Must confess I am now getting concerned about the Savage transfer. The Brum directors by all accounts are hard uncompromising characters who would have no problem forcing Savage to rot out of the team until he asked for peace with them. Bruce must know that this is personal- Savage much prefers Hughes as a manager to himself. Having been colleagues at Man U this must hurt a lot. It is going to need an enormous amount of skill on the part of the Rovers team- board, JW and MH- to unpick the deadlock on this one.

If you read the rule change thread, you will see that the Coca Cola Cup Final will be experimenting with a microchipped football and sensors all round the goal frames.

Didn't the Mancs benefit from another 93rd minute handball goal in the month they played us. I think on that occasion, Everton suffered. Correction, as Radagast has pointed out below- it was Bolton who suffered Anyway, so far as the Premiership is concerned, it pretty well became a one horse race tonight with Chelsea winning and the Mancs "drawing" and Arsenal also only getting one point. Have to say, the action wasn't even fast when Carroll clawed the ball back from out of his net- it was a yard not a foot over. That linesman bottled the decision pure and simple. As it is the darling of the media folks, Spuds, who have suffered this time, perhaps the deeply suspect refereeing which the Mancs get the benefit of will get some proper exposure this time. The headline in Skysports would have equivocated if Rovers had been on the wrong end of that decision.

Percy, agree with you 100% on that post. I was in the let Todd rot for refusing the bench against Leeds camp but obviously things were horribly wrong at the end of the Souness time. Hughes was right to select from the pros available to him and all credit to both Todd and the new management team for how it is working out.

Swap Savage for Flitcroft and you have the line-up I thought of including subs.

Bit behind there SG194. They put that price on him before Christmas when they were also saying he wasn't for sale!

I know I was watching it on tele but I thought the game was quite entertaining and that Rovers gave it a real go in the first half. There have been some awful Prem games this year but that wasn't one of them. Sparky did have the team playing very entertainingly after he arrived: the 2-2 v Liverpool and 3-3 v Brum for instance but in case anyone has noticed that with the excitement, the goals against have disappeared as well. I hope it is a phase in the rebuilding. The crowd was utterly bad on what is traditionally one of the top attendance days of the season- clearly there are big societal changes at work as attendances were pretty poor everywhere yesterday. Perhaps the New Year sales were to blame? However, Jan has a good point about the lack of wins and I guess the failure to grab the winner against Newcastle had quite an influence on the occasional supporters who came on Boxing Day.

Cardiff are a very ordinary side struggling at the wrong end of the second division but so were we when King Kenny brought the mighty Liverpool to Ewood. My words before Bournemouth came to Ewood were horribly prophetic- With so many Prem clubs playing lower division opposition, there is bound to be at least one casualty and it could well be us. Ditto this tie. However, a draw gets us a replay this time rather the chance to demonstrate our ability to lose a penalty shoot out. 1-1 in a right scrap in which MGP and other recent signings put in appearances. So what's the first team now, boss?

Savage dropped, Bruce bleating.

Still showing the lapses though, they had a fair shout for a penalty eh? He definitely IS playing better than in the latter stages of Souness era though. and so did we when nissa was DRAGGED TO THE GROUND and dumped on his arse big time in the 2nd half ....it was the most blatent penalty we have NEVER been given. Watching the Sky coverage, the wrestling to the ground of Nissa was an absolutely blatant penalty but I watched the movement of the players in the box and neither Wiley nor the linesman would have had the clear view the camera in the JW gantry got. Lucas Neill did not get a touch on the ball at the other end so that should have been a penalty as well but again from Wiley's perspective, Neill would have been seen to get extremely close to the ball (he only missed it by a fraction) and the impact of the challenge caused the ball to deviate as though Neill had got a touch on it. I guess if Wiley had given one penalty, he would have given the other as well. The press has been very positive about the Rovers but very negative about the size of the Ewood crowd.

