My opinion exactly. BUT I was speaking to a prominent member of this mboard (no name no pack drill) last night in the pub who disagreed stongly and thought that Reids crossing yesterday was excellent!

Maybe not Pleasure but Neill has now proved that he can do a more than passable job right along the back 4. Which is not an inconsiderable benefit to a team with a small squad like ours. We need to keep him imo.

1. Rain? Get about 10 rows back and it's OK. 2. Try not to go too far back that your view is interrupted with a stanchion. 3. Apart from Nov-Mar you need a baseball cap if the sun is shining. Funny how so many sit with their hands shading their eyes when a simple baseball cap will do the job. Maybe the fear of looking like a chavvy / nobhead dissuades most. 4. No concourse with tellies. 5. Take your own refreshments. Despite only having a 15 min half time window the dumbo's that run the refreshments insist on selling only time consuming foods and using low paid dollopers to do it who inevitably cannot use the tills. It frequently appears that only about 30-40 peope get lucky each week. If it were my business Pies and Bovril/coffee and crisps would be the only foods on offer. Quick sale items only and if anybody wants anything else then tuff! Also there is no orderly queuing. Without barriers the counters simple resemble a log-jam. Do as I do and dont even go there. 6. Don't leave before the end cos it disrupts the views of hundreds of paying customers and it looks sh1t on telly. Apart from that and having that unecessarilly wide gap at the front it is OK and it is 'real'. Well I for one am going to struggle with those two. One of em should grow a bit of hair and dye it blonde! Must say Benny played the deeper role as expected and yesterday just oozed class. His style reminded me of Dwight Yorke ........... but at his absolute best that is. Benny's goal was an absolute belter too. A screamer from his left foot. Anyone know if he is left footed btw? If that was his weaker foot then his right must be something else.

There you go deftangel. It's an obvious move to exact as much revenge on Victoria Beckham as possible whilst at the same time placating her husbands buddy who just happens to be the country's best right back / barrack room lawyer. Wheels within wheels eh? I put that down to Clifford btw cos Maclaren and Venables wouldn't have the gumption to think that one up! behind the scenes at Lancaster gate......... Macca........."Now we've got shut of the David and his bitch what we gonna do now with Gary Neville? We need him remember....I've phoned Flopsy and he says he is the country's best right back so thats that. But the sh1t will hit the fan when Gary finds out. He was David sbest man rem. He's sure to get all the others to write nasty things about me and you Tel in their books." Tel...... "err I dunno Steve. Why are you asking me? Ummm err is Viv Anderson still playing? If he's packed up then we're stuck so maybe I'll get Ray Winstone to go uo norf and 'av a word in Gary's shell like'?" Max..... Don't be silly Tel Ray's 4ft 6" for goodness aske! "The answers simple gentlemen. Just recall their Phil and it's job done." Next. Altogether now..........'Clifford for England'

A stupid and pointless action. I'll defend any player geeting cautioned for a fierce tackle as long as they are going for the ball but this was gormless. Why cannot these numpties not grasp that everything they do is picked up by half a dozen cameras and played over and over in slow motion? Sorry thats a stupid question cos most footballers are terminally thick. I know this was only a friendly but what I do think is that referees should have another coloured card at their disposal (e.g. Blue) that constitutes a 'replaceable' sending off. Todd would have gone off and suffered suspension / fine / club discipline etc but Hughes could have replaced him with the team and supporters not punished and disadvantaged by being treated to yet another 11 v 10 charade.

What? I hope not! imo England play far too much direct football and Beckham and Gerrard are the biggest culprits. We work like the opposite of whites to get the ball, give it to one of those two who then nearly always try to make a 50 yard killer pass and end up in effect giving it straight back to the opposition. International football is about keepball as much as anything else, every team that I can think of that has won the WC in the last 30 years is far better at that particular team skill than any England team that I can recall. BTW I've just thought of another angle to this topic which imo has plenty of credence to it. Consider this ....... I think Maclaren has actually sacked Beckhams missus! and she has taken the huff and taken Becks with her! The theory fits too when you consider 1. his exit from OT after much publicised bad blood between Victoria and the RFW. 2. Maclarens time at OT when he would have been privvy and possibly occasional victim to her tantrums and influence over Becks. I wouldn't bet against Maclaren frickin hating her guts to be honest. 3. and the reports that he regularly stayed in different hotels than the team. 'Revenge is a dish best served cold' comes to mind.

Fife was right to 'help' you FLB. How was he to know that you had missed a word out through being 'tired and emotional' as they say. He like Jim, Paul, Dave (and myself) etc was brought up with the 3 R's being paramount. When we took exams we didn't pass them by right so that failure didn't upset our fragile temperaments, did we ######! We had to study hard for a piggin pass never mind an A*. Anyway the plain fact is that what little pace Beckham had in the past is quickly going now and anyway he will be 35 and past it next world cup. Been a good (not great) player for us but time and tide wait for no man. The King is dead as they say.

Point taken but I can't even name a better English shop steward. Dropping him needn't be forever (although he is getting on a bit) but it should establish who is the boss.

I imagine Gary Neville is gathering the troops as we speak! So if Maclaren really wants to be a new broom and sweep out the old he'd better pot him as well.

Come on to play in goal did he?

