I have just seen the aerial photographs of some of the towns on the Western side of Sumatra. They are totally devastated with virtually no sign of life. Aceh Province had a population of over 1 million, nearly all living on the coasts. The figure of 80,000 dead in Aceh maybe an underestimate.

The death toll is now 68,000 but I suspect it will rise a lot more. The deaths of Western Tourists in Thailand seems to be being reported in proportion to the calamity which has affected so many other people which is a more responsible approach by the media than would normally be the case. However, it seems likely now that there will be at least 2,000 casualties from the Scandanavian countries and that there are hundreds of Germans, Czechs and Americans missing. It seems astonishing that so few British citizens have been lost. Many of the islands off the coast of Sumatra and some of the towns on Sumatra are only now being reached. I fear the numbers of casualties will rise dramatically. Similarly some of India's Nicobar and Andeman islands are still being contacted. I suspect that the military junta in Burma are playing down the reality of what has happened there. The loss of the train in Sri Lanka makes that the world's worst rail disaster- more than double the number of casualties of the previous worst rail disaster when a typhoon blew a train off a bridge in India in 1981. I am so pleased that Jan Egelund of the UN did use the word "stingy" in responding to the financial efforts by the west. Even now, after more than doubling the aid offered, the USA is still only offering the same amount as Australia- a country with less than 10% of the USA's population. There are reports coming out that the Thai authorities were aware of the tsunami risk before it hit but the local officials did not want to worry the tourists. Certainly it seems astonishing that there are few reports of alarms being raised when the sea retreated from the beaches and there were still several minutes available to evacuate. Putting the strength of the earthquake into context. The average vertical land displacement along the fault is 10 meters along a 1,000km line with local displacements of up to 30 meters. The Earth wobbled slightly on its axis such was the force and it is expected that satelites will show the islands off the coast of Sumatra have moved closer to the mainland and that the sea level will have permanently changed on the coast of Sumatra- several harbours are now dry. With all that force, it is not surprising the shock waves in the water travelled so far. I wonder how many people who have reproductions of the famous Japanese wood cut "The Great Wave" realise that it is a representation of the tsunami that killed 26,000 in Japan at the end of the last century? Some of the pictures of the tsunami as it hit Phuket are so redolent of that wood cut. One last point, whilst there is huge regret that there was no tsunami monitoring in the Indian Ocean (unlike in the Pacific), does anyone know if there is tsunami monitoring in the Atlantic? After all the last Atlantic tsunami was only 80 years (on the Grand Banks of Canada- the previous Indian Ocean tsunami was 160 years ago) and there are under water fault lines round Iceland where the water is shallow enough to trigger a tsunami plus the better known risks which exist in the Canaries.

No -For many years it was the biggest crowd I had been in.

It will be a huge blow if we fail to keep our unbeaten run going against a Villa side on a losing streak with key players out of form or injured. Villa Park has been a happy hunting ground for the Rovers but twice in recent seasons we have gone there in not dissimilar circumstances to now (us looking OK, them not) and lost: 0-2 just after promotion in 2001 and 0-3 in a deluge the season before last after we had stuffed them 4-1 at Villa in the Cup. Fortunately we don't have Souness around to completely under motivate the players for an on paper "easier" fixture. However, Villa defended well enough against Man U last night to make me fear our lack of quality up front will cost us. Another 0-0.

Without looking up the record books, we won 1-0 at Bolton twice in the '70s. Once in front of 33,010 at Burnden in 73/4 when Faz headed the winner the season Bolton went up from the Third Division. I believe the Sheffield derby was played at Bramall Lane the same night so nearly 80,000 people watched two Third Division games that night! I am pretty certain we then did them 1-0 at Burnden again in the second division the season before Bolton got promoted back to the old first division. We also beat them 2-1 at Burnden in the early '80s and of course there was the magnificent 4-1 the season we both went up- Matty's feint before dinking his goal in was one of my favourite all time Rovers' goals! Floppy was right in that the Rovers hadn't beaten Bolton away in the top flight for 40 years--- before yesterday.

