By the way where is Jordan? Probably still trying to impress people in Norwich with his card trick Seriously though, the situation with the stewards/police this year has seemed to be worse this year than last. Last season for as many games as we could we headed towards the back of the stand at away grounds. I'd say that on most occasions we stood up a bit, but generally when we were asked to sit down we did, then stood up again when Rovers got remotely near the goal. Compare this to Norwich where people were just blatently standing up for the hell of it, and imo were just antagonising the police and stewards.

I dont think that Davies was the worst player for us - we just didn't play him to his strenghts. We tried to play him as a running-at-defenders type of player, which whilst he scored a couple of goals like this at Southampton, wasn't really his game at all. At Bolton, big Sam has played him more as a target man - he is strong and can hold the ball up quite well, and this suits him down to the ground.

Just saw this on another board, made me laugh

Isn't this just a standard letter that gets sent with all away tickets? I think I have pretty much got the same letter with every set of tickets I have bought this year. If the home team requests Rovers to tell the fans that they are meant to sit down then they send it with the tickets. I know that it doesn't happen at Rovers but that issue has been dealt with in length on other threads.

I'm in the process of collecting more Rovers shirts than I already have. I have got all of them from 1994/5 season onwards, but I'd like some from before then. I've got a couple - the Yellow and Black one from 93/94 and the blue and white ribero one. The two I'm after the most are the home and away shirts from the 93/94 season, but any others would be cool. So, if anyone has any lurking in a cupboard that they dont want anymore (i'm not really that bothered about size), I'm willing to pay a bit of money for them and p&p etc, please give me a pm

At the top of the message board is a link to My Controls. If you go there, you'll see a link on the left which says " · Edit Avatar Settings" where you can choose a picture. As for the Liverpool game, I cant see Rovers winning at all and our non-scoring record will continue. 2-0 to Liverpool.

However, that team that conceeded four goals included the likes of Shearer, Sutton, Sherwood, Berg, LeSaux etc. Unfortunately this time round we dont have even a quarter of that kind of quality in our team

Firstly welcome to the site. Secondly, this site has its own badge - I think theres some left - if you PM PAUL then he should have more details.

I've chosen Bryan Douglas. As much as I like Ripley I dont think that he should come close to Douglas. I obviously have never seen him play but I've read and heard a lot about him, enough to know that he was better than Ripley. When I was at school I interviewed him for the school magazine, which I've dug out and posted below. We spent the best part of two hours just talking about Rovers which was very cool for me. The end few paragraphs are a little outdated, but never mind. Bryan Douglas always wanted to be a footballer. He played for the Blackburn town team. He was offered trials at Blackpool, Bolton, Preston, Wolves and Blackburn. He chose Rovers because he was born and bred in Blackburn and had supported them since he was young. After the trials, he was asked to sign by the manager, Jackie Bestall. Bryan only ever played for Rovers, his home team, something he is very proud. He made his debut in August 1954 against Notts County. That was the first of 500 league and cup appearances he made for Rovers. He mainly played either in the outside right or inside left position. Inside left was his favourite although the outside right was where he made his name. He also made 36 appearances for England including playing in the Sweden 58 and Chile 62 World Cups. He retired from playing international football in 1963 and finished his career with Rovers six years later. His most memorable game for Rovers was the 7 – 1 defeat of Tottenham at Ewood. This was when Spurs were one of the best teams in the country. His two most memorable games playing for England were both against Scotland. In his early England career he remembers beating the Scots 4 – 0 at Hampden then later on beating them 9 –3 in England. Bryan said that without a doubt, Tom Finney was the best player he had ever played with while Pele was the best player he’d played against. When he started at Rovers he got paid £14 a week. In 1963, the maximum wage was abolished and Bryan was given a 50% increase on the £20 he received. The players also got bonuses for winning games. The most Bryan ever got was £50 plus appearances per week. Unlike today there were no sponsorship deals. After he retired, he ran market stalls for a year. Then he became a sales representative for a local paper mill. A job he did for 18 years. I doubt that we will see any of today’s professional players have another job when they retire from football. Bryan still watches Blackburn. He goes to all of the home games and some of the away games. He also keeps in touch with some of his Blackburn and England team mates including Ronnie Clayton, Tom Finney and Jimmy Arnfield. In his opinion, the game is not as entertaining now as when he was playing. This is because there are less individual players who take the opposition on. If he had the chance to, Bryan said that he would play football today but he believes it would be a lot harder for him because now the players are a lot fitter. When Bryan was playing, training was very basic, concentrating on stamina and sprinting. Now the players are as good athletes as footballers. Bryan thinks that next season will be a very big year for Rovers. He thinks that Graeme Souness is the manager that will make Blackburn successful again and thinks that they will get promoted again. It was a pleasure to meet Bryan Douglas. There won’t be many footballers who grew up in a town, played for his home town’s team for all his career and still lives in the town but Bryan Douglas is one of those few.

A European Superleague has been talked about for years, even before the Premiership. Basically the reason it never went ahead was because the respective FA's of the countries said that if teams joined the superleague, they'd no longer be part of the football league and therefore wouldn't have access to the traditional European competitions ie the Champs league or UEFA Cup. There's a very good book on Amazon called "Premiership" which goes into all the financial/marketing/tv side of football right back to the 1950's.

Yep, the attendance for that game was 16,922 and you're probably about right with your estimate for how many Rovers fans were in the west stand that night.

Rovers may not have won against Villa but there several reasons to be positive. Villa went ahead after 25 minutes with Angel latching onto a De La Cruz pass. However Rovers fought back and equalised through Barry Ferguson just before half time. Rovers came out all guns blazing in the second half and put Villa under pressure. Just after the hour a great move saw Djorkaeff link up with Emerton down the left channel and Emerton beat Sorensen at his near post! However Rovers' defence couldn't hold on as Mellberg equalised on 80 minutes. Full Match Report by Scotty

It is indeed. Not convinced its worth anywhere near £30million. The massive sports complex at work only cost £12million and that involved around £2million to shift some great crested newt type creatures. Im not too sure Brockhall is owed by Rovers at all. Of course the training ground and the academy will be, but the whole of Brockhall is owned by one man, whos name escapes me right now, not Rovers.

It is indeed. Not convinced its worth anywhere near £30million. The massive sports complex at work only cost £12million and that involved around £2million to shift some great crested newt type creatures. Im not too sure Brockhall is owed by Rovers at all. Of course the training ground and the academy is, but the whole of Brockhall is owned by one man, whos name escapes me right now, not Rovers.

I'm happy about it. He was one of my top two - Strachen being the other one. Although he is unproven at club level, he's done a good job with Wales and I think he'll be good for Blackburn Rovers.

Now wouldn't that be a shame

Oh bloody hell no!! When he and Kidd were at Rovers, the academy was pretty much neglected. From when my bro was at the academy, he wasn't rated very highly at all as a coach.

Was a complete shock to me. Having just moved into a new house, I as yet haven't got an internet connection or got very much of a telly signal so when I got a phne call, thought my bro was taking the p*ss! Its a weird feeling. I was a supporter of Souness but I'm not absolutely devastated that he has gone. We had three wonderful seasons with Souness but last year was poor. He turned our club around from when we were mid-table in division one and we should all thank him for that, but on reflection he had probably taken Rovers a bit too far.

Venables to replace Robson oh dear!

Got a source? It says it on the official site.... <<Link>>

You mean they were really United "fans?" I thought you were making it up. * holds head in hands * B11 - For shame. Didn't you know that all Man Utd fans refer to themselves as "manure"? Ste..... As a die hard fan of manure I was gutted obviously as we clearly had outplayed you over the full season.

I'm not expecting very much from this game expect from a good hiding. Although the closer it gets to kick off, I'll start thinking 'well we may get a point, and you never know, we could win' I'll go for 2-1 to Arsenal - Reyes 2

Well a couple of points I took from the game. As has already been said, first half wasn't the best. We weren't that poor, just seemed as though we were still playing a friendly. The first goal was very silly. First of all Matteo lost the ball in a daft position, and although he did take some of the ball I think it was probably a foul. Then our wall - wtf was going on?! But apart from that, WBA didn't really cause us any problems. The second half and change of formation, we looked a lot better. Thought Yorke was very good and Dickov was also good. Stead wasn't too good but did put in an excellent cross for the goal. One thing that has definately not changed though is freekicks!! Why do we shift freekicks? IT DOES NOT WORK!!! If we just hit it first time, we'd stand much more of a chance of scoring. I'm quite happy with a 1-1 draw, we came close on several occasions and some solid defending from wba kept us out. Should get something out of the Saints game - they looked quite poor today on the highlights, then we need to get ready for the big boys the following week!

Cant wait for this game. Think we'll do areet - 2-0 to Rovers. Stead and Dickov.

He's only 10/1 at Ladbrokes - the same as Jacques Santini.