Why is it either of the Clubs' fault? Did the people for whom this has seemingly become an all consuming obsession not notice the clash of dates when the fixture list was published?

Interesting concept - but it would expose the Club to far more ridicule than you were worried about through the introduction of cheap ticket offers. Doubt it would work in practice, we may have a hard core of support but how many people would as a matter of principle agree to a 100% rise in price? Plus it would make the current pricing structure in JW upper central obsolete. Doubt I could justify over a grand for a seat up there every close season.

You may be right but the word "apathy" surely also extends to someone who has made a conscious decision to move to a location from where they will no longer be able to attend future games. Not a criticism per se, just a fact. It's odd how the most vociferous critics of the attendances / Blackburn Public(apart from SG ) are generally the ones who are not actually in the position where they have to make a choice as to whether to shell out season ticket money and/or make the effort to attend a game which is invariably televised anyway. It's the easiest thing in the world to sit back and criticise when it doesn't directly concern you.

I thought the fee for a "normal" Sky game was in the 600-700k region. It's less for a PPV but I thought it was quite a bit more than 160k.

So Liverpool fans are boycotting the game. Boo Hoo. What a shame. Heaven sent opportunity to restrict their allocation to one quarter of the Darwen End, reduce prices to a level that competes with watching it in the Pub and start the novel concept of trying to fill the ground with BLACKBURN fans for a big game. But as someone else said, we probably wouln't be able to see beyond the short term loss of revenue.

Looking at the fixtures again, Bolton should win at the weekend against Sunderland, as we will hopefully against Boro. They then have Boro away, we have Sunderland away. So the respective positions should be more or less unchanged at that stage. They then have a horrendous little run Man U (H) Liverpool (A) Chelsea (H) which may render their games in hand obsolete. If Arsenal beat Liverpool today however I can't see the Gooners failing to get 4th spot. All pointless speculation but hugely entertaining nonetheless.

Well jim wasn't happy about playing well and getting beaten at Spurs, he should be absolutely ecstatic about this one!. I suppose the last two games show that the oldest saying in football "Luck balances itself out over the course of a season" is still one of the truest. Don't want to complain about individual performances after a 2-0 win and with us 5th in the table. Just hope and trust that they will put it right against Boro. We won't get lucky 2 weeks running. I would say however that MGP looked far from fit and I really don't know why we need to risk him like this with Peter, Bentley and Emerton to call on as alternatives. Savage was far and away our best player yesterday. After that I thought Pongolle showed up as well as anyone. How it can be said that Dickov looked better on the basis of 8 minutes action (and touching the ball maybe twice) is mystifying. Bellamy was starved of service and therefore generally quiet but showed his class by coming up with the goods yet again. Onwards and upwards.

Very doubtful, the 22,000 attendance (which was excellent in the context of this season) probably had very little to do with the Spurs game but much more to do with the quid a kid scheme. I reckon it put 4,000 on the gate yesterday.

All to play for now. Chelsea 2 Spuds 1. (In injury time)

Chelsea 2 Spuds 1! Fantastic result for Rovers. Chelsea were all over Spuds first half