A very good performance in the main tonight but hardly the unmitigated triumph that tash is hailing it as. The bottom line is that Chelsea played particularly poorly yet we came away empty handed from a game we should have picked up at least a point from. How crucial will that be at the end of the season? As already mentioned by most, Savage Mokoena and Nelsen were excellent. Also thought Todd and MGP played very well. On the downside the majority were let down by three shocking indidual performances. Neill probably surpassed Bothroyd's Bolton display to earn the "worst ever premiership performance from a Rovers player" award. If you're picked at right back is it really too much to ask that as a bare minimum you'll at least station yourself in that position requiring the opposition to get round you to cause any damage? Emerton was his usual completely anonymous self. I am starting to get ticked off with these two ripping off the fans and the club with their substandard performances week after week, month after month. Why on earth aren't they dropped in an attempt to give them a much needed kick up the jacksi? Thompson was similarly awful and to me hasn't performed to anything like an acceptable standard since returning from injury. On recent evidence he can no longer cut it at this level. Up front I can not understand the adulation for Dickov. I thought he was quite poor tonight. No end of niggling, plenty of giving away unnecessary fouls, plenty of playing for fouls, plenty of getting caught needlessly offside, and an unnecessary yellow card. No sign of him scoring, making the keeper work, or bringing his teammates into play. Not good enough at this level yet apparently still our main hope. So whilst we seem to have potentially struck gold with Nelsen in defence and Mokoena in front of the back that's now 180 minutes of Ewood Premiership action without a goal. Can we score enough to keep us up? Only time will tell.

We won't get humiliated and I can see it being an extremely tight contest. Trouble is, even if we restrict them to "Nil" can't for the life of me see where a goal from us is going to come from. If anyone fancies a bet on us there are some extremely tasty odds on offer. Rovers to win 6/1 Rovers half time/ full time 14/1 !!!!! Emerton to score 1st 14/1 etc.

The short answer to your first question jim is "no." If it had been my own decision, in the absence of a suitable replacement I would have turned Ferguson's initial transfer request down flat and told him he could leave in the summer. In the event the Board were a lot more accomodating to him than I personally would have been in acceding to his request and setting a fee. When Rangers couldn't afford or wouldn't pay the original fee, Ferguson was outrageously taking the wotsit in allegedly refusing to play against Colchester. He was clearly in breach of contract so personally I would have sent him home without pay until such time as he was prepared to make himself available for selection. A couple of weeks should have been enough to have Mrs. Ferguson chewing at her husband's ear. As it is we are substantially weakened in midfield for the rest of the season. Yes we have the money, (£2m balance) but it's a huge gamble, this will seem extremely small beer if we are relegated. And if anything I think today's revelations make us look even weaker than previously if that's possible. Barry Ferguson throws a hissy fit, spits his dummy out so we bend over backwards to rush through a last minute deal so he can have his own way. A price quoted for a player is no longer THE price. And Rangers having flogged us an overpriced player are laughing all the way to the Bank having bought him back on the cheap. The thing is I think a very dangerous precedent has been set here. Now I can't see anything to stop this happening again. Anyone fancying a move only has to pull the same sort of stunt and if we try to resist they will be entitled to ask "If it worked for Barry, why not for me?"

Disgusted with this. On Thursday the asking price was quite rightly a guaranteed £6m and not a penny less. We then maintain up a show of false bravado until predictably in many ways caving in at the last minute giving us no chance to secure a replacement. I really do think John Williams position is untenable following this shambles. How can Ferguson's value depreciate by £1.5m in 4 days? Makes Rangers initial estimation of depreciation on him of £3.5m over 18 months look positively generous. Furthermore a) Players now know they can walk out of Blackburn Rovers at any time with little or no opposition. Other Clubs will know we are a particularly soft touch in the transfer market. Whenever we quote a price for one of our players they know that isn't really the real price. Conversely we always seem to end up paying top dollar for players. ie in the case of nr 31 yr old Savage, useful acquisition though he undoubtedly is. Dunn, Duff, Cole for nothing and Ferguson at a substantial undervaluation. And people wonder why the ground is one third empty.

My thoughts exactly. Signing Savage and the two defenders and retaining Ferguson for the rest of the season at least would have been a reasonable window. Instead of which with two hours 45 mins to go it's looking increasingly likely we're going to lose our best midfielder without a replacement and the real problem positions up front haven't even been addressed.

So what is he doing in Scotland then? Family christening; aye alright. Apparently De Pedro had a bar mitzah a few days ago in Perugia as well... Ferguson badly wants out and is doing all he can to make it happen. Nothing of Ferguson's behaviour over the period of his Rovers life leads me to believe that if he stayed he would give his all for the club and keep us safe from relegation. He's best out the club, why cannot that be seen? Is my interpretation so different from everybody elses? Am I on my own here? The man does not want to be here or he wouldn't be courting Rangers like a frustrated old spinster after her last chance. Am I missing something? What has been wrong with his performances on the pitch for the club? Nothing as far as I can tell. Granted he hasn't been the Keane or Viera we maybe hoped but that's one of those things.

