anyway, to get to the point in hand yet again. First of all, what's all this "us" sh!t? Your so called solution has nothing to do with "us". There wouldn't be a Blackburn Rovers football club if it was left to you. What you are basically saying is that you want to support a local team, any local team it would seem, that can compete with the current big clubs. Why not save yourself a lot of hassle and just become a United fan then?

Hughes and the rest of the management team seem to be taking Blackburn Rovers forward quite nicely thank you. Hughes will only leave to join a bigger club if he continues to be a success here and, if that happens, it will be up to the board to recruit another manager who can continue Hughes's good work. That's their job, they've got the last two appointments right, let's hope they get the next one right as well.

As for Rovers competing with the bigger clubs, or taking football in the area forward, I and others have already explained that the game as a whole will have to make some fundamental changes before that can realistically happen. Read the earlier posts. At the moment though we are going in the right direction and I'm perfectly happy with that.

Finally, I'd much rather watch a Blackburn Rovers team play in a bloody Blackburn junior schools league than follow some faceless corporate white elephant like "Lancashire United". Personally, things like community, tradition and local pride are much more important to me than watching a team I have no affinity with playing in Europe (not that Lancashire United would like but let's run with your "solution" for the sake of argument). Those things obviously mean nothing to you, a fact that, in my eyes at least, just makes you the crappest sort of glory-hunter - the type of fan that I despise when I go to places like Man U and Chelsea. If anyone should resign from the board it's you.

West Ham and the media are already building this game up as a must win match for the Hammers. However, there's no doubt that they are low on confidence and I'm sure the crowd will be supportive at first but quick to turn if West Ham don't start well. If we can quieten the crowd and make a good start it's ours for the taking. Make a bad start and we're in big trouble.

2-1 Rovers.

If you have nothing constructive / imaginative / valid / beneficial to offer other than blank closed minds, intellectual sterility and continual criticism then sod off!

But you have nothing constructive, valid or beneficial to offer either. Just a wildly imaginative "idea" that would actually alienate most of our fans. Whenever your "idea" is debated you come back with nothing in the way of a resoned argument, in fact, your above post is a pretty standard response to anyone who disagrees with you. Which makes me wonder why you don't "sod off".

Saw them in Denmark this summer, fantastic concert. Not only Jack White's redefining of 'entertainment', but also the extremely solid backup band. I also liked that Brendan whatshisname's vocals - did they cover David Bowie by any chance?

Didn't recognise any Bowie covers but they did do a cracking version of Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).

Saw The Raconteurs at the Apollo tonight in Manc. Top band - Jack White is an axe legend!

Special mention for Bentley who, in the first half especially, delivered a number of great crosses - one of which led to Benni's goal. Bentley's one of our players of the season for me at the moment. By way of a contrast, why is Pedersen still in the team?

We passed the ball really well in the first half, Tugay was instrumental, and our two forwards looked lively and a threat. Liverpool pushed on in the second half though and we started to get deeper and deeper. Our passing became non-existant and it was inevitable that Liverpool would equalise. Crap goal to concede though - as others have said, Emerton just left Bellamy and there was no-one on the far post. However, once Liverpool had equalised I thought we settled and took control again (replacing Tugay for Mokoena helped) and we could have won it at the end.

A great, fully deserved point and, perhaps more importantly, there was no obvious difference in class between us and Liverpool.

Was that because you have been watching The Simpsons or you going to offer something more in the way of justification in your usual erudite manner?

Well, I wrote the main piece about him in the Greatest Team section so I guess people can read that if they want to know why.

The season we finished 6th under Souness was probably the best in terms of entertainment I've seen at the Rovers. Watching the likes of Duff, Dunn, Jansen, Tugay and Cole all playing together was fantastic. It may not have been our most successful team, but it was certainly the most enjoyable to watch in my Rovers lifetime.

Of course, I worshipped Shearer and the rest of the Championship winning side, and Garner, Sellars, Price, Barker, Keeley etc etc before them. But there's something different, something special about watching a player who can take the opposition players on and beat them as regularly as Duff did. Add to that the fact that he came through our youth ranks, that he looked so awkward and funny at times, and that he seemed such a down-to-earth character all made him stand out for me.

Duff

Wasn't Brad having to pull off some of his stupendous saves cos of Lucas' boo boo's for a couple of years when Neill was average.

Still lacked "fundamentals" though. :ph34r:

I went to the Sparta Rotterdam pre-season game. We stayed in Amsterdam for 3 nights before the game and then Rotterdam for the night of the game. The two cities are a complete contrast.

Amsterdam is genuinely beautiful and has plenty to do - either from a touristy perspective or from a nightlife perspective. Rotterdam is very industrial and lacks any real charm. When there I felt I could have been in any city, there was nothing outstanding about the place that I could see.

