Why??

Only got to see the first half much to my chagrin but thought we performed superbly well. OK we were helped by the wood work but United were restricted to predominantly long range efforts and aeriel threats. Have to say Mokoena was absolutely outstanding in his "breaking play up in front of the back four" role. Roy Keane obviously thought so as well judging by his disgraceful attempt to put the South African out of the game. So we've now been to Anfield and Old Trafford and rarely looked in danger of being beaten. A useful indicator of how special next season could be with the injection of a little more creativity and firepower?. Memo to John Williams and the Board: After Souness's fortuitous departure we seem to have acquired something rather special in Mark Hughes and his backroom staff. After a period of the club being net sellers in the transfer market they now need backing to the hilt.

Sod Burnley, the two fixtures against the red scum are the ones that get my juices going. We're actually well overdue a win (or even a draw) at OT, no wins there in the thirteen (or eleven) years back in the top flight. Although with United's twelveth man Mike Riley in charge it'll probably have to wait at least another season. 1-1.

Whilst I am just about in agreement with the article (apart from the comparison with Newcastle) I'm not sure it will have the desired effect. In general people don't like being dictated to. Is the article likely to have hordes of Rovers fans thinking "Crikey Paul you're right, you're too good for me, what was I thinking, I'd better rush down and buy a ticket!" or is it likely to get the backs of people up who consider they've valid reasons for not going and have them even more inclined to stick two fingers up at the club and the LET because they resent being told they're not proper fans? It's a dangerous line to take. Personally I'm of the view that it's an FA Cup semi final and I'd be there if it was played at four am in the morning but that's my personal choice. I wouldn't presume to criticise anyone who chose not to go to this particular game given the prevailing circumstances.

I would have to take issue with the management for the second home game running as I thought we were excellent in the first half today, dominating possession and only undone by a momentary lapse in concentration for the goal. There was really no need to make wholesale changes to the formation and I thought we were accordingly much less effective in the second period. I have to comment on Dickov though, yet again he offered absolutely nothing and is incapable of playing the lone striker role. Stead held the ball up and linked play far better at Anfield and can consider himself very unlucky to be dropped. I really can't understand why we insist on wheeling Dickov out half fit week after week, he has nuisance value but is not really good enough at this level when fully fit anyway. It's not like we're missing out on Shearer or something if the former Leicester man fails to make it onto the pitch.

In terms of previous Rovers line ups we are currently most like Howard Kendall's team. Back then (79-80) he also took on an ailing line up and first made us practically impossible to score against as we ground out innumerable 0-0 draws and 1-0 wins. Amazingly successful it was too as we were promoted from the old third division and missed out on promotion to the old top flight on goal difference in successive seasons. Back then too we lacked a degree of flair, three successive 0-0 draws towards the end of the latter season did for us. Amazingly researching it now only Kevin Stonehouse got into double figures with 10 goals, Garns being next best on 7. It just shows where we might have been had we had this management/line up from the start of the season. There's really no reason why we can't be next season's "Everton" especially with some investment in the striking positions. For the neutral and Sky though we will quickly become the Premiership's version of Millwall, the team everyone loves to hate if we can't add a little more flair to our armoury.

I thought this was a superb performance, once again horses for courses, tonight the tactics were fully justified. It wasn't Leicester at home, it was a team who recently destroyed Leverkusen to reach the last 8 of the Champions League so to go through 93 minutes without them having even a sniff of a half chance shows how well we performed. Yes we are limited up front but this will hopefully be addressed in summer. In fact it now seems we have an extremely talented backroom staff, so much so that the summer will be an interesting test of the Board's ambition. How far could we go with a quality striker to help bring on Stead and a quality replacement for ferguson alongside Savage? An extremely long way if we continue to be as mean defensively.

We'll have to agree to disagree then, we were in real danger of becoming one of those statistics due to the tactics employed yesterday. This was Leicester, a very poor first division side at home, yet we hardly forced their keeper into a serious save yesterday. Football is a game of minute margins. We were saved by a 50/50 penalty call in the dying minutes and all is well with the world. Had we not been, everyone would have been up in arms about potentially blowing our chance by being too cautious. That's not to say that 4-5-1 (Stead instead of Dickov IMO) won't be the way to go against Arsenal and or ManUre but it's horses for courses.

Newcastle would have been best but the main job was to avoid ManUre at this stage in their current form. This isn't bad at all. Take Henry out of the equation and Arsenal look decidedly average at the mo by their usual high standards. Should be a fascinating contest with our new found "Hard to beatability" And Souness won't even reach the final.

I posted a while back asking if anyone believes in all that "Our name is on the Cup this year " stuff. If we do go on to lift the famous trophy I think there must be something in it after playing so abysmally against Burnley twice and if anything even worse yesterday. I'm a big fan of Hughes but IMO he blundered badly with his tactics and starting line up yesterday, nevertheless getting out of jail courtesy of the rather soft penalty decision. We carried too many passengers yesterday. What on earth has happened to Thompson recently? He was awful. Garry (was he on the pitch?) Flitcroft wasn't far behind and Dickov had a shocker despite his extremely well taken penalty. Johansson hasn't done badly at LB recently but had his poorest game since returning to the side. I couldn't fathom the substitutions as I thought Mokoena played quite well and Reid although not at his best didn't plumb the same sort of depths as Flitcroft and Thompson. Against this there were the usual bright and competent performances from Todd Nelsen and Pedersen. Paul posted some time ago asking where all the heroes had gone and with these three you feel some warmth and empathy towards them because (like Craig Short) you sense youre going to get a good display out of them every time they pull on the blue and white halves. Still we're through which is all that matters. Fantasy Island time: a 4-0 drubbing of Sourpuss's barcodes in the semis and a fully committed 1-0 win over Scumchester United in the final (Keane og 89) please!

Waters Edge open between 5pm and 7pm only on Police advice.

That doesn't seem to be correct Paul. I think you were given duff info by the steward. I managed a ticket for a friend who is a S/T holder plus one extra (three tickets in total) with no problem. It seems I could possibly have got yours for you as well. Sorry!

Anything and anyone connected with Scumchester United Off the top of my head, Alex Ferguson, Cantona, Keane, Schmeicel, Ince , Beckham, Bruce, Pallister, Paddy Crerand.

I may be in the minority here but I quite like Mourinho, he reminds me in a lot of ways of the young Brian Clough. He may be controversial at times but he's been a breath of fresh air compared to listening to the RFW and Wenger bickering with one another. And anyone who can put one over on the RFW is fine by me. Disagree with his comments following the Chelski Rovers game though.

Just got back from the ground, big queue but moving quite quickly. One hour wait.

You do know they pack up and go for their lunch in two minutes

Closing Pubs near to the ground will have little effect, if people are that determined they will find the nearest Pub that will accept their custom after that.

No, but funnily enough they were about twice as wide as modern seating!. Must be some fat bloaters in that part of Yorkshire.

Fantastic draw, Uncle Jack who desperately wanted to win the FA Cup must have been pulling the balls out. PLEASE PLEASE don't let us down guys.

I wasn't fortunate enough to attend on 17/12/2000 and after all the nervous energy expended in looking forward to the occasion I thought the whole thing was a bit of an anticlimax. The coach thing was terrifically well organised but was it really necessary to be sat on them for one hour 15 minutes before moving off? I found the game itself a shade depressing due to the lack of any marked difference in quality between the two sides. Whilst we just about shaded it on possession and chances, what the game did highlight was our appalling lack of quality up front. I have had a recurring nightmare ever since the fifth round draw was made of two goaless draws and going out to the Clampetts at Ewood on pens. After yesterday that scenario moved significantly closer and I just pray we can find a goal or two from somewhere a week on Tuesday. Still think that horrendous miss by Dickov may come back to haunt us. Elsewhere, conditions in the concourse like the black hole of Calcutta, wooden seats, a crap pitch resembling a beach, crap football on it, moronic pitch invasions and a streaker. Welcome back to the 70's. Is this what we want more of in future? Is it hellers like. It was always going to be downhill after putting seven goals without reply past them in 2000/2001 and unfortunately from our point of view, for them, after the draw it is very much pride restored. That's why in my view it would have been best never to have played them again and left the 5-0 drubbing as the final footnote in East Lancs Derby history. All that said my spirits were significantly restored by today's wonderful draw. Does anyone believe in that old tosh about your name being on the cup? Eeerily reminiscent of the Worthy Cup win when we got a particularly straight forward path to the final. It's ripe for a typical Rovers style cock up but the team MUST NOT let us down in ensuring a semi final day out in Cardiff at least.

Be fair CS, I know they were a bit lax not taking the poor little mite 8 days earlier but then they weren't at home!

Flippin' 'eck I've pulled!

A vital game for us, we've had a dismal couple of seasons with not much to shout about and a victory in this tie will go a long way to redressing the balance. I expect nothing less than a fully committed and professional performance because if we play to our full potential and Burnley play to theirs we will win. Question: are the semis at the Millennium this time round? If we win are we just 90 minutes away from a Cardiff return?

The other thing that struck me on reading the summary was that as I recall: 12 months ago we made a tiny operating profit which we were told translated into a £12m loss due to player depreciation. I can see no mention of player depreciation in this summary. Does this mean that by using the same accounting standard and applying straight line player depreciation we lost £24.7m before the profit on transfers? Or does player depreciation not apply this time round for some reason?

You're entitled to your opinion philip as I am to mine but in any other commercially run organisation, officials awarding themselves substantial salary increases on the back of large losses would attract severe criticism. Your Chelski/ManUre comparison is frankly ridiculous. Their turn over is four times ours. That however is largely irrelevant. The point is that they are making large profits as opposed to our large losses. If we were consistently turning in healthy profits then there would be no objection whatsoever with the figures in question rising steadily on an annual basis.