Only ourselves to blame if we don't progress to the last 8.

Tin hats on!

If we are still in dialogue it should extend no further than either "Have you got the £6m yet?" "No" "Please go away" Or "Have you got the £6m yet" "Yes" "I'll start the car" After all the tough talking really hope the Rovers Board aren't going to cave in at the last minute. Either way from a footballing perspective I firmly believe we're better off retaining Ferguson's services until the end of the season. Then having ensured safety if he still wants to go in summer (which I hope he woulden't) we can release him at a time that suits us having secured a suitable replacement.

Just seen Bruce interviewed on Skysports and he was most reticent about his chances of signing Bellamy.

That will roughly be what is in the papers tomorrow or Tuesday - an entirely predictable compromise . So assuming we have already paid Rangers around £4.5m we lose the player and £2.5m immediately reducing to a "mere" £2.1m in the summer. Some compromise. I still think Rovers would have to be crackers to accept such a deal at this stage.

I wouldn't get anywhere near the same satisfaction out of beating Burnley as I would have done 25-30 years ago. We SHOULD hammer them give the respective financial positions of both clubs. As several others have said, not bothered if we never play them again. Certainly never want to face them in the League again as it'll mean we've been relegated at least one rung. Got to be a 4 or 5 nil whupping of Newcastle and Souness at Ewood for me please! I'd LUV IT just LUV IT if I got to see us lift the FA Cup. It's always been my ambition since being a kid. It would be particularly apt to make it a domestic treble on the tenth anniversary of winning the Premiership to underline and rubberstamp Uncle Jack's contribution to the modern domestic game. COME ON ROVERS!

I think possibly on this particular point you should be writing Taggart scripts but it will be certainly be hellishly interesting to see if Boumsong expresses a desire to return to Rangers in 18 months time and they offer £3m!

Just what I alluded to at the end of my post tnr. I really don't think you can extend the conspiracy theory that far. As I recall BF's price was inflated originally by stiff competition from Everton. I will concede that GS seems to have no compunction about paying hugely inflated fees to his beloved Rangers. Mind you at the time Everton supposedly had no money..............maybe they were in on it as well?

Scotty, don't be such a drama queen. Ferguson is still our best midfielder and we are best served by him going nowhere at least until the summer. Personally I want to watch him and Savage in midfield hopefully winning us as many games as possible until the end of the season. (God knows we've seen little enough of that over the last season and a half) IF then he is still adamant he wants to return home AND IF we can bring in a comparable replacement with whatever fee he brings in then so be it. I agree his departure wouldn't be a Duff or Shearer like catastrophe. I still think the hysterical rush to condemn him simply for wanting to return home though is particularly over the top. It reminds me of the Todd situation last year. One minute he was everyone's choice for player of the season, the next he fell out with Souness and according to most he was a complete barsteward who was never any good anyway and who should never wear the blue and white halves again. Souness leaves, Todd is reinstated, more outstanding performances, and all of a sudden around 50% want him appointed as new captain. Back to the present the real villains of the piece are Rangers for trying to rip Blackburn Rovers off by paying less than half back what we paid them for the same player. Did Ferguson have any control over that or was it his deliberate intention we should be shafted? I doubt it. Unless it can be proved otherwise he should be allowed the opportunity to let his performances on the pitch do his talking for him. If given the events of the last couple of weeks he is not professional and his performances subsequently stink then yes he deserves all the stick he can get.

Excellent one indeed. I think given the respective resources at their disposal I think I'd have to go for Howard Kendall to slightly pip King Kenny by the narrowest of margins. My ratings since I started watching in late 1970 1) Kendall 2) Dalglish 3) Lee 4) Furphy 5) Mackay 6) Smith 7) Souness 8) Hodgson 9) Saxton 10) Kidd 11) Harford (but superb coach) 12) Iley (by quite some distance) Caretakers Parkes excellent John Pickering did a fair job Norman Bodell and Richard Dinnis off the bottom end of the scale somewhere.

Any move to try and lump Ball in as part of any deal would seem to be an increasingly desperate move from a club that couldn't afford to keep Ferguson in the first place and who now can't afford to buy him back at a realistic price.

Really can't understand why people think letting Ferguson go for £4.5m and taking a £2m - £3m hit on him would be "good business". (Did we pay £6.5m or £7.5m?) The Board are TALKING a good game and adopting the correct stance by insisting he will not leave for a penny less than £6m. Now let's see them back those words up in practice over the next five days.