Great result, delighted a got my prediction hopelessly wrong and was pretty astonished at how extremely ordinary Charlton looked. Shame Aston Villa were so utterly inept at Palace (it was showing on the adjacent screen)- how did we lose to that shower? Watched ther game live and was impressed all round- nobody had a bad game; in fact they all played really well. Dickov showed far more to his game than those who decry him are willing to admit and Stead IS class. I know he missed controlling three very difficult through balls in great positions but the lad kept getting there which is all credit to him. My only gripe was not so much the forward interplay (although it did not work as well when Gally came on) but the passes in the final third. We are keeping posession well but at the cost of not playing any inspired defence splitting balls. I can certainly think of at least three occasions when the failure to pass to players who had created space cost us opportunities to strike on goal. I don't knows when our approach play will be remedied but it was interesting to read how Mourinho prepared Porto for the Champions League Final. To quote from Ricard Williams' thought provoking piece on Mourinho in the Guardian today: "After Porto's victory over Monaco in the European Cup final, he was asked how he had prepared the team for the encounter. To a standard question he produced a response that was neither banal or evasive but provided a genuine insight. "On Friday we practised defending," he said. "On Saturday we practised attacking. On Sunday we practised the transition from attack to defence. On Monday we practised the transition from defence to attack. And on Tuesday we practised set-pieces." "Those who like to make the comparison between Mourinho and Brian Clough might care to reflect on the training routine that enabled Old Big 'Ead to win the European Cup twice with a club of roughly Porto's size. Cloughie would send his Nottingham Forest players for a walk beside the Trent, occasionally joining them - with his dog - for a game of eight-a-side on a municipal pitch. And that, from Monday to Friday, was more or less that. " One sight which gladdened me was Mark Bowen eagerly talking to a listening Mark Hughes. No more Souness storming around his technical area with a dumb struck Dean Saunders looking gormless stood motionless next to the subs bench.

The team here in Malta has now raised over $3m in cash plus I don't know how much in gifts of goods and equipment. All done by TV appeals, an impromptu equivalent of Live Aid and an Arts Auction. We avoided pushing tins in front of people and instead used the media effectively. The Government has already dispatched a fully equipped medical and civil rescue unit to Sri Lanka.

Charlton did the double over us last season and I fear they are going to do it again. Prior to their defeat to Arsenal, they had won four on the bounce. I think they will have too much quality for us and our mis-firing front line will not find a way through often enough. Rovers 1 Charlton 3 and back in the mire.

As his two name sakes have just scored for Fulham and Chelsea, I am rather relieved that Cole is out injured for Villa today. Samuel and McCann are back in the starting line up for them though.

Villa stars back for Rovers game. Feeling less confident now that Samuel, Delaney and McCann will be starting for Villa.

Back yards are interesting concepts. Aceh is as close to Canberra as Mt St Helens is to London.

Souness is splashing FF's dosh in a big way. After Babaryaro (undisclosed but the guy is on contract so unlikely to be less than £2m), he has clinched Boumsong for £8m. Thankfully McLeish watched Newcastle ands didn't fancy taking of the existing bar codes in part exchange so cash it is. The Newcastle war chest is variously reported to be £10m or £20m. If the former, Souey has to start selling to buy any more. If the latter, he is not going to be able to buy a decent forward and Fergie with what is left. He is rumoured to have offered £5m for Morientes. The other good news is Rangers now need a central defender (Amo?). Presumably the Ibrox mob can now afford to offer the rumoured £7.5m for Fergie which would set a price hurdle that Souness is unlikely to jump.

This is the BBC take on the story of Brum's complaint. I wonder whether Rovers should refer Birmingham's approaches to David Dunn if Brum actually do go down the road of filing a formal complaint? After all, one of our insiders reported that Dunn had received a Birmingham City shirt from Steve Bruce a long time before the transfer window opened and before Dunn rejected the improved contract terms from Rovers. Personally, I am a little puzzled as to why Savage has suddenly become so keen to get out of St Andrews. Usually in these circumstances, there is an element of pushing as well as the disgruntled employee walking. Nothing has happened yet to alter the suppositions in my previous post!

These arguments are unbelievably stupid. Several of those Governments have made massive military sacrifices in the military consequences to 9/11 and have troups in Afghanistan or in other theatres freeing up US troups to go to Baghdad. A not insignificant number of the 9/11 dead were non-US, non-first world citizens. The per capita income in the USA is about 100 times greater than that of Bangladesh and Indonesia and 10 times that of Thailand and India. Why oh why would the poorest on earth be putting money into trying to restore the property of Floridians? If we say OK, we only look after our "own", in case you haven't noticed, at least twice as many "Westerners" will have perished in these tsunamis than died in 9/11. Everywhere is our backyard. I thought America learnt that on 9/11.