Four points, three places and a superior goal difference above 18th is a very happy place to be compared with what we were all fearing after the 0-4 at Chelsea. (Nice to see Liverpool are a goal up against Southampton). A great achievement at Bolton considering Brad was not needed for any heroics. Bolton must be relieved that the bottom four are so poor that they can lose six on the trot (ho ho) and still not be in any real danger.

Fife Rover makes some excellent points about Hartson. He has managed to placate my opposition to signing him but I still do not think it will happen. Back to Savage- I hope we do get him and I suspect we will. We will probably see that the regular success with which we obtained our transfer targets in Souness' time was as much due to the astute work by John Williams and Tom Finn as it was down to Souey and I expect they will be forming a formidable combo with Mark Hughes. It will also be nice to notch another one against the Brum mob- they probably over paid for Dunn, got rooked for Tiny and Yorke and only Johnson was a false move in that we did not get a decent transfer fee for him (Souness was so keen to ship out a player he was convinced would never make it). Their behaviour in bidding for Dickov shows what a cheap bunch Brum are. I maybe wrong (and another injury to a barcode midfielder might change the situation) but Souness seems to have far more need of defenders and a Shearer replacement than he does in central midfield- I don't think Ferguson is going to the North East. In fact, I struggle to see any club which realistically has the £5m necessary to make a convincing bid (not that we should sell at anything less than £9m+ in my opinion) actually having a need for Ferguson. At this stage, none of Boro, Everton, Liverpool, Man U, Villa, Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal seem obvious destinations and would he go to Brum, Charlton, Pompey or Southampton even if they found the cash? Rangers can carry on whistling- they are still broke although £54m less broke than they were. However, there might be a transfer merry go round starting and were Chelsea to take Gerrard for instance, I would be worried where Liverpool would look for his replacement. As it is, I can see Ferguson/Savage rapidly becoming one of the best midfield pairings in the Prem and I am very excited by the prospect. Savage has a great all round game as well as a fantastic engine and is no mean dead kick exponent either. Even without any other additions, he could be the signing to turn our season into an upwards progression. Savage is a vastly superior player and competitor to Flitcroft and it will crystalise the place pressure on Emerton, Thompson, Reid and Pedersen to secure the two remaining midfield positions which will be no bad thing.

Seen the Robert free kick- yes it was brilliantly taken but it was a stupid one to give away and the body language of the Rovers preparing to defend it was panic and "we don't fancy this". In the end Robert's execution was so good, I don't think there was actually that much at fault with our defending of it apart from giving the opponents reason for optimism by the way we went about it. You see calm organisation when teams like Chelsea prepare to defend dangerous free kicks. Why do I mention this? Bolton have been/are the Prem's set piece masters- that's where their goals have been coming from. This is a local derby and we have players at the back who can be clumsy so dangerous free kicks are going to be given away. Bit of a worry. Here's hoping Sparky gets the lads to defend up the field and has had his video system working overtime on Big Sam's set pieces. Unfortunately, being without Reid could be a big miss for the Rovers (and I did not think I would ever be able to write that).

"Rovers have only won one in the last eight. If we cannot stop our losing run against this lot, I can't see when we ever will" - A Trotter/ Big Sam Something's going to give but it is going to need heroics of the highest order if its our winless run which ends. Just feel this has a 0-0 bore draw written all over it.