On the way back through the car park last night there were a number of Bentleys on display which highlighted the stark disparity between the wage level and talent of the "average" Premiership player. A dire game with neither side deserving to win, the sour taste in the mouth being left by Bolton who were even worse than us, coming away with all 3 points. Despite the understandable concern over Diouf's antics I'm far more worried about our own shortcomings. Defensively Todd was impressive yet again and Mokoena was much improved on his Cardiff display. At full back though I fail to understand why Matteo is constantly preferred to either Gray or McEveley and if Nelsen doesn't turn out to be a better performer than Lucas Neill it will be very disappointing. In midfield Thompson showed once again how much we need Ferguson and not £6 million quid and Savage looked off the pace after an enforced break from first team action. He can and will play better. Emerton was just Emerton, desperately disappointing, as is the case more often than not. Pedersen was the best of our offensive players. Yet the problems were worst up front. Bothroyd didn't look in the least bit interested, Gallagher has gone completely off the boil, Stead desperately needs a goal and Johnson isn't yet strong enough for the Premiership. Whither Jansen? On last night's sorry evidence Dickov who I still maintain isn't good enough at this level is unfortunately "the pick" of our strikers. A bit of transfer magic is required from Hughesey in the remainder of the transfer window or the remainder of the season could be unnecessarily stressful for all concerned.

To correct (for the 9,648th time) re Duff Had the board (and Williams in particular) not worked damned hard in 2002, not only would we have seen Duff leave a year earlier, but we'd have got 1/3rd of the money Chelsea paid for him. At the most. Dunn and Cole are not really worth commenting on. Neither has done anything to suggest we should have kept them. The Rovers board is running this club exceptionally well, in the most difficult of circumstances. The most difficult of circumstances? Buoyed up by numerous years of Sky money, the infrastructure instigated by Jack and the backing of the Trust Fund? Bet Bill Fox would have loved such "difficult" circumstances.

To be fair he only refused to pull on the shirt to sit on the bench. Maybe in a perfect world he shouldn't have done that, but how would you feel if you were playing and then demoted to sub a few minutes before kick off because a certain Italien declared himself fit? What can be said with certainty is that prior to the Souness spat and since his reinstatement, he's been our most consistent player. And I was a major detractor originally. (I voted Savage for captain though)

With all due respect to Paul who earlier put across his point of view extremely eloquently I still think everyone is massively over-reacting to the fact Ferguson has handed in a transfer request. Let's take off the blue and white tinted specs for a minute and look at it objectively. Ferguson is far from a Dunn or a Duff who came through the Rovers ranks, he is a Glasgow lad through and through. In fact from what I recall the only reason we signed him in the first place was that Rangers couldn't afford to keep him any longer given their extortionate debt level, and we were flush with cash having ushered Duff off to Chelsea. So to him it is just a job, it is unrealistic to expect him as a player to have the same huge level of commitment to Blackburn Rovers the club as a fan. That said he is a quality player, he is our player and under contract for another two and a half years. Rejecting Rangers initial derisory bid is hardly an act of genius by John Williams and the Board, it is the only sane option. Unless we are offered a fee of £5m plus at some stage that would enable us to go out and buy a Scott Parker, it's a non issue as far as I'm concerned. If he is allowed to leave on the cheap it would just be yet another severe let down from a Board that have stood back and allowed Dunn, Duff and Cole to leave in recent times. We do nothing, sit back, tell Ferguson to be professional, and put him and Savage together in the probable expectation that this will shoot us up the table, and in the hope this will prompt a change of heart from Ferguson. If it doesn't, does anyone seriously think we would get less than the £3m currently offered in summer? At this stage it's a no lose situation for us.

Sorry to hear about Den's near miss, thankfully it doesn't appear anyone was hurt. What last night proved to me if anything was how much we need both Savage and Ferguson. We were completely outplayed and anonymous in midfield, Tugay isn't getting any younger and IMO for all his long range shooting and goals last night Thompson hasn't impressed at all converted to a central midfield role. Elsewhere Neill was as he has been for the last 15 months, a defensive liability, Mokoena and Matteo were poor and Reid who had formerly looked much improved didn't impress when he came on. A great result given the performance. P.S. Watched the game for the first time from the warmth and comfort of the 500 Club lounge. What a cracking view and facility that place is!

There's no doubt that at face value Brum seem to have extorted a whopping fee out of us for Savage given his age, possibly the majority of it has been off set by the money still owing on Dunn. ** Very pleased the signing seems to be eventually going through though, hopefully Savage will have the sort of galvanising effect on the team Flitcroft and Ferguson never have possessed. ** Come to think of it wouldn't mind taking a leaf out of the Rangers school of transfer thought though. Bid £2.5m for Dunn before the end of the transfer window with a £500,000 by way of cash adjustment actually changing hands!.

Completely agree with Tris and Philip L. Does Ferguson look like a £7.5m player? Maybe not but he's certainly the best we currently have by a long chalk. I'm surprised by the vehemence of the reaction against him. The prospect of him and Savage in the midfield is an exciting one. (even if only for a half a season) Rovers hold all the aces on this one. Ferguson is under contract for a substantial amount of time until mid 2007, it's not like his contract is due to suddenly expire leaving us high and dry. If Rangers want him that badly before the end of the transfer window, let them pay through the nose. Otherwise Ferguson should be told that he will have to be professional until another club comes in with an offer that is acceptable to Rovers. It would be madness to let him go now for a knockdown fee. That said, if Ferguson was to be replaced by say, Scott Parker it would be a case of Barry who?