You're obviously on a wind up with your " Souness can do no wrong" crusade Tris but just to play devil's advocate: 1) 10 home defeats. 2) Inability to put a personal feud with Cole aside and work together for the good of the club 3) + 4) agreed 5) irrelevant 6) Grabbi £7m, Yorke £2m, Gresko £3m, Reid £2.5m, Mahon £1m (and on last season's form Emerton £2.5m and Amoruso, if he doesn't prove to be less injury prone, £1.5m) You've never had a good word to say about Cole so by your criteria buying someone for £7m and releasing them 2 and a half seasons later is another £7m written off. Total £26.5m. (+Greer, Yeldell, wages for Baggio) 7) Sales - what sales? £2m profit on Bent otherwise the only 2 worthwhile sales he's made were of players he inherited, not purchased. 8) I didn't win anything in football last season. So we're exactly equal there.

So as things stand (and I know it may change) we've got rid of the player who won't say a bad word about the club and are still paying the wages of the one who slagged us up hill and down dale in the tabloids. What's that all about?

The strip does look excellent. Come on Sports Soccer pitch it in sub 30 quid. You know it makes sense!

Maybe he should, but you could hardly blame him if he didn't bearing in mind Souness has already had his go and branded him a "baby". Rev........imo most people agreed with him. Maybe man management is not Soueys forte but the accuracy of his judgement about these 3 and his honesty in coming out with it cannot be questioned. My only prob with GS is that whilst we had to buy Cole or face the drop he was bloody blind not to see that Yorkes days as a professional footballer had already passed when he was at Man Utd. For Yorkes type once gone there is no return. My point is that if Cole comes out and gives his version in the Sunday rags (and there's usually 2 sides to a story) it is once again more publicity which will reflect poorly on the manager and club. Whilst not totally disagreeing with Souey perhaps it would have been better if he had left it at a simple "we didn't see eye to eye on footballing matters"

Fair comment.

Maybe he should, but you could hardly blame him if he didn't bearing in mind Souness has already had his go and branded him a "baby".

It is Souey's and John Williams responsibility to bring the player to the club if they see fit or not as the case may be. To place blame in advance on a supporter for the player possibly not being signed is pathetic. It was a match open to the paying public and as far as I know it's still a free country. If it really was necessary to keep this player's identity a secret a trial and/or match should have been arranged behind closed doors. All that said though IF Souness had personally addressed every Rovers fan present and asked them not to divulge the identity of the player you would hope they would respect that. If not it's only to be expected the news would filter back sooner rather than later.

I've just read the "Souey anger at Rovers fan" piece by Andy Neild in tonights LET and I think it's outrageous to single out a dedicated fan for criticism like that. If the player in question is good enough it's Souness's job to sign him up for the club, if not it's his job to send him packing. It's not his job to criticise incredibly dedicated supporters who have devoted holiday time and spent hard earned cash following the club on a pre season tour. I really can't see what difference it makes if the player's identity is known is not. All this "secret squirrel" type stuff makes us look rather ridiculous IMO.

There wasn't one. There was however a "player of the year" poll in which Cole came a very narrow 2nd behind Steadinho. But now Souey has offloaded Cole so as usual in the eyes of most* Cole was never any good anyway. *Tris being an honourable exception.

So you don't know then.

Yes, Dickov.

I agree with you Tris that I wouldn't have given Cole a mid season break. At the end of the day that was Souness's very strange call. I'll have to disagree though as to your assessment re: Cole's contribution. His unstinting efforts in the second half of the season and in partnering Stead were vital in keeping us up. His run and cross led to the crucial own goal v Leicester at Ewood. Superb first goal v Fulham. Created Stead's goal v Everton.

As Tris would say "show me the quotes" from either Cole or anyone connected with the Club that Cole has refused to play for Souness. There were however direct quotes from Cole himself in the LET in the summer indicating he wanted to stay. Let's be realistic here, the relationship between Cole and Souness isn't the best, we also face having to pay Cole a loyalty bonus at the end of the season and are therefore trying to get shut. Whether it turns out to be a case of saving £1 or £2m and losing £20m remains to be seen.

Exactly right. I'm often criticised (when the glove fits) for reading too much into newspaper articles. Sorry, but in the absence of direct quotations from either party I treat with extreme scepticism this particular piece in the LET from Andy Neild claiming that he believed following a meeting on Monday, Cole refused to play for Souness. I don't believe Cole is that unprofessional and even if he was his agent would advise him against that course of action. IF he was of that mindset etc have we only found this out just now? This is after all the same player who was DIRECTLY QUOTED earlier in the summer as saying he wanted to stay at Ewood. Seems to me the relationship between Souness and Cole has not been the best and they may be equally at fault in that. The Club also face paying him a hefty loyalty bonus at the end of the season. In all those circumstances who is the most likely to want Cole to leave? If Cole leaves and we can get a better replacement, fine. If as seems the case we've replaced him with Dickov we'll most likely save about £1.5m in wages over the season and lose £20m by being relegated.