That must be obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse.

Excellent post Shillito. Many points I have made before on here. By being in the Prem we are punching well above our weight and cannot hope to compete with the big boys anymore. Football is a sport second and a business first and to stay where we are we need to box clever and play the system. Sentimentallity is for shmucks. Sure nobody wants Neill or Nelsen to go but if we can turn a profit and replace them with better then well and good. Lets imagine a scenario where we are either in the bottom 6 or in the top 8 at Christmas. Profit made now could be put to good use. If we have made no money then there is nowhere to go. Our biggest vulnerability would be to lose our management team, and imo to keep them here they should be on a %age of any profits made from transfers (within certain criteria). I have said before that we have superb facilities and a great management team who have a record of turning players fading careers around and that agents should be falling over themselves to put their underachieving talent into our hands. Now Hughes has said as much in the LT...... I'm not sure that we are all that sexy yet but imo we are certainly getting there and Hughes's teams efforts really do need to be richly financially rewarded in order to keep them away from other predatory chairmen. From the LT Hughes: Rovers are sexy now By Andy Neild MAIN ATTRACTION: Rovers boss Mark Hughes BLACKBURN Rovers manager Mark Hughes believes his club is an attractive proposition to leading players. Hughes has already made four signings this summer, including strikers Benni McCarthy and Jason Roberts, and he is heading the chase to land Dutch World Cup defender Andre Ooijer from PSV Eindhoven. And that's just a sign of the times for the Ewood boss, who helped rejuvenate Craig Bellamy's career before a move to Liverpool last month. Hughes, whose side face Sparta Rotterdam tomorrow night in Holland, said: "I think people are now starting to understand what we can offer here. The football grapevine can be a good thing and a bad thing, but I think the word has got out that the work we do here enables people to develop as football players and I think we're more attractive in that respect. Certainly European football and the attraction of that has helped this summer as well. But I just think people understand what we have here now. We've got great facilities, I'd like to think a good manager, great coaches, good back-up from all departments at the club, and everything is geared to make players better, and that will always be an attraction for footballers." Franny Jeffers is one of the players hoping to get his career back on track, and the attraction of working with Hughes was a major factor in his free transfer move to Ewood. And fellow striker McCarthy will be looking to build on his debut goal against Aachen on Saturday. "Obviously, you have to sell the club to these guys," said Hughes. "They have to understand what we can offer and that is part and parcel of the negotiation process. "We've been successful this season in that respect and we hope that will continue. "We've had a decent year this year and other years won't be as fruitful, I'm sure. " "But I'm happy enough." [/i]

Indeed Don. Goods and services should be charged as necessary with the users of plastic made to pay a small but necessary surcharge. ........... and a frickin hefty surcharge for the dozy sods (usually wimmin btw) who insist on paying for a round of drinks in a crowded bar with plastic! How geeky is that? The pubs and bars should ban em outright cos on busy Fri / Sat nights they cannot possibly sell the same amount of drinks when each transaction takes twice as long. ...........put it another way and by definition if this catches on then we can all only drink half as much!

I'd like to see the existing ones leave the High St and open a branch on a retail park with about an acre of car parking all around. Last years 60% hike in car parking charges in Blackburn to pay for the inumerable wardens adds even more to the cost of banking.

Quite right. Thats more like it stu. Rather than whingeing it's always better not to get mad but to get even. I know a chap with a business who was asked by the bank to allow a new manger to spend a morning learning about the industry that he was in. He allowed the trainee to come but sent a bill charging them at the same rate that he was charged for his annual overdraft revue. They paid up too.

Afraid I'm with Glenn here. Our Nanny state to the rescue again as soon as a mouth slips off the nipple and the baby starts to yell. In the old days you would simply have changed Banks wouldn't you? Anyway stuff plastic and the like we would all be far better off dealing in cash.

1. Are you now scared of rats too Paul? And if so are your children scared of them too? 2. Are your children scared of spiders? Just wondering if many of our phobias are planted deep in our subconcious at a very early age by our parents? I'm not really 'scared' but rather 'not keen' on spiders too whilst my daughter is terrified of them. As for nightmares at our age?........ I'm sure you'll agree that the most scary ones start as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning.

This tough training lark for footballers is a myth imo. Everytime TV shows clips from training grounds all the players are doing is keep ups and having a laff and a joke. I've never seen one of em do anything strenuous yet.

What happened to that stupid little sod from the reserves / youth team with the tarry fingers (cant rem his name) who got sacked by us for thieving from his mates and then picked up (reprehensibly) by Bolton? Gone on to great things in the game has he?

Now I've no doubt that some people will disagree with me here but Reids all action end to end attitude coincides imo not only with the arrival of Hughes and his team but more particularly from the arrival of and example shown by Robbie Savage.

Never a good idea to give charge of spending large sums to hired hands.

Got to be Dave Whelan Scotty. He's about the only one (apart from Tim Sherwood possibly) to have made more money and more of himself (other than retiring to semi-detached suburbian window cleaning or running a pub) after retiring than before. Failing that did we have any ex players who saw much active service in either war? They will usually have tales to tell.

I THINK FETTIS IS AT BURY.

Good.... They deserve each other.

Don't know either of em personally but I bet privately Terry frickin hates Maclaren.