gumboots

Quite agree. Have never supported a fashionable club and never wanted to. Quite enjoy watching lower league football where you know that the players aren't on huge wages and do have mortgages to pay like the rest of us. I don't want Rovers to go down the leagues obviously but certainly don't want our club to become one where the players are so far from the ordinary people that they can't understand any of our concerns or give us anything to identify with. At the moment we seem generally (with a few exceptions) to have players who haven't got too carried away with their own status and still semm to realise they owe the fans respect. Throwing money at a club often changes that.

Terry was also waving his arms all over the place to make sure the ref looked in his direction. It probably was on reflection a pen but what usually happens is the ref sees something like that starting to happen and doesn't allow the free kick to be taken until he's warned the players. Overall I didn't feel the ref was bad but just couldn't see past the reputations of players so that most 50/50s went Chelsea's way. We didn't deserve to win today but I didn't really think we deserved to lose.

Thing that disappoints me most is that this is all there is for Damien. At the time he went to Chelsea most teams would have liked to buy him if they could have got anywhere near affording him. Now he's going to one of the League's perennial underachievers. I don't begrudge him the move to Chelsea because in the short term it's given him what most players say they want, ie medals but Shearer went to the toon for love of the club and it didn't matter one jot to him that in the end they won nothing, but Duff is going without having any real choice because no other club wanted him enough to really try to tempt him or Chelsea. And that's sad to see

He won't be able to drive anyway cos someone will nick his wheels!

So perhaps that's the real reason jose's selling players and shrinking his first team squad?

So with a first team squad of 20 players, what happens if four of them get injured, go down with a virus or whatever. You're left with just enough to fill the team and your bench and what if lots of outfield players go down and you don't have enough? Seems to me either Jose's on a wind up again or he's playing a very dangerous game.

Was that the match when Anelka ran riot and it snowed?

Looks pink on my monitor too. Hope it's just a poor photo

They might well come back up but they'll probably go down again. Bruce is the kind of manager to get you out of the Championship but doesn't seem to have the staff or the managerial and training skills to keep them there. As for the big money for Heskey, it's partly because Wigan are desperate and partly because they don't actually have to sell that they got so much. Not due to any great negtiating skills. Just in this case a selleer's market. Anyone else sick of seeing Bruce on TV already and the season hasn't even started?

Apology accepted. Know it's not the most feminine sounding user name but I teach German and I like the sound of the German for gumboots but if I put it on in German it takes too long to type every time I need to.

Can I just point out that I am female so "lads" isn't really appropriate!

Only getting ready? Most of us have hated them for years.

All our players seem to be saying the same thing, even those who don't play for us like Dickov and Pongolle. We should have these comments translated into various languages and shown to all targets. This is not the management trying to sell the club but players talking about how they like the training and coaching, feel they are being treated as responsible adults and feel the club is going places and in the midst of the doom and gloom regarding Bellamy it's great to hear. Hopefully, Bellamy will have the good grace to say good things about Rovers too.

And where exactly does Lucas Neill ask for a transfer? I haven't seen anything quoted that says he wants to leave Ewood. I've seen a lot of media speculation and one or two possibly ill-judged comments (which may or may not be correctly quoted) Plenty of rumour but no fact other than that he hasn't actually signed a new contract yet. Leave him alone until we see what's actually going on.

It does if you work with the same people, management etc but rovers is a completely different set up from when he joined and when someone like Dickov is saying he learnt more in his 2 years working with Mark Hughes and co than at any other time in his career you do have to think Rovers is a good place to be just now.

Why should he find it stale here when most of the players are saying this is the most exciting time to be a Rover? I know he's been here a while but things aren't necessarily that exciting elsewhere and unless everything goes pear shaped this season then he might as well sign his contract, stay another year and then if it doesn't work out go at the end of next season. I suspect agent power in some of these rumours - if you don't move on or negotiate a bumper deal agents don't earn as much so they push for moves that the player might consider but wouldn't necessarily seek of their own accord.

Good to hear Bruce say he doesn't have to sell Heskey. Please don't then unless it's to some other rubbish team so he can go down with them again.

Can't imagine what Stuart Pearce saw in Dickov when he played at the end of the season. He was awful at Portsmouth, never up with play and looking thoroughly uninterested in getting the ball or doing anything with it when someone was inconsiderate enough to put it directly in his path. Almost all the Rovers fans were yelling at Hughes to get him off because anyone would have been more effective. Pretty much the same story in the other games he played too. I wasn't one of Dickov's critics before because, as a lot of people have said, he always seemed to put in the effort to make up for any lack of ability but at the end of the season he didn't even seem to be trying and I for one won't miss him.

There's a large part of me that says that Spurs and their moaning fans deserve all they get and it will serve them right if Arsenal win the champions league and nick their place but it doesn't make it right that the champions can't defend their title except at the expense of a team who have worked hard all season and would in most seasons have qualified. What real hardship did it cause anyone when Liverpool were given an extra place last year? I do feel sorry for Spurs if they don't get Champions league because it could have been us and we'd have been really gutted then. Then I think again about those whingeing fans .......

Surely a lot of what they do is dependent on the uefa cup place cos if we don't get it they already know they've got to play the intertoto. That'll shape the clubs planning. Personally I'd like to see them go to France as we always miss the preseasons because of our family holidays.

It will only ever happen if all conditions are right, ie. transfer fee, low wages. I just can't see Hughes taking a gamble on him when there will be a number of other options this summer!

Bit late if he recovers by Wednesday because Chelsea's Tuesday

Can you not see the contradiction??!!!!

Because it is the ENGLISH FOOTBALL TEAM!! lets get down to basics here, this is not club football, we cant pick ronaldihno, so why do you think we can pick Scolari? I know there is no rule against it, but for the sake of the essence of National football teams, the coach should be English. Its not like we are an up and coming footballing country that needs a helping hand from a foreign coach, like South Korea did, like the African nations do. We have a pool of English managers to pick from

But if nobody goes to the ground then there is no product. It's alright saying that people watch it in the pub but how much do you spend there and what will there be to watch in a few years if the club can't raise income ? We can't really afford to go to all the games we go to and we're certainly not well off but as far as possible we try to support the club by attending games. I know the cost of season tickets is high for a lot of people but it's a case of how low the club can afford to make them. You want a high quality product in pleasant surroundings then you have to pay for it.