Modes, Tyrone's ratings are absolutely spot on. You must have had your blue and white/beer goggles on or been at a different game, we had a right off night tonight and got away with the result! Nothing wrong with that!

On TalkSport about a week ago there was an interview with Alan Oliver a senior reporter who writes for the local paper up there. He spoke very sensibly and eloquently and said that he had alwys a huge supporter of Souness rght from the start and even when he was under fire but that he could no longer support him after the nature of the recent away performances against Wigan and Liverpool and the controversy about bringing that young lad back from injury too early.

Whalley New Rd. just past Bastwell heading towards Brownhill. Used to be Stanleys.

Excellent performance today, after only winning once away up until a few days before Christmas, the team have showed far greater steel and determination in winning three tricky looking away fixtures in ten days. The success has been built by going back to basics in defence. A month or so ago we'd started to leak goals in Sounessque fashion again. Zurab played today instead of Todd but in all 3 games weve looked far meaner defwensively. I thought both full backs were particularly impressive today, areas in which we tend to have struggled in recent times. Gray in particular having against all odds come back from the dead just seems to get better and better. In midfield Savage did a superb job of stopping Wigan play. IMO he is starting to get towards the fom he displayed at his previous clubs. I've never seen anyone cover as much ground in the cause. If only he'd been at the club for the last ten years. I was also very pleased for Reid who really has done nothing to deserve being left out. Bentley and MGP showed signs of returning to some sort of form, if those two and Bellamy were firing on all cylinders I'd say we'd have a realistic chance of beating ManUre over two legs. Up front Kuqi and Dickov did their best but it must have been completely galling for Wigan at 2-0 down to see Bellamy coming on. After that had we not been protecting our lead as much we looked as if we could have scored at will. Emerton and Thompson weren't bad options to throw on either. The bench is looking far stronger these days. Great following, the weight of numbers meant we got some proper football songs for once instead of the usual silly "2 pounds per hour" and "There's only two/three of us singing" Top day out.

Tough game, Wigan on a right roll, but I refuse to believe they're significantly better than us if at all. Entertaining 2-2 draw.

I raised the question of minikits at the Fans Forum a couple of sessions ago. Tom Finn made a note. Add that to mugs and tankards, Rovers footballs, ties, towels, glassware, cufflinks, pens, watches, soft toys, boxer shorts, night appareil, bed linen and just about anything else under the sun you could name that you used to be able to get at what now passes for our club shop and now you can't. Then again I just like complaining for the sake of it.

Au contraire, most people on here won't criticise the club even when they're clearly in the wrong because they think it makes them a better supporter. I got horrendous flak on here about Grabbi and Souness. (But I was right with the benefit of hindsight) At least Preston Blue has had the decency to express his concerns. What's the point of a messageboard, Fans Forum, or BRISA if you can't criticise the club when they make the occasional foul up?

I remember in the old days getting to the bottom of Buncer Lane in the car and the game being called off over the radio at 2.15p.m. due to a sudden cloudburst. That's unavoidable. In this case the condition of the pitch couldn't possiby have come about instantly. Either the undersoil heating was working in which case the pitch would have been fine, or it (obviously) wasn't in which case the pitch would obviously have been unfit from early morning onwards (conditions were similar the previous night) and an earlier announcement could easily have been made. Aside from that there was the PR disaster of neither the ticket office nor Radio Rovers being aware of the situation.l

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Rubbish.

Gav, with all due respect, typical overstatement. As I understand it you've not been able to go to so many away games recently. (I haven't been able to either although this season I've seen all bar Citeh on dodgy foreign Telly) So really it ill begets either of us to criticise levels of away support. This game was always going to sell out. Despite Grooby's equally predictable pessimistic assertion it wouldn't. So let's just enjoy the day. And hopefully the result.

If as seems probable the undersoil heating packed up then that presumably is a technical problem that can easily be resolved. Must say I have to laugh at the "It couldn't be expected to work when the temperature dropped a few degrees below zero" type comments. That's exactly what it's there for surely! What this episode can hopefully do is give us the kick up the arse which is obviously necessary to get our act in order behind the scenes. Why were callers not forewarned about the potential problem with the pitch and in particular the pitch inspection? How come Sky Sports News knew about both the pitch inspection and the eventual postponement but the Club's own employees i.e. the ticket office and Radio Rovers, seemingly didn't? For the ticket office to insist on selling tickets after the game had been called off beggars belief. Completely farcical and it wouldn't take much more than a repeat of something like this for the club to lose all credibility with the paying public.

