Still completely wrong 'drog. Never mind, institutionalised bungs and Lancashire United all add to the entertainment on brfcs.com. The Stevens Report/investigation whilst a damp squib in PR terms will undoubtedly force clubs, agents and the FA to be extremely careful and is probably having a clean-up effect beyond the appointment of additional compliance officers at the FA. 39 suspect dealings being further investigated are sufficient to keep every Prem and ex-Prem boardroom excepting the three newly promoted clubs very nervous. I for one hope the identities are not leaked although the Quest team's activities and direction of questions in the coming 8 weeks will alert insiders to what they are chasing. The longer the period of anxious suspense, the greater the chances of someone cracking and changes oif behaviour becoming embedded.

The rankings are based on country co-efficient plus the club's own performance over the past five seasons. So Rovers' non-winning pops in recent seasons have gained them enough points to be able to laugh at Spuds in pot 5 for whom Europe is a 21st century novelty. For non-english clubs in the top three pots there is a minimum 25% chance of getting an EPL club out of the bottom two pots which is a bit of a nightmare proposition. At least there are no Italian or Spanish clubs lurking in pot 5 to bite Rovers in the derriere. Still it means that Rovers are theoretically seeded to get knocked out and will need to produce something special to get through. Four possible permutations to chew on for the draw: "Thank the Gods- we've got a great chance to come top of this one": Leverkusen, Brugge, Krakow, Rovers, Mlada "Couldn't be much tougher and not box office either": Sevilla, Alkmaar, Rapid, Rovers, Nancy "Do they give us tin hats?" Feyernoord, Rangers, Palermo, Rovers, Haifa "Glamour ties" Ajax, PSG, Espanyol, Rovers, Eintracht

Side-stepping the current bitching (perhaps) - The club has said that Season Ticket sales are over 13,000 this season which means a slight INCREASE on last season at this time, - I'll comment again that the steady decline in attendance coincided with the introduction of the drummers. They clearly annoy many people intensely. - Less tongue in cheek, the ease of availability of foreign TV in pubs in an area where TV watching and pub going are way above the national average is probably a straight causal link to Rovers suffering a disproportionate loss in attendance - without getting 'drog going but when we had 26,000+ averages, we had local rivals doing not very well. Now, virtually all our local rivals are having strong seasons and/or playing in divisions higher than they are normally to be found. I know when travelling in from my mother's the days of seeing masses of fans coming from west and north Lancashire are dramatically a thing of the past. Two observations of hope: - will the Prem attendance group recommend a pause in increases or a general reduction in attendance costs for this summer? Prem clubs will be getting a 60% windfall increase from TV rights so a cross the board 25% cut in attendance charges is EASILY affordable. - in the past, when Rovers have been playing well there has been a general increasing buzz in the town which isn't reflected in gates until suddenly a game comes along which is a must-see and bang, gates permanently shifted up by two or three thousand. In 80/1, league gates were around 5,000 to 8,000 until the Cup run and tickets for the Villa tie went on sale at the Blackpool game. 14,000 turned up and there wasn't a sub-10,000 gate for any game in the rest of the season. Is there any chance of this pattern repeating in modern day Blackburn?

The bias in officiating towards the big clubs is utterly blatant. Frankly, I have got over getting upset about it (although the reffing in our next few games is bound to wind me up again). Linesmen get called to account for bad decisions against Everton and Liverpool. But that numpty in Sheff U v Rovers?....

I think if you look back on the two previous seasons, there is a massive onus on winning your UEFA Group. In the Third Round, third-placing teams get wiped out by the Group winners and second-placers get wiped out by the CL 3rd place teams dropping into the UEFA.

You'd be an absolute menace in any business. Offering an incentive to management for stripping it of its best assets! I'll happily settle for the points, qualification and trophies incentivisation that already exists.

But we will sit out one of those five dates. Will know which, who and where on Tuesday. eeeh in't it exciting!!!

Preview of the Stevens report.

Palermo away please- visit to t'neighbours.

Thanks Bob- been laughing out loud.

On the basis that Daren popped up with an excellent better late than never preview, I am sure gull will visit us with his droppings... Logic says we'll get rumbled by the pie eaters but I'm a barm cake man and I'll go with 1-0 to t' Rovers. In honour of Daren's home town: A pie-eating manager named Jewel lots of football rumours did fuel When Roberts got pesky He signed Emile Heskey and ended unemployed, fat and a fool

When we got knocked out by Lyons, we were beaten by a club and team on the verge of doing great things. This time we knocked out Salzburg but I wouldn't be surprised to see Salzburg become a minor force in European football.

