This might sound stupid, but is there anything to stop anybody that was previously concerned with Great Harwood Town just 'restarting' the club. Sort of what the Manchester United fans did with FC United, except the original club isn't there to contend with! Not only that, how the hell does a club like Great Harwood end up owing £1m??? Maybe they blew it all on their replacement for Derbyshire?

I disagree strongly. Doesn't make many mistakes? The guy is a bag of nerves. He's constantly giving the ball away, underhitting passes and not looking around to get into decent positions. He can tackle and he's supposed to be a real athlete, but I'm afraid there are plenty of Championship players that fit into this category. There is no evidence either to suggest that Dunn has been anything other than unlucky with his injuries in the past few years. I don't remember him being sidelined all too often when he was with us the first time round, and perhaps he isn't 'injury-prone' as people suggest. Anyway, players do have medicals BEFORE they sign you know? We were all saying in the summer that Tugay couldn't hack a full season in the Prem. Proved a few people wrong didn't he? Who's to say Dunn won't do the same? At the end of the day, if Hughes thinks David Dunn is good enough to play for Blackburn Rovers then that's good enough for me. Bolton are doing well and they want him too.

Go on. Let him back on. I miss him.

I got Wrexham upto the Championship but then went to Fulham as Chris Coleman had been sacked. Fulham were ninth in the Championship but expected to win the title. As soon as I joined, the club got taken over by an Andorran entrepeneur and he pumped £46m into the club. He gave me an initial £10.75m to get the club promoted. Easy I thought, as the January transfer window was about a month away. I then got a message that the chairman had doubled my transfer budget to £21m and a wage budget of £1.5m a week (it was only £275k a week at present) - and the window hadn't opened yet! I bought Javier Acuna from Betis for £7m and a few smaller purchases and had about £10m left over. I won automatic promotion on the last day. Over the summer the board announced that they would offer me various finance packages - I chose the £37m option with more to spend on wages but they were prepared to offer me upto £55m to spend! I bought Mancini from Roma for £20m and Gary O Neil from Portsmouth for about £13m plus a few smaller transfers. However, the club did not actually have the £37m in the bank so I'm in debt by about £20m!!!! Has anyone else been in this situation before? I mean I'm sure I'll recoup the money in prizes and the odd sale, but still why is the board offering me a transfer budget when they obviously cannot afford it?

Hold on a minute, when was the last time anybody paid £13 to watch the Rovers? It's normally at least £18. And if you're talking £13 as an average cost per game for season ticket holders - well proportionally it's unfair to use our season ticket holders' costs as an average cost for a fan. We have a season ticket holder fan base of about 13k I believe which means we have roughly 8000 (on average) 'walk-ons' every game paying much more for their tickets. Clubs such as Everton, Villa, Arsenal and Manchester United rely on their season ticket holders to make up the vast majority of their attendances. I have read somewhere that Everton have around 30,000 season ticket holders. Also, by using the figures in your post Philip, and also by some people's hypothesis that losing gate receipt revenue will directly affect our league position and abiity to compete, we can actually see that this is in fact - B*LLOCKS! Last time I checked the league table, we were above Charlton and Aston Villa! Newcastle, West Ham and Middlesbrough all charge more than us and get higher gates, yet we are above these teams and performing to a far higher standard! Man City, Everton and Spurs all get double the attendances that we do, but has this affected our competetiveness? NO - we are only one point, three points and four points behind these teams respectively! So I say let's continue to reduce our tickets and try and get more through the door. I can't think what would be worse - having less money to spend on players in the summer, or starting next season with only 10k others around me at Ewood!

You seem to have missed the point. As Bryan says, you made it out as if Derbyshire has been an unpleasant surprise or something negative. Of course we aren't going to play Derbyshire up front every game (although I don't agree that that would relegate us), but the fact that when called upon he has performed confidently and very well shows us that we may well have a real prospect in our squad.

No Derbyshire has been a complete and utter disappointment, and is a waste of time.

Yeah to be honest I'd have said the same about David Bentley last season, and look at him now. He can definitely hold his own in a physical tussle now, yet doesn't seem to have lost his technical ability or pace.

Nah. If people want to use drugs then sod em. We still sell alcohol and tobacco products in hundreds of thousands of shops in the UK, and with the taxes we generate through that we can afford to run our country. I'm sure I've read that without cigarettes, there would be no NHS. The fact of the matter is that people can get drugs EVERYWHERE. Go into any town centre pub on a friday night and you can get your hands on pills, cannabis and coke at least. A quick phone call and you can get your hands on the harder stuff. We must remember that legalising drugs won't neccessarily make drugs more accessible to your average man, but would rather benefit those who see the sense to stay clean. It's like saying it would be perfect to live in a world where nobody smoked tobacco. Unfortunately our country would be in a REAL mess without the sale of these heavily taxed drugs. We could even re-invest the money generated through taxed drugs into increased drug awareness and black-market drug raids. It is the dealers that make the drug-world as nasty as it is. They are the ones that post 'free samples' through letterboxes in Manchester to get them addicted, and then are knocking on their doors six months later because they havent given back the five grand they owe the local drug gang. Drugs will ALWAYS exist, we just need to make it safer for those that choose to do these things to themselves.

Lancashire United in favour of Blackburn Rovers? No. Lancashire United if no Blackburn Rovers existed? Yes. The fact that you are so keen on the whole Lancashire United thing really negates the fact that you care so much about the club. You are willing to sacrifice the pride of a town for that of a club that represents an entire county. To me it really doesnt make sense - you are willing to team up with fans from Burnley, Preston and Blackpool in the hope that it will put us on a level pegging with Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal? You will give up all the history and everything you have ever supported involving football? Football would be classed as dead and buried the minute Lancashire United was suggested by someone involved in the running of Rovers.

I'd be very surprised. Many people are going to be watching this game in the pub (it's on Sky), and I'm sorry to say I will be joining them. I hate this alternative of watching a 'live' game, but at the end of the day I can take the entire family down to the pub with a couple of drinks each and watch the game and I would still have change from £36. I hope the attendance figure proves me wrong, but like I say I'd be very surprised.

BRFCS4EVA - I know you are one of the 'The Club Do Everything Right' brigade on all issues, but surely we should be being less picky nowadays. We will not sell out against Liverpool because the prices charged are nothing short of robbery - so why are we turning people away that ARE willing to pay that??? Yes the little old lady may well be a scouser at heart. So bloody what?!? It's not as though she is taking the seat that would otherwise be filled by a Rovers fan. Until we can fill the stadium on our own, it is ludicrous to bring in these restrictions. Like somebody else said if you wanted to buy a present for your grandson who lived in the Blackburn area but hadn't really thought of watching Rovers before, the two games you would think of as ideal to whet the appetite would be Manchester United at home or Liverpool at home. We are shooting ourselves in the foot BIG time with this, and by the way £36 in the Blackburn End is an absolute disgrace for ANY game. I'd be most surprised if we get 15,000 home fans on for this game. Then again everybody is loaded at Christmas aren't they and with only three games in seven days it could be a sell-out

Without the 'middle-men' though, there would be no drugs trade. I personally would make all drugs legal, but increase the penalties on crimes such as rape, smuggling, theft and murder. Certainly death penalties for rape and murder. The fact that drugs are illegal simply forces people to look for illegal means in which to obtain them. In legalising drugs we can tax them, and even offer them 'clean' to addicts. At the end of the day, drugs will always be around so we should make it safe and accessible for people to pump this sh!t into their veins, rather than force them to rob somebodys house or sell their body on the streets.

The suggestion that the club should not drop prices further because it may ###### off the season-ticket holders is pretty pointless. At the end of the day, if we continue to get 16000 on to every home game, the season-ticket holders themselves are unlikely to renew their tickets because of the effect on the atmosphere. I don't know what the soloution is - I wonder if anybody has the soloution. Football is dying on its arse and at the moment only selected sections of football supporters can see it. Man United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and Everton fans (probably a few I've missed there) all think it's great because the supporters of those clubs are either: a)seemingly in endless supply b)or have nothing better in their lives to entertain them The fact of the matter is that there just isn't enough Blackburn Rovers supporters. Cheap tickets may lure fans back that are already Rovers supporters and have stopped going, but ticket prices aren't going to make you support a particular club. Having said that, I am convinced that the club should reduce ticket prices if it means getting more people through the doors - even if we lose money. At the end of the day, if I cannot afford to go and watch my team then there is little point 'supporting' them. I don't want to have to save for weeks so I can go and watch a team in a 2/3 empty stadium with no passion, no connection to me and no identity of being the type of team that we have always been - a proud, ambitious and confident Northern team always trying to overcome the so called 'bigger' clubs. Until football changes, football will be shyte. I'm sorry to say that the state of the current game is terrible and totally alien to the way that it used to be played - in the days it was successful. Even upto the mid-nineties we still had true legends of clubs and proper professionals. I'm not just talking about the likes of Alan Shearer, David Batty, Mike Newell, Tim Flowers and Colin Hendry that we can associate with our club. I'm talking your Steve Bruce, Denis Irwin, Mark Hughes, Ian Rush, Craig Short etc. There is nobody we can relate to in the current game - it's just a bloody mess of foreign imports, obscene wages, SkySports Ford Super Sundays, billionaire takeovers, divers, cheats, agents, high ticket prices and Christiano Ronaldos. What a load of ######. Can have more fun watching Sunday league football.

Arsenal are cheats. It's just not fair.

OK here's my two little flutters for tonights games: Bet One Hamburger SV to beat CSKA Moskow at home West Ham to beat Wigan at home with a one goal handicap FC Kopenhagen to beat Celtic at home with a one goal handicap Odds: 4771/100 (£2 pays £97.42) Bet Two Man United to beat Benfica at home Newcastle to beat Reading at home Arsenal to beat Porto away Odds: 49/5 (£2 pays £21.60)

Awww. Poo.

The fact of the matter is that it's not a case of "he can play in this formation but not in that formation"!!! He looks good as a defensive midfielder in a 4-5-1 formation because he doesn't have the pressure of having to do a lot on the ball, yet he is pretty good at winning the ball back. Now I don't think we should settle for a midfielder that is good at tackling/winning the ball back and not much else. The guy is incapable of threading any kind of creative pass, he cannot head the ball convincingly and (i've said it before many times) panics when he gets possession. There are certain members of this messageboard that will defend any player or in fact any person associated with Blackburn Rovers. Sometimes you just have to hold your hand up and accept that somebody is just not good enough. As for Scotty (i think it was him) that suggested that Mokoena was "...the first player on the teamsheet in a 4-5-1" - this the most ludicrous suggestion I have heard recently and a pathetic attempt to back up an opinion.

Spot on. The club always seem to make things more complicated than they need to be. If there was no on-screen entertainment and no music, people would have to talk to those around them and dare I say it start a song.... We'd save a fair bit on the lecy bill aswell. Those bigscreens aren't half energy inefficient

I think you've missed the point dear.

Well thanks for that Thenodrog Anway, I didn't actually say that "these measures will ensure gate improvements" did I? No, I don't think I did. What I was getting at was the fact that these only add to the negative feeling about attending a game, and possibly add fuel to the fire so to speak. These are big issues for me, and whilst they may not initially get people through the door, it may help in persuading them to attend more games and come to the opinion that watching footy live at Ewood is better than on some dodgy Arabic TV. This is possibly an issue for BRISA to address, but really you would think that our high flying mega-bucks board of directors could come up with the idea of turning the friggin volume switch down. Well you've sold it to me MCMC1875!!! Maybe we should recruit you to the BRFC marketing team?

But SG194, there's so much more the club can do. The frustrating thing is that they seem to be channeling their energies into the wrong areas. That guy on RoverVision - the lad that used to be on Radio Lancs - what exactly does he do? What a bloody waste of money the whole setup is. All we want at half-time is a pint, a pie, a chance to see the goals on the big screen, and the half-time scores from elsewhere. Instead we get 50 adverts, ticket news for the next decade, some crappy compilation of Rovers goals from last season, more ads, replays of the goals from approximately 16 different angles and then whooose - the circus is back on. We play Wild Rover when we come out. Why not sack the music? No, Nay, Nevarrrrrrgh - don't make me laugh what a bloody joke. We've got an entire stand at one end of the ground completely empty - oh sorry I forgot the sprinkling of away fans - and then we've got some kids allocated in the upper tier of the Blackburn End. We've got an ancient stand that's pretty full with awful facilities and restricted views, yet we house the away fans in the Darwen End. I just don't get it. Put the away fans in the Riverside, move the kids to the Darwen End and relax the stewarding slightly in the BBE. Turn the music OFF, get rid of the Radio Lancs man, turn the big-screen on at half-time, and lets get some ATMOSPHERE back at Ewood.

Quite shocking really, something needs to be done ASAP. Yesterdays 'atmosphere' was terrible, and despite the win I very much doubt that a first-time supporter at the game yesterday would have any incentive to go back again. Some suggestions for Rovers: - Turn the bloody speakers down. I'm 21 and I think they are way way too loud - christ knows how the older supporters feel. - Drummer out. When the attendance is poor, he basically does a fantastic job at drowning out any crowd noise. In the past I've been on the fence with this issue, but he really does get on my tits now. - Why not just have the team lineup on the bigscreen before kick off? What's with all the shyte video compilations that they show nowadays - they look cheesey and nobody watches them anyway. - The club should generally let the crowd motivate themselves. I'm really getting the impression we are moving towards the Manchester Unitedesque approach of creating a 'fake' atmosphere - they are just trying too hard. - I, like others, love going on Ewood but yesterday was so pathetically crap. I'm sorry to be blunt and I know there are members on here that will defend the club and the people that run it whatever, but the matchday experience is half of what makes someone come back. Yesterday was the first time I've gone on a game and not sang a single word. Not a single syllable of vocal support. Why? I'm basically sick of having to compete with the drummer, the cheesey commercialised and obscenely loud RoverVision/PA system and the fact that I'm expected to sit down and be quiet. And that's in the Blackburn End.

Rovers 1 - 4 Man City When City got promoted at Ewood on the last home game of our first season in Division One. The result didn't matter too much to us, but the fact that they won (and won comprehensively) really rubbed salt in the wounds left by a terrible terrible season. It possibly wouldn't have been as bad had the City fans not outnumbered Rovers fans 10-1 in our own stadium!

3 and 3. I've always thought we suited a black and red away shirt, not least because they are complete opposites to our blue and white home. We should keep the halves on the away shirt permanently in my opinion.