In a sentence and a half that is as accurate a summation of "the Souness years" as I have seen.

We can only live in hope Ste.

Go on then Bryan and Tris it won't hurt - "Revidge you were right all along." This has obviously been Souness's intention all along judging by his comments this summer. Bob, mark me down in the "incredibly fed up" brigade. We have replaced our leading scorer and second all time premiership top scorer with a four or five goal a season relegation specialist. This places a near intolerable burden on young Stead to score enough goals to keep us up. As for the timing it's exactly the same as last year. Get right up to to pre season and we see a star name departing. Of course it wouldn't have anything to do with getting the vast majority of the S/T renewals in first would it?.

Too early to say that yet IMO FLB. Yes, if "normal service" is resumed asap and we finish in the top half of the table then it's fair to say that, for want of a better word, "the Souness out brigade" were wrong and he is the right man for the job. However if next season kicks off as an extension of the first 32 games of last, where does that leave us exactly? Back to square one. I don't call stringing four late wins together to avoid the drop, or ten home defeats, or two seasons of poor home performances, or our best players leaving the club, or a frightening number of age thirty something players in the squad as reason for rolling out the bunting just yet. But as always optimism must prevail at the start of a new season, Ferguson for Flitcroft will be a massive boost, the coaching shake up may have the desired effect and at the end of the day the players are capable of far better than they displayed last time round

That was exactly the same carefully worded quote used by John Williams a few weeks ago. Which of course doesn't even address the question of whether Cole will actually be here at the start of the season. Which he won't be IMO as I've said for a while.

Not one person on here wants to minimise the tragedy of what happened but when some people say "It's time to move on" I think they intend it in a helpful rather than derogatory way. The question has been posed "What do you now hope to achieve?" and it seems to me that that hasn't been answered. Yes, serious mistakes were made, and yes the Sun was well out of order. But surely the fitting tribute to those that passed away was the Taylor report and the subsequent improvement in stadia and ground safety it brought about. Don't buy the Sun by all means. Never forget those that passed away. But for those that suffered this terrible loss there are two options, try and get on with life as best you can or allow it to become an all consuming obsession which destroys the rest of your life. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn as an emotionally detached outsider but I can only presume that wouldn't be what the victims themselves wanted.

Who's to say attendances haven't improved in relative terms over the last 10 seasons anyway? Three of the first four gates in 1994 to watch Hendry Shearer Le Saux Sutton et al (who finished 2nd in 1993/4) Leicester 21050 Coventry 21657 Aston Villa 22694 (at this point seven games in we must have been top) Inbetween was a 26,500 gate for the visit of Everton

To me anyway it doesn't seem difficult to explain. We were hit by a fairly unusual set of circumstances. When gates recorded a modest few hundred increase to an average of 26,200 in 2002/3 it's probably fair to say we were not that far off our natural current maximum given we only recorded an all time high of just over 27,000 the season after winning the Premiership Having finished sixth I personally expected us to move forward and strengthen by adding retaining the players we had and adding maybe one top quality player to the squad. Instead, regardless of whether you think the club had no option, we lost our two most "glamorous" players in quick succession. I don't think it's entirely accurate to say that gates were down before Duff and Dunn left. Dunn left at the start of the close season so it's difficult to argue that had no effect. The previous 2 summers were also rife with speculation about Duff leaving so quite a few people must have been waiting to see what happened there as well and some of those obviously didn't renew either. Whilst we were losing our two star names and home grown boys, and slumping from 6th to 15th over at Bolton, they continued with the consistent improvement they've shown since being promoted with us. Yet despite Bolton being twice the size of Blackburn only last season did they record a higher attendance. Given the extremely limited assets they've had at their disposal over the last three years compared with us they've wildly exceeded expectations. All this wailing about "why are we the ONLY Club to be losing support?" presupposes that people from Blackburn have three heads or are different from anywhere else or something. This is plainly nonsense. It's a bit of all the factors mentioned previously impacting on us to a greater degree than would be the case elsewhere due to our smaller fanbase.

Admitting as GS has done on numerous occasions that the cups "aren't a priority" is tantamount to saying you're not going to give them your best shot. From what has been said at Fans Forums it would seem it has been recognised within the club that this sort of message is counterproductive. Saying that "survival is the aim" (and again the message has been modified more recently) smacks of lack of ambition and sends out the signal that the season is going to be a grim cheerless struggle. The other important factor I forgot to list is the probability of missing a few games due to Sky chopping and changing. Again this is currently likely to impact on Rovers far more than other clubs due to the finite fan base. Where's Chalfont St Latimer?

If you broadened the point re: comments about cup competitions to include negative statements about our ambitions generally I would say they're ALL primary factors influencing season ticket sales. Obviously the other one being lack of finance in some households.

Err....hello? I'm here you know! Apart from my dozens of posts making that point then yes Scotty is more or less alone.... Be fair. A hell of a lot of the posters on here realise the problems Rovers face due to their location. O.K. both of you then. Be fair, I did say "more or less" alone.