I believe the number now is all but 15,000 season ticket holders. I hope that last night was a function of: 1) Birmingham at home again ten days from now in a Premiership game which for ST holders is "free" ie nothing extra to pay. 2) Birmingham home being a prospect of a game at best after two sub-standard Rovers' efforts. 3) Everyone saving up their mid-week night out passes for next Thursday when the club really needs another 20,000+ crowd on to cheer the lads forward and make the difference. For what its worth, I am told by friends in Thessaloniki that every man and his dog in Larissa are scraping the readies together to be at Ewood next week and we can expect a huge outpouring of Greek national pride as every Greek waiter in the UK is trying to get the night off to be there as well! 4) It was 24 degrees and balmy here last night with everyone sat outside their front doors in shirtsleeves chatting to the neighbours. In Blackburn it wasn't.

Hughes on Dunn

Yesterday Arsenal released a staggeringly fabulous set of financial results which must have sent waves through the football world and rattled Man U, Liverpool and above all, Abramovic (Chelsea are just an appendage now). It clearly is a case of the tortoise and the hare- Arsenal have endured three relatively barren years whilst rebuilding in every sense and have re-emerged under the same corporate and managerial control as a powerhouse it is difficult to see anybody stopping in the foreseeable future. This analysis of Man U by the Arsenal Supporters' Trust shows again how weak Man U are in the longer term. Thankfully the Rovers are well-managed and in the hands of a Trust that can and will only sell when all the boxes are ticked.

The way Pompey play, this is a fixture Benni should thrive in. Any sign of a Pompey preview?

I think speeedie has made some excellent points. I find Benni one of the most likeable personalities in modern football- the guy just tells it as he sees it in a very engaging way (even when he wanted to jump ship) and no doubt if that impression is true to life it explains why he is so popular with the players. Will be interesting to see how Roque and Benni click on Thursday. I think they have the potential to be the best Rovers forward partnership since the SAS (and we know those two didn't get on) and I think it is only a matter of time before they combine to give some unfortunate defence an absolute thrashing. Incidentally, Derbs would have got no change whatsoever out of Chelsea on Saturday. Roque is probably just about as quick as Matty and the only runs he got with the ball were on the touchline.

There's a very readable piece on the official site of Brad paying tribute to what Sparky is achieving.

Article about Benni from a Chelsea perspective- it says a lot of nice things about rovers as well.

Rovers promoting the game to the Pompey fans.

Here's hoping Mark Hughes celebrates the third anniversary of his appointment in the style he will want to- a win at Chelsea. I was in the Yes camp and now he is Yes- the first and only choice! He is that good.

I watched Slovakia beat France in a friendly recently and they were a tidy outfit. Remarkable result for Wales- didn't Slovakia win 5-0 in Cardiff recently?

That is true- 13/17 October is an international break as is 17/21 November so looks like (hopefully) nicko's chums got it wrong. Just hope Air NZ do the decent and give him a full length flat bed otherwise he's going to be cream crackered when he gets back.

If neither South Africa nor Samba's Congo go to the African Nations, that is a fantastic afternoon for the Rovers. Keeping fingers crossed that this is the outcome!

Glazers quick to rebuff the independent supporters' claims.

The Independent Man U Supporters' Trust has calculated that the cost of servicing the Glazer debt has now soared to £100m per year.

Yes I do. It is no different from Government doing the same with tobacco for which the cold facts are: - removes ten years' high quality of life ON AVERAGE from every user - will kill more people in the next twenty years than were killed by the Second World War and Stalin combined I would far rather have Government raking the profits than the Taliban, Yardies, UDA, IRA, Mafia and street gangs making billions. I want to see a 10% drop (at least) in most other forms of crime because there are no longer desperate people trying to find cash to pay criminals. I want to see insurance premiums go down. I do not want to see drug users in jail because it is completely bonkers putting them there. Some of the money raised by could be used to fund serious rehabilitation and prevention programmes rather than the weedy efforts at present by a dedicated but vastly overwhelmed and underfunded group of people in the field. Criminalisation of drugs is zero deterrent, be it zero tolerance, cold turkey or confusion. The scenario of Government taking the profits would be a huge improvement.

That is so obviously a para- military action. Section 6 of this report gives an insight into the particular issues in Northern Ireland My case is simple- Human beings have been altering their states of consciousness since the dawn of time. Whether it is legal (alcohol) or illegal ("drugs"), it seems to be a basic human need which different individuals deal with in different ways. Some of the greatest achievements of humanity have been conceived and realised by individuals under the influence of hallucigens. They are all harmful to health to a greater or lesser degree. There is a random divide between what is societally acceptable and not and what is illegal or not. 90% of all schizophrenics are tobacco users for instance. Prohibition of alcohol in the States was a dismal failure. Prohibition of drugs is causing far greater human misery and misallocation of resources (from funding the Taliban to hoodlums operating in gangs from Belfast to Palermo to Tirana etc. to private armies in Colombia) than other means and ways of attempting to regulate and moderate drug "abuse".