Have to say that the broken knee cap did for Ferguson who went from moderately talented to a total non-entity. It was quite a shock to see he scored against Mould. In retrospect, we did very well to get £4m+ for him (now he's done time, oops that Bellamy, er Rangers appearances). I really hope we draw Rangers and shove a well-deserved thrashing down them. It will ease the Celtic pain where we were disgracefully mismanaged.

Fancy retiring to Hawaii? We'd win the Champions League and the dingles drop to the Unibond!

Sorry Palermo- which is in my first post. Was on phone whilst scanning the posts. Will concentrate next time!

It is all becoming clear, 'drog works in a toilet factory and judges others by his own standard.

Three monitors side-by-side in the Dubliner- kept focus on the Rovers game but the ball is in action only c.40 minutes in any 90 minute game so it was easy to keep peripheral vision on the screens either side of the Rovers' game. Flopsy, if you say so, it must be the one. What on earth was the Ref doing at Ewood if he is suspended at home? Good job that Salzburg were basically just a bunch of ill-disciplined wussies. That ref would have had a riot on his hands if we had been playing a bunch of hard cases as he and his linesmen were utterly incapable of keeping control. I thought all the marginal decisions went against us by the way- don't know what it felt like in the ground.

Scotty, that's pretty well how I'd expected it- four higher ranked clubs got knocked out so we moved up into pot 4 which contains a bunch of clubs we wouldn't have minded drawing. Avoiding Palermo coming out of pot 3 could be a key to Rovers' progress as we can expect pots 1 and 2 to produce tough opposition. That said, I could quite easily pop up to Palermo if we play them away. Do we know whether letters A, B, C, D and E denoting order and venue of play coincide with pot numbers 1 to 5?

Very very happy! Another clean sheet, team gelling, no weak links, but to be honest collectively and individually that had the look and feeling of Rovers still only achieving 75% of what they are capable of yet. There isn't the fluidity about the side that Rovers showed towards the end of last season and when we really click into the groove we are going to be fantastic. Thought Benni and Chris (Nonda) looked a real threat all night and it was refreshing to see Benni looking so gutted about that missed header at the end of the first half- he really cared and it hurt him to miss like that. Another clean sheet and Brett just gets berter and berter. We shouldn't undersetimate the Austrians. Thankfully we were English so Spuds and WHam weren't lurking in the bottom half of the draw but Red Bull were one of the strongest teams we could have drawn with a great coaching set up and we totally nullified them. We can look forwards with confidence on the basis of that performance last night. The Rovers crowd came over very well on TV- looked a great atmosphere at the end. Watched it with the Newcastle and Parma games on adjacent screens. Newcastle are really poor and would have been embarassed last night except for two moments of sheer quality from Martins. Duff came on from the subs bench and the kindest thing you could say is he should have stayed on it. He is a million miles away from being the player he was at Rovers and is frankly now an embarassment to Rovers' greatest ever team. Don't be mislead by the 3-0 scoreline for Parma; WHam could easily have won that game as they dominated the first 20 minutes when Parma couldn't cope with Tevez. Outstanding goalkeeping, getting tight and hard and three complete cock-ups in the West Ham defence won it for Parma. The last was hilarious, a three man last line pushed up for offside 40 yards from goal so Parma dinked a through ball from the centre circle and two runners went through from onside positions. It was like watching the parting of the Red Sea. One final note. Those Potuguese officials were terrible. There are referees worse than in the Premiershipafter all!

McLaren's agent makes sweeping bungs claim. English football the dirty man of Europe and millions have gone out of the game.

Monaco have a history of eccentric transfer dealings. They almost went bust at the time they shipped Nonda out which is probably why Roma picked him up the way they did. Anyway, unlike Nelsen and Mokoena, Nonda has long been a well-known name outside his home and adopted countries.

This is a nice preview.

With the windfall coming from Sky next season, probably nobody would be more pleased to see well over 20,000 at Ewood on Thursday than John Williams and the Board. It would be a pointer for how to price next season and good evidence for the football attendance committee of the Premiership John Williams is a member of.

It is quite a while since I felt such anticipation and excitement about Rovers. It may all go flat but if Benni and Chris are shaping up in training the way Mark Hughes and the boys want them to then we could be going into that run of tough games starting in mid October with one heck of a potent front line- and one which the opposition don't know too much about.

Following the banning and fining of Ashley Col's agent, the FA have reportedly asked UEFA to go after Zihavi for his role in the affair. Spurs alomost ended up playing with themselves when they were drawn against Slavia Prague! The Guardian on the unravelling of ENIC's crazy football empire and the prospects for greater limitations on ownership. Have to say the ENIC plan was singularly dumb. I feel sorry for Vicenza which seemed a nice club in the sleazy Italian football world.