1) If the undersoil heating was working properly I'm sure the temperatures today such as they've been woud have been irrelevant. 2) If it isn't working properly I guess that can't be helped. BUT and this is the criticism there's no excuse for the game being called off as late as 6p.m. The problem must have been evident a lot earlier.

Please be realistic. The ground is apparently completely white and hard as iron and obviously hasn't just deteriorated from being completely playable to it's current condition in a few hours this afternoon. The referee is obviously trying to be diplomatic with his public comments despite the efforts of Radio Rovers to insult our intelligence by suggesting that the weather was so unbelievably severe in the last few hours nothing could be done.

We heard from someone who works at the ground that the undersoil heating wasn't working properly, despite the official line of the weather being exceptionally severe etc. Whether this is true or not there's obviously been a monumental cock up. The referee was on Radio Rovers saying the pitch was like a skating rink and as hard as concrete. It must have been perfectly obvious much earlier in the day the pitch was going to be unplayable yet the ref said he rang the club at 1430 to be told there was absolutely no problem. He then got another call at 1730 to say there might be a problem with certain areas of the pitch. The bit about the earlier call was hastily edited out of a rerun of the interview. I tuned into Radio Rovers at 1800 because it was on SSN that there was to be a pitch inspection. Gerald and co came on prattling away obviously blissfully unaware there was even to be a pitch inspection until Wendy gasped "it's off!" in the background leaving Gerald floundering about mumbling about needing to wait for official confirmatiion. We are a Premier League Club but behind the scenes we often behave like anything but as we 've seen today.

As far as the draw is concerned, we all knew deep down didn't we that Man Ure and the Arse would be kept separate. The last time when we played Man Ure in the semis, the draw consisted of 4 large black numbered cubes drawn out of I think the top of the Cup! They obviously couldn't get away with that one again so the "fix" this time seemingly consisted of picking out the numbers from a legitimate closed container but allocating the teams to them afterwards. Not that it should really matter. You should always have to be prepared to beat any given team in a cup competition to win it. The worry is as mentioned by someone else how far the referees in each tie will go to ensure the "dream" final.

As far as the draw is concerned, we all knew deep down didn't we that Man Ure and the Arse would be kept separate.

Sorry Neil, what a ridiculous suggestion. This is a home game where Rovers need all the advantage they can get. Why not go the whole hog and just ban Rovers fans from attending altogether? With imaginative pricing there should be no difficulty in shifting 18-20,000 tickets to home fans. I know we've taken the easy option and made a business out of selling tickets to away fans in recent seasons, but IMO we need to stop putting quite so much emphasis on that and concentrate on one thing and one thing alone, getting more home fans into Ewood. Why not just for once taking the equally radical step of restricting the Manc allocation to the minimum allowable under the regs. Who's to say that it wouldn't have a beneficial effect on us and a detrimental one on them on the pitch? Who's to say that a lot of non regular Rovers attenders wouldn't feel far more comfortable and less intimidated at the prospect of attending if there were 2,000 and not 10,000 Mancs hanging around Ewood? It's a question of balancing short term loss against potential long term gain. I would argue that the policy of filling the ground with away fans for the major fixtures has in the long term clearly had an adverse effect on the level of home support at Ewood as a whole.

Agreed, once again no matter who the two out of Dickov/Kuqi/or Bellamy are picked up front, we looked far better playing with two out and out strikers rather than with a 4-5-1. Excellent performance, we dominated the game territorially for 90 minutes, the only worry being we would not capitalise on our superiority. In fact after we had what looked a legitimate strike mysteriously ruled out for offside on the stroke of half time and then Nelsen headed wide of an open goal from 4 yards out in the second half I feared it wasn't going to be our night. Extra time and a defeat on penalties? Luckily Dickov's late strike (which was a carbon copy of his second v West Ham)restored sanity and a sense of justice to the scoreline. His game seems to have improved immensely in recent weeks as a result as a result of cutting out a lot of the going to ground looking for fouls. No real negatives on a night like this but Bentley and MGP were completely ineffective. MGP's total loss of form since Old Trafford is mystifying. Last minute winner, a quarter final win and the red Scum in the semi finals. What a night, this is what the modern day, post Jack, Blackburn Rovers is all about, not singing about some extinct rivalry with our bankrupt neighbours down the road. Remwember the cricket v football debate in the summer? Just when football seems to be losing it's appeal you get something like this to remind you which is still the real McCoy.