Trains from Amsterdam to Rotterdam are very regular, fairly cheap, and take less than an hour. I'd stay in Amsterdam given the choice.

It's great to know now that we have real quality in reserve - players who can come in when injuries occur and still make a big impact. Nonda has been great for the last couple of games so when I heard he wasn't playing yesterday I was worried. But no problem, Jeffers came in and played really well. Then Roberts comes off the bench late on and sets up the winner. Friedel going off at half-time wasn't brilliant either, but on comes Jason Brown and, even without the penalty save, looks confident, assured and talented.

When you consider that two of our better players last season, Nelsen and Reid, are out injured as well it just goes to show the strength in depth we have now. The only real concern is our two centre-halves who, yet again, made loads of mistakes and nearly gifted Wigan the win. Zurab constantly gave the ball away in dangerous areas in the first half - and we all know what Ooijer did in the second. Thankfully Wigan didn't capitalise, but teams will in the future if we don't sort it out soon.

Still, I'm not going to end on a negative note as pretty much everything else to do with the team is positive. Our 4 forwards are all good players, players who are capable of coming into a game or coming off the bench and making a real impact. McCarthy might just be a bit better than good. Our midfield is looking balanced, competitive and creative - special mention for Bentley in particular who has been one of our players of the season so far. We have two of the best attacking full-backs in the league on current form, and in Emerton we might just have the best full-back in the league full stop. He's a revelation. And, looking at the second half yesterday, we have two top quality keepers as well.

Do we know whether letters A, B, C, D and E denoting order and venue of play coincide with pot numbers 1 to 5?

No they don't. There will be 8 groups of 5 teams, each group having one team from each of the 5 pots in it. Teams from the same country cannot play each other. Once the draw is made then the computer takes over and sorts out who plays home and away at what time. It has to take into account weather conditions, city clashes (can't have two games played at the same time in the same city), etc etc.

Basically, we won't know who we're playing when until after the draw's been made and the fixture computer has done it's stuff.

Here's the teams remaining and the pots that they're in.

Remaining UEFA Cup Teams

Here's the full list of teams left in and who's in what pot (assuming the bloke who updates this page has got it right!).

UEFA Cup Group Stages

If you're going to post what the draw will look like you might as well get it 100% right - otherwise what's the point?

TrimmTrab's post is just nonsense. There are 80 teams still left in the UEFA Cup and I'm sure the 40 remaining after tonight will look different to his list..

when lovejoy and helen come on at the start can you all start chanting "who are ya?"

would be quality!!!

You clearly have a different definition of quality than I do.

Anyway, enjoy yourselves and just don't embarrass us too much.

The gap for Euell's chance didn't appear between the two centre-halves. It appeared between Neill and Zurab. Neill was caught between marking his wide man and coming in to cover Euell. Zurab was just nowhere covering no-one. And nobody tracked Euell from midfield.

The questions I'd be asking are why Neill was left marking two men (where were Pedersen or Tugay/Savage?), why didn't Neill spot the danger and come inside to mark Euell (the more dangerously positioned player), and why Zurab was stood next to Ooijer leaving a huge gap behind him. And why no-one seemed capable of communicating to each other quickly enough that there was a gaping big hole in the defence.

All-in-all a bit of a shambolic episode in what otherwise seemed like a pretty solid defensive display. That said, I still don't like Ooijer and Zurab as a partnership, particularly when both our full-backs aren't really used to their current positions.

It has everything to do with it. If Blackburn didn't have Rovers, Lancashire United would be the team that would represent the town. Much like it's been easy to adjust to following Europe at the Ryder Cup after they expanded the team from Great Britain to Europe, fans would be able to adjust to Lancashire United. I agree with Joey that there would be short-term pain, but in the long run Lancashire United would become a bigger force.

I'm not advocating this as the solution, there are a LOT of other things that could/should be done first, but it can't just be dismissed out of hand.

But that argument again completely disregards the emotional attachment that most fans have with their football team. Most don't have that same attachment with a GB or Ryder Cup team. Sure they want to see them win (I was as happy as anyone that Europe won the Ryder Cup), but it's the nature and rarity of the event that stirs the emotion. If the Ryder Cup was played every week I'm sure most people wouldn't give a toss about it.

And it doesn't follow that people would automatically support Lancashire United if Rovers ceased to exist. Personally, I'd be prepared to help form a new Blackburn Rovers club, like the fans at FC United and AFC Wimbledon have. Failing that, I'd probably find a smaller local team to support instead. I suspect a lot would do the same.

It can be dismissed out of hand. I've done it, and most other fans would as well.