What a curious non-football day. Went happily down to the five screens Ryans Bar to watch the game to be told the the bar manager had not bothered to renew the Arab TV subscription so there was only a choice of the Mancs or Everton. Back to the appartment and got stuck in the lift! Fortunately the engineer came- eventually. Even my stepson who is in London at the moment decided to take in Mansfield v Cambridge (he refuses to say why!) but that got iced off. To the game- Laurent Robert's name features prominently in both goals, shame Souey was not sufficiently angry to completely freeze the transfer-wanting Frenchman out of the bar codes' squad. According to the BBC, Newcastle had 55% of the possession- unusual for the Rovers to conceed so much at Ewood. An even stranger statistic is that Rovers had over 20 shots to Newcastle's 5. (what do they do in training? as Bob F would ask) ...and it seems that Flitty's lifelong weakness for getting his head up where it shouldn't be when shooting saw an excellent 88th minute chance fizz into Row Z... again... The draw is not a bad result- another point further away from a relegation position and the odd goal or two goal difference detereoration for three of the four fellow travellers in trouble (hopefully Liverpool will continue to do the biz at the Hawthorns- they are leading 0-1) Finally great to see a 29,000+ crowd. Hope they all enjoyed the game.

Most of Souness interview is very fair and well balanced. I just choked on the bit about Dickov and Matteo and his assessment of the current squad. To be fair, Hughes has got the Souness inheritance defending well now.

My worry exactly: Gareth Jorkaeff Taffy Spector Llewellyn Mokoena Bryn Nelsen even Barry John Johnson promoted from the reserves!

When Souness came to Rovers, his career was on the scrap heap and he was joining a club which Brian Kidd had turned from a good mid table Prem side into a moribund bottom half Div 1 side with essentially the same players. Souness had to work his way back up knowing there was no room for failure... for his career or the Rovers, and he did so magnificently. However, success bred a resurgent paranoid ego, and a failure to understand that bully boy tactics kicking the Kidd dawdlers would not work with UEFA competitors. That combined with training which was out of the ark, poor fitness levels and a lack of tactical finesse to say the least and we all know what happened to Rovers. In comes Fat Freddie and the Souness rationale goes something along the lines of.... "I was held back by a small club mentality at Rovers" "I was a great success for them and now I get the big club I deserve" "All I need is the right transfer budget!" Allied to being told by the media and Fat Freddie "Newcastle went soft under Sir Bobby- it needs sorting out" which gives him an open invitation to be a mindless bully from day one. He has no further ambition now as he has said himself that all the other top jobs are closed to him though how he fantasises he was "half way" to getting the Chelsea job is beyond me... Those who believed Souness would give the bar codes three good years before going off the rails are wrong in my estimation. Newcastle have bought a ready made off-the-rails Souness. I doubt Souness even realises that behind the scenes, the Rovers are light years ahead in professionalism compared with Newcastle. Its the only way we can compete effectively with a club which has more than double our revenue. ...and on Boxing Day, I expect we are going to show how effectively we can compete.

I disagree- for the first time I've seen them this season, the Rovers had stopped giving the ball away stupidly and cheaply PLUS we were defending effectively from front to back. The first two involvements by Gally when he came on were a poor touch and a bad pass- suppose either of those had lead to an Everton goal... what would have been levelled against Hughes then? At this stage of the season better to bank the one point against one of the tightest defences around and climb up to 16th. The expansive playing MGP type of stuff can come after we've won a couple more games and put some real daylight between ourselves and 18th.

Interesting match report. Makes the point that Everton changed their formation, Rovers didn't and very nearly won. However, I agree with RB that bringing Gallagher on a bit earlier for the ineffective Bothroyd would have been a good move. The report quite rightly slags off the residents around Ewood. Yet again, Blackburn showing that it neither wants nor deserves a Premier League football team.

Whether Shearer has thumped Bellamy once twice or three times or kicked Carr in the head, the well-behaved boys of Newcastle have been misbehaving themselves at the Ritz in London as Souness has admitted in a bizarrly worded statement this evening. So much for Souness introducing discipline to the bar codes. It is also worth noting that whereas Souness inherited a leaky defence from Sir Bobby, it has carried on leaking at an increasing rate and their cards record on the field has steadilly worsened. Hughes inherited an even leakier defence from Souness but after those two 0-4s and the 3-3 has tightened up to the extent that we have let in one goal in the last four games. Our card count hasn't got any better though and at least the lads had a colourful Christmas party! So it seems Hughes is doing a better job of a Rovers squad stripped of skill and character than Souness is doing with a Newcastle squad full of expensively signed stars and more "characters" than in Strangeways. So to Boxing Day and a game that I am only worried about in terms of how great a blow it will be if we fail to win. If we bring the level of concentration and determination we showed against Everton- particularly second half when we cut out the few sloppy balls we were guilty of in the first- we should win this one. Surely a crowd of 28,000+ should be at Ewood for this emotive set of reunions and here's hoping Ewood's biggest gate will witness a riproaring victory for the Rovers. I am going for 4-2 if Shearer plays, 3-0 if not.

