Yup, you'd have to be a blind man on a galloping horse not to have sussed that one out. It's one law for the "big four" and another for the other sixteen though imo. There's no specific vendetta again Blackburn Rovers as Souness used to allude to in the past, and others have hinted at whenever we get a couple of bad decisions.

I agree with mike completely on this one, eighteen goals or not, McCarthy was an absolute disgrace yesterday - never came out of the dressing room. To answer Eddie's question, the difference between McCarthy and Derbyshire is that even when the latter isn't having a good game he gives it his all which the supporters can see and appreciate. McCarthy's poor games (which have become alarmingly frequent recently) appear to stem from a "can't be arsed" attitude.

What I said. We're agreeing far too many times for comfort recently sweetie.

Bellamy was absolutely superb during his time at Ewood Park and that fact was no doubt reflected in the fact that Mark Hughes and the Board offered him an unprecedented 60k p.w. to stay.

Equally, we were sat at home twiddling our thumbs tonight because we saw "the real Nonda" missing the easiest of chances when the chips were down three minutes from time at Ewood v Leverkusen. Shorn of pressure a few days later he effortlessly converted a much more difficult chance in the opening seconds. It depends how highly we're rating Nonda. No more than a no 3 in my eyes. IF MCcarthy stays we ideally need to sign a player of similar quality alongside him and let Derbyshire/Roberts/Nonda/Gallagher scrap it out to try and displace them.

Apologies, I could nonchelantly pretend that I was of course referring to his effort v the Kiwis, but I could actually have sworn blind he scored against Wigan at home. Better get a berth next to jim in the nursing home.

Not strictly true, Roberts has at least scored once from open play this season, Jeffers needed a rather fortunate penalty conversion to register. We haven't really been playing to Roberts' strengths this season when he has been on the pitch, he has usually got the ball with his back to goal which isn't his forte. We saw a brief glimpse of "the Wigan Roberts" on Sunday at the breezeblock with that awesome run. Next season if we can play the ball in front of him and play him in a lot earlier I still think Roberts could be a real asset. Nonda I'm really not convinced by. I would have thought that if we can get into the UEFA again either through League, FA Cup or Intertoto, we can do better.

I completely disagree, I couldn't believe how poor Grabbi was right from the first minute of his first game (the friendly v Barcelona) It was obvious from an extremely early stage we'd been "sold a pup" but people just didn't want to believe it at the time because we'd lashed out a club record 7m on him and they wanted him to succeed so badly. I don't think anyone could have made anything out of Grabbi and that tends to be corroborated by the fact he subsequently failed to make any sort of impact at much lower levels. Conversely, with his vastly superior fitness regime, I think Hughes would have made a very useful player out of Davies in much the same way Allardyce has done.

If that's true it's allegedly EXACTLY what happened at Rovers when Woy was in charge. It's alleged the dressing room was split between some of the "old guard" and the newcomers they weren't too impressed with. I was also told by a decent source that one of the reasons Sherwood had the hump was that he was club captain on 12k p.w. and doing his bit. All of a sudden Martin Dahlin came in on 17k p.w. and, not only that, was never off the treatment table etc.

dave I thought you'd had therapy for that!

USA Blue voiced publicly for a long while something I suspected privately. That our results and performances would improve after Neill left. There can be no argument with that I think. Rid of the "bad apple in the barrel" it's onwards and upwards. It is perplexing though. How did the team parading "the best right back in the Premiership" manage to ship 4 goals at home?

He missed a crucial chance when it really mattered on Thursday night. He notched a neat goal in the opening seconds today and another "couldn't miss" opportunity thanks to great work by Derbyshire and a blunder by Calamity. That apart he wasn't that great although I thought his partnership with Derbyshire was as effective as anything we've seen from any other combination this season. I've thought for a while McCarthy must be very difficult to play alongside.

After we went a goal down last night, we showed no creativity or imagination whatsoever. Our sole tactic seemed to consist of lumping a long high ball up to Crouch in the hope he could get a flick on. Only we were so poor, more often than not, we couldn't even direct the hoof forward in the general direction of Rodney's head. I was left thinking, "Just what is the role of the supposed tactical genius that is Terry Venables in all this?"

Not that I'm bothered but spain have just scored and are 1-0 up after 65 mins.

Well i'm really looking forward to seeing Dunny back tomorrow as well. Shame some people seem to have the knives sharpened for him before he starts. No pressure at all then then lad, mom performance, a minimum of two 30 yard screamers, couple of goal saving challenges and a clearance or two off the line the minimum required...............

Vastly over-rated player and a prat to boot imo but definitely time to move on. We have bigger fish to fry.

Come on Gordon, you said initially "our better players!" I saw that as well. It was a feeble attempt at humour by Curbs as in: "For someone who is supposed to be an average player, but is really Roberto Carlos mark 2, it's not surprising there were a few clubs after him." Unfortunately it went totally over the heads of everyone in the room (not even the merest titter) because they were probably all thinking "Yes, this is an average player."

Well if that did suddenly become everyone's intention then we'd need 'em on long contracts so we could suss 'em out with 2 years to go and move them on then for a sizeable fee if necessary.

It was obviously the opportunity to play alongside Christian Dailly wot swung it.

I agree with 99% of what you say there but as a Club we can't afford to simply let players come and go as free agents. If one of our more highly regarded players leaves occasionally we HAVE to be in a position to cash in. We need the fees more than most.

Watford look like they've gone, it's not looking good for Wigan but Charlton might yet give West Ham a run for their money. I think it will be Watford, Charlton and Wigan down although I hope it's Watford Charlton and West Ham (not because of Lucas but because it's a crap journey, crap place, and we always always lose there) Didn't honestly think we'd be looking down on it from quite such a distance quite so soon. Amazing what 15 points out of 21 can do! The players have answered my original question in some style!

Exactly so. Bellamy behaved worse than Neill if you will but the situations do bear certain similarities. Bellamy insisted on "the clause" so he could get a cut price move ensuring someone probably came in for him with a whacking signing on fee plus higher wages. Neill refused to sign a new contract so that he could move for nothing in the summer or at worst allowing him to move before then for a vastly reduced fee thereby ensuring himself a whacking signing on fee plus (much) higher wages. However I seem to be arguing with people claiming Lucas wasn't acting purely in his own best interests!. Where would we be if everyone simply walked out at the end of their contracts? In a right mess. Interesting what we're going to do about it in future though. We didn't get a real inkling that Lucas was leaving until this summer (12 months to go on the contract) by which time it was probably already too late to realise his true market value. Do we have to insist that players we want to keep always have at least two years left on their contracts in future or they'll be sold? Could get pricey. Or do we just leave it as it is and risk the odd one walking out?

That was Neill's intention. Whether or not the club should have taken matters out of Neill's hands and sold him in the summer is a different matter entirely and one for debate. However as I recall there was only ever really a swap deal with Warnock on offer in the summer anyway which Sparky must not have fancied at that stage.

Sheesh 1) Not entering the final 12 months of his contract 2) Obviously because I'm a Rovers fan and we got the better end of the Dunn deal. If I was a Brum fan I wouldn't be too impressed. Stop trying to defend an indefensible position. Neill ran his contract down for his own benefit and we've lost out on about 2.75m as a result. Entirely his prerogative and maybe in a financial sense you can't blame him but don't try and pretend it's anything other than that just so you can pick an argument with me.