On the field, Savage is being the model professional- if you doubt that, look at how he has played in the current run of four Brum successive victories. Off the field, I have to admit to feeling a little uneasy about the ethics of the way Rovers/Hughes/Savage have handled all this. Put the boot on the other foot with these sorts of tactics being used against us and we would have a 60 page thread of vitriol by now. The Savage transfer will happen- Brum have already shot their mouths off about it and the transfer window is still a week away (it actually opens on 4 January because of the holidays!). Meanwhilst Savage and his people are quietly upping the anti and reducing the emotional backlash by bringing his ailing parents in North Wales into the issue. He is giving Brum and their supporters a way out without seeming to be humiliated. As for a transfer request, I hope it doesn't come to that because that would only mean Rovers picking up the compensation bill to Brum for Savage breaking the three and a half years remaining on his contract quite apart from the eminently good reasons given above. My guess is that the Rovers Board and CEO have got the measure of their Brum opposite numbers by now as £5.5m for hamstrung Dunn, £1.5m for Tiny Taylor and £250K for dynamo Dwight have all demonstrated. The debts outstanding on those deals alone give the Rovers plenty of chess pieces to move to secure Savage- the headline transfer number will have a lot of people on this board choking but the small print will be extremely advantageous. E.g. there are some extremely soft terms on the last £1m of the Dunn transfer which could get traded. The recent upturn in Rovers' and Brum fortunes must also make both sides less nervous about relegation clauses (especially if we cheer up the blue half of Brum by beating the Villa ) I will be a little surprised if Savage is not signed in time to prevent him from becoming cup-tied. I expect a deal on either 6 January or the morning of 8 January.

Ironically the chances are that those chickens were produced in SE Asia. Isn't there some strong suspicion that the San Andreas fault could cause something similar in California? I'm sure that I saw something on the tele a while back about that. As for PhilipL's 'monitoring' suggestion, monitorings fine and with a little luck a few lives would be saved (if the roads could cope with the traffic that is) but buildings, railways and other man-made structures would still be totally trashed so wouldn't it be much better for people to be encouraged to move to higher ground? The area the Americans are most worried about for tsunamis is where the fault goes under relatively shallow water off the Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington States. If that slips with the force of the Sumatra quake, Seattle would get a phenomenal shaking (the buildings are supposed to be all earthquake proof) and some ten to twenty minutes take hits from 90 ft waves. That's what the west coast of Sumatra has just been through. There is not a lot one can do in those circumstances but there is a great deal that can be done when pressure gauges pick up tsunamis travelling across open ocean. Taking that analogy, Hawaii would have about three hours notice before the tsunami hit and east Asia at least ten hours to evacuate. Coming back to the current catastrophe, tsunami waves only travel relatively small distances across land- a mile or so at most on the level- as they expend much of their energy gaining height as they slow in shallow water and loose most of it in the first hundred yards or so of hitting land- that loss of energy is what makes them so destructive. The Thai beaches could have had a warning of at least an hour after the Hawaii monitoring station accurately measured and located the Sumatra quake. An hour is plenty enough to evacuate people a few hundred yards (don't you think the Thais would have had a mass evacuation plan ready following the Bali bombing?) Being utterly parochial, but given there are about a hundred American casualties, perhaps the Americans wish they'd tried harder to impart the knowledge they had at that critical moment.

So, Philip, you going to put your money where your mouth is and go down there and help out? Or will it take you too long to get off of your soapbox? The amount the Bush administration first offered was less than the equivalent of 10 minutes interest on the US national debt. Yes, I'd call that stingy.

I rem it different Philipl. I cannot be bothered to look it up but I'm sure that 33000 crowd at Burnden was a 3rd Div all time record which was beaten some time later by the Sheff derby. You are absolutely right- it was a 3rd Div record which the Sheffield derby broke in 79/80 with a 49,000 crowd at Hillsborough. I now definitely recall a second 1-0 win at Burnden late in the season in '76- we scored early with a near post header from a defender and held it pretty comfortably denting Bolton's promotion chances. Crowd was about 24,000 for that one.

The PFA are quoting Savage as saying that as soon as Rovers come up with more money, he'll be gone. On the basis that the PFA are the players' Union, I think it can be safely expected that they check their stories with their members before publishing them.

If that were the case, they would have been over-ruling the Manager. If they didn't fire Souness after such a blatant display of lack of confidence in the Manager, Souness would have every right and expectation to win a case of constructive dismissal in court. In short your correction is totally wrong.