I've not looked it up but - when Duff moved to Chelsea it was widely reported the contract was for £75k per week. - similarly when he moved to Newcastle it was widely reported the new contract there was worth £55kper week - when Bellamy moved from Rovers to Liverpool, again there was a lot of reports he had been offered £60K to stay at Ewood and had taken £40k at Anfield. I must admit it had not ocurred to me that Liverpool's major signing that summer would not be on top rung except for Gerrard but it does make sense that Liverpool should pay loyalty bonuses within their structure so other long serving internationals get significantly more to retain their services. Having said that, it re-enforces what I suggested that Liverpool probably offered Duff as a new boy the same as Bellamy: £40K per week. Obviously this summer, the Liverpool wage structure will have changed considerably as have several other clubs'. Hence John Williams' comments yesterday about wages going up in a new spiral. In this, I have to say that West Ham are the major culprits and the way the Eggman came out saying West Ham have tried to sign British talent only re-enforced the points John Williams was making.

As you are a lecturer you will be used to getting references. Put wage structre and Liverpool FC into Google and you immediately see they missed out on Figo and Neill to name but two because they were unwilling to disrupt their wage structure. And to repeat, the issue about Duff moving was that Newcastle matched all Chelsea and Duff's contractual transfer terms and Liverpool were not willing to do. Newcastle only paid £5m to Chelsea but the deal probably cost them the thick end of £10m which has shot Duff into the ten richest football players in the UK. We do not know whether Duff rejectyed Rovers when he moved from Chelsea but we were simply not at the races when Newcastle were willing to do that sort of deal. Let's see what BFS's fitness regime achieves if Duff comes back and stays injury free. Thankfully Dunn has come back and stayed injury free (touches wood) and is showing what a fabulous midfielder he really is. If Reid does the same and MGP finds his best, we will have one of the best midfields in the Premiership by Christmas.

Exactly tcj, hit the nail on the head with the comment about regular football. Mourinho signed three of the best wingers around (SWP, Robben and Duff) yet was starting some games with not a single conventional winger on the pitch. That would make anybody get upset- in fact I remember Duffer at Chelsea saying "all I want to do is play football". Perhaps I should have encouraged bazza to carry on digging his hole? It is all an academic conversation because of Duff's wages- when he moved to Newcastle, he went from £75K a week to £55K a week at a time Liverpool were only paying £40K max (except for Gerrard). Newcastle also coughed up for a lot of contractual elements effectively buying Duffer out of his Chelsea contract so whilst Chelsea only received £5m for him, they had nothing to pay in severing his contract. Liverpool were not interested in doing that and to be honest, Chelsea were probably more comfortable with Duffer being at Newcastle than having Liverpool solve their left wing problem.

I haven't heard criticism of Duff's training before- in fact I remember him being quoted at both Rovers and Chelsea saying that he loved the training. And the badge kissing argument used for supporting a general character assasination is a bit wet as well. In fact bazza, I'd stop digging the hole you've dropped yourself into. For me, the key differences between Dunn coming home and Duff coming back are: - they both might have lost some pace but loss of pace is far more critical to a winger of Duff's style than to a central midfielder; Dunn used to be an option out wide for Rovers but I doubt Sparky would use him there now - Duff is in the list of the richest footballers with a personal wealth of around £10m. Unless he is turning philanthropic as he moves into what should be his peak playing and earning years, Duffer is way outside our wage structure whereas at least the porn boys knew how to keep a grip on what they paid their players at BIG CLUB- most of the time. It will be another year to 18 months before Duffer could remotely come onto the radar of a club with Rovers' current means and if Duff shows that he is back to something like form and fitness he will get offered a lucrative extension at St James.

Faz- Dunn for England?

As from last Tuesday, Reid is back in full training but no risks are being taken. That will give him the best part of three weeks from start of training (again) to the Chelsea game which is no match to come back into so I guess we will see him on the bench at least at Larissa. The good news about that line-up is the returns of Zura, Henchoz and Peter so only poor old Bruno Berner is currently completely out of contention for a place.

On the TV, the drum sounded different and less obtrusive. Has he changed kit? Much better.

Even as someone who desperately wanted Dunn to come back, I am being pleasantly surprised by his current form. He is heading back towards England contention.

The Times economics spokesman advocates dropping the war on drugs