Sorry but the former held a grudge against him seemingly because he snubbed his mascot child. As for the latter, she only pops up when it suits her to bait fellow MB members. Far from close knowledge in my book. More like attention seekers. Ok I don't know for sure but... jim is a jouno who from time to time fed us more about Souness than was then currently known and pretty well all of it turned out depressingly accurate, Jan has a position in the business world which has granted her access to the inner workings of the "upper echelons" of football north and south of the border and again she hasn't been proved wrong very often no matter how much she might irritate certain people. My hope that there are no morons hanging around to give Souness a rough time before Newcastle get on the pitch. Disdainful silence has got to be the best way of pricking his ego.

That was a pretty dumb post Mr K

15 points after 18 so we have avoided that bogey! The reason for the passion against Souey is the lover spurned syndrome. Yes Souness came to us when both the Rovers and him were in a trough and he massively over-achieved: promotion Worthy Cup two entries to the UEFA (cannot call them campaigns) 2-0 and 5-0 But he was also an egotistical bullying arrogant fool who has no time for modern tactics or fitness methods. At some point the Souness Dr Jekyll turned into Mr Hyde for all of us- two with perhaps closer knowledge of him (Jim 'n Jan) were against him from the start- but for the rest of us we turned from being passionate supporters to passionate detractors at some point realising the negatives were now hugely outweighing any residual positives. For those who stayed loyal to the end came the final kick in the pants when he took Fat Freddie's wodge to join a "massive" club despite being at best fifth chojce in the most amateurly conducted Premiership management recruitment witnessed for some seasons. Fat Freddie the Wrexham kicker, and Souness the Yorke kicker deserve each other. Souness joins Gordon Lee, Dick Dinnis, Shearer and Dalglish in the list of those who won honours at the Rovers but not at Newcastle.

The advert outside the bar gave our game and the Mancs game- another game was being shown (the arab channels always carry a different game from Channel+) and I had assumed that was it. Header?!? Come on the ball was on the ground and Todd dived across Cahill's midriff to check him. He "bought" the card as they say because we were completely open if he hadn't stopped Cahill. That was certainly how the Sky commentators read it. You're talking about a different incident as Todd's arms were not being used for the body check. Not surprised there were only 17,000 Rovers fans- on TV, large areas of the Blackburn End looked empty

Just watched it right the way through in the Scots bar- interestingly, nobody was watching the Mancs being shown at trhe other end of the bar. So what do we take from this? - we more than matched Everton who were at full strength and played as well as they normally do and have won a lot more than 50% of their games thus far. - in the first half five midfield passes were given away setting up Everton attacks, in the second half those sloppy balls were no longer being given away. - Mike Halsey is not a Premier class ref despite being a likeable character: there were 15 seriously bad decisions which could have changed the result - Everton's free kick in the second half wasn't, Dickov's penalty was; other reffing bloopers were his failure to make several bookings and if Todd's rugby/american football full length diving body check on Cahill wasn't deserving of a red card.... - We had 13 set pieces in the Everton half, twelve were played so badly by the Rovers that they were complete and utter disgraces. - Neill, Reid, Ferguson looked class and Emerton is capable of ripping teams apart if only he can get rid of his Souness-induced fear of taking the opposition on. - Gallagher was carelessly off side for the original shot (fool) so cost himself the goal. All credit to Sparky- he came through the trial by Moyes very well indeed. The Rovers looked the part everywhere except upfront where a collective fear seemed to have siezed the team until the last five minutes. There were four great shooting chances in the first ten minutes and all of them were passed away- literally. Bothroyd still does not convince me and the day Emerton finds his crossing boots we will stick five past someone. However, I have changed my mind about signing priorities and a striker has gone on the letter to Father Christmas. Make no mistake- this was a good point earned, Everton are not about to self-destruct and we are steadily going in the right direction. More so than Norwich, Southampton and West Brom...