Ever wondered what became of the people who supported Blackburn Olympic? Did they adapt to supporting BRFC or did they simply end up waiting to die all bitter and twisted? Check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Olympic_F.C.

Note the reference to John Lewis.

There's a two page article in the latest edition of When Saturday Comes about Blackburn Olympic. Olympic were the local working man's team, rooted in the factories and mills, whereas Rovers were formed by grammer school old boys. The article states how Olympic used to be the most successful Blackburn team, and eventually the most successful team in the country, by being hugely innovative.

They introduced new standards of fitness, preparation, and tactics to the game and, for a short while, regularly defeated the old public school clubs. However, the other clubs had more money and started to poach Olympics players, and they soon cottoned on to the new levels of professionalism. Olympic couldn't cope, got into debt, and eventually went out of business.

It's an interesting story, but not really relevant to this debate. They weren't merged with Rovers, they competed alongside them until they couldn't any more.

Lot of irrationality about it all isn't there Bellamy? Ever noticed the ease at which we all convert from supporting GB at the Olympics to England in the commonwealth games? It really is all in the mind.

But football is completely irrational. It's totally irrational to pay good money to watch 22 blokes kick a bit of leather around for 90 minutes. Totally irrational. Yet millions do it because it's a passionate, tribal game that allows fans a form of escapism for a while. Rationality doesn't come into it. It's totally irrational to support Blackburn Rovers when there are more successful clubs available who have better players and play better football. But we still do it.

And what has supporting GB at the Olympics and England at the Commenwealth Games (or the Ryder Cup) got to do with it? We do that because they are the team that represent us in those particular competitions. I'm sure that if Blackburn had an exclusive Olympic team we'd all support them ahead of GB, but they haven't.

Your arguments for "Lancashire United" seem to centre on business principles (I'm guessing a bit here as you've never really made a proper argument for it), business principles that will supposedly allow the new club to compete with the best clubs in the land. This will be achieved by merging two (or more) clubs, pooling the collective resources and fanbases of those clubs together, thus making a bigger and successful club - much like merging two companies together. But that argument is hugely flawed because football doesn't operate on business principles. As Bellamy11 points out, it's the fact that football is becoming more and more commercial that is turning fans off the game at the moment.

If you take away the fan's emotional attachments from football, the local passion, the tribal rivilaries, the community spirit, the traditions, then what are you left with? You're left with a past-time, just another leisure activity competing against all the other leisure activities that are available today. You take away what makes football special. The fans of the merged club wouldn't feel that same emotional intensity that they currently do for their own clubs. Everything that makes football special would be torn away, and it would become just another sport. Without that emotional intensity most fans wouldn't bother going. They would start to think rationally, start asking themselves why they are paying all this money for something that doesn't excite them. Many are already doing it, "Lancashire United" would just increase the trend. So, rather than incresing the fanbase, the new club would dramatically decrease it.

Of course, you could argue that, given time, the new club would start to gain the same traditions and community spirit that Rovers currently has. However, time is exactly what you don't think we have. The reason you came up with the idea of "Lancashire United" in the first place is because you're worried that Blackburn Rovers no longer have the resources to be able to compete with the bigger clubs, and will start to tumble down the leagues as a consequence. Yet by forming this new club, I believe it would have to operate initially with less resources - much less. Thus surely accelerating the decline you seem so fearful about.

There are a million and one reasons why "Lancashire United" wouldn't work, the points above cover just one aspect of the whole argument against it. There are many practical, financial, and legal arguments against it as well. These have all been raised before. Yet you never respond with an argument backing up your proposal. You never outline specifically why I, and others, are wrong to object. All you ever do is quote phrases like the need to "think big" and then demand what our ideas are. But you continue to claim that you have the answer to our falling attendances, that "Lancashire United" will solve our problems. Well, I'll ask again, how will it?

Anybody out there remember Chris Finnigan, ex-Palace?

I remember a Tony Finnigan, ex-Palace.

2-1 Rovers.

My answer was here all the time scotty in the first paragraph. If you can't be arsed to read my posts then it's very SAD.

Now I've explained my position will you have another go at the second paragraph.

But that's no answer at all. You're the one who constantly posts on here saying that you've got the answer to our attendance problems. I'm giving you the opportunity to tell us all what that answer is and how it will work. Share your wisdom with us so we can all be blessed with you're knowledge and foresight. Or just admit you haven't a ####### clue.

And I've already explained that I haven't got an answer. I'm not naive enough to think that there is a simple solution.

Gord, would you support Lancashire United? Would you wear their colours, travel religiously to their stadium and go mental when they score? Genuine question. I know you're thinking from a business perspective, but isn't the business aspect of football the very thing that is turning fans off anyway?

You're not really expecting a straight answer are you?