I raised exactly the same point last Monday night at the Fans Forum. I went into the Club Shop about ten days ago to buy a new fleece. In the past there has been several designs to choose from. On this occasion all the new stuff, tracksuits, fleeces, benchjackets etc was in one design and one design only. Moving to the fleeces I was mildly irritated to find there was only XXL or small available. I assumed they would obviously be getting some more in for Christmas and went to check with the staff only to be met by a shrug of the shoulders, "we're not getting any more" and a "it's nothing to do with us" type attitude. I was horrified at this. That was only one item. If the same is true for everything how much will be lost in potential sales over the Christmas period?. However I got the impression from Tom Finn that this wasn't considered a major issue as Rovers are apparently on a minimum take from the shop regardless of sales. Whether that's true or not, the shop is OK if you want to buy some cheap SWI crap but relatively useless if you now want any Rovers merchandise. Gone are the days when you can buy mini kits for cars, dressing gowns, pyjamas, bed linen, Rovers soft toys, towels, watches, art prints - that's just a few examples off the top of my head - the list is endless. Desperately disappointing to say the least. A heck of a trade off for SWI's pile of silver.

Irt mentioned on the radio this week that Damien Duff scraped into the list at number 100 with a "mere" 7.75m! I think that's quite well deserved in comparison to dollopers like Heskey and Drogba.

Strange game. We played some scintillating football for the first 20 minutes then went slowly off the boil. Nevertheless there was little sign of the mayhem to come of conceding a sloppy goal,the sending off, and the killer second on the stroke of half time. Unless his hand was forced by injury I thought Hughes erred in his initial team selection by switching to 4-5-1. We've been successful playing 4-4-2 and the only real points for discussion are which two start from Zurab Nelsen and Todd, who plays alongside Savage, and who plays alongside Bellamy. The foreign contingent on here calling Todd are way off the beam I feel. Nelsen had a stinker toay being at fault for both goals. I'd need to see the sending off again but feel it was a bad decision. My initial reaction was that the Everton player (Beattie) played the ball against Todd from a yard or so away. The referee who seeingly had a clear view didn't react nor indeed did the linesman until Beattie started waving his arms about. Then the linesman flagged and you feared the worst. Hughes was also at fault I thought not bringing Zurab on immediately after the sending off. We seemed to be trying to muddle our way through half heartedly until half time and it cost us. The second half even with 10 me we created the better chances but it was one of those days. Hopefully an afternoon we can put behind us, revert permanently to 4-4-2 and pretend today never happened

Unbelievable, gave up listening to it on the radio with 20 minutes to go at 2-0 down and then watched gobsmacked (and whooping) in the Pub as the score flashed up 3-2 on Sky. Sounds from the game as though 4-5-1 failed miserably again and that we only looked a threat when we switched to 4-4-2? Great strike from Thompson. The commentators remarked he looked immeasurably leaner and fitter. Must admit I had written him off after a string of dire displays, Particularly at home v Leicester in the Cup. Let's hope we avoid ManUre/the Arse next round. Although wouldn't bet against them being kept apart as with that farcial semi final draw out of an open receptacle a couple of seasons back.

That's apologising for Souness in the extreme. The facts are that for Newcastle it was one of two chances to win a trophy this season. (Surely even GS couldn't get that squad relegated?) Paul Jewell stated the day before the match that staying up this season was still his priority and he would be making numerous changes. That he did, I think there were TWO regulars selected until Roberts came on 2nd half. It was the manner of the performance that must have had Fat Freddy cringing. It was a 1-0 drubbing, Newcastle hardly had a kick. Having taken us to the brink of ruin, thank god he is now working his magic at Newcastle. Long may it continue. Although judging by Fat Freddy's face in the stand last night, it may not continue much longer, it looks like reality is setting in.

How can you draw a negative from that piece? It's praising him to the hilt and simply remarks that he isn't the most physical of players which we knew already. It doesn't say anything about lack of commitment.