If as many posters have been asserting, the Rovers squad is not that much different from Everton's, this is going to be a massive test of Mark Hughes' skill, tactical awareness and man management. I still don't think we will get anything out of this game but I will be fascinated to read how it went. PS Is it being shown on any foreign channels- the web sites I usually use to check these things seem to be down at the moment. PPS Got my new keyboard so I can do , and . again!

Ronnie Clayton interviewed by Everton.

Blackburn Rovers wins draws Everton wins League 53 27 52 FA Cup 2 1 7 Other 0 0 2 Total 55 28 61 A bit of history shows we are shading it in the league- by one! Unfortunately the results at Ewood in the last 5 are: W L W L W - all pointing to a L on Saturday

Here are some answers from my Everton-supporting step son pieced together from our conversations: Why oh why are you a Toffee? "Blue was my favourite colour and when I came to England from the Soviet Union aged 9 I was desperate to see English football on the television. The first game I saw was Everton at Goodison and I thought they looked really smart." You were lucky they weren't showing Oldham: "No comment!" You must have been an oddity supporting Everton at Eton: "most of the boys didn't follow any football team so I was a bit different- in the end many of my friends started following Everton because of my influence." How is the nose bleed? "very nice thank you! This is how you must have felt back in the early '90s when Rovers emerged." Will it continue to the end of the season and automatic champions League qualification? "We'll be suffering altitude sickness never mind the loss of blood! A lot depends on avoiding injuries and suspensions but we have some good youngsters coming through who could probably rise to the occasion. I am very confident of European qualification as we are now nine points ahead of 7th place and there has to be a big doubt about the ability of any of the chasing clubs overtaking us for fourth; that is assuming Arsenal and United are good enough to go 2nd or 3rd! At least nobody is talking about us winning the Premiership!" We had an obnoxious Scottish manager who upset people and couldn't change- you have one who did the same but has created the tightest team spirit in British football: what is Moyes' secret? "Moyes is just brilliant. He is tough personally and all the players respect him for that but he is also very intelligent and extremely good at thinking a game through. Nobody has broken our 4-1-4-1 system yet and it is something the players know works and uses their strengths. I actually like Souness a lot- he is always good for a quote and he did a fantastic job for you because in 1999 you were going nowhere in Division 1. But there is no doubt that Moyes is on a different level from Souness in terms of tactics management and motivation." Which players should we be worried about when we play you? "All of them! Everton are flying!!!!And I cannot wait for next week, I have so much confidence in my team at the moment. Nigel martin is in the best for he has ever been in; our full backs are solid; Stubbs and especially Weir are outstanding and must be the best centre back pairing in the League; Gravesen and carsely stop anyone else from controlling the midfield no matter who they are playing against; Cahill Osman and Kilbane are a lot more creative than they are being given credit for whilst Bent is fantastic- you were mad to get rid of him! Don't forget big Duncan Ferguson- he has won us several points and is the most dangerous and intimidating substitute in the Premiership." What are your weaknesses? "We have no individual stars now Rooney has left us and the team works for each other so well that if one player is not having a good day he gets covered by the others and that is creating confidence right through the side. I used to think Pistone was weak but he doing well. Hibbert is vulnerable to pace and strength so if Emerton is on song we might have some problems there." What do you think of Rovers this season? "I really expected you to do well and be challenging for Europe. I think you were very unlucky with those early games against Southampton and United and you play some good football when I see you on television. Your defence is a bit of a joke at times and that has been the problem. I like Ferguson and Dikov and Tugay is so cool." Will we go down? "Don't think so." What will the score be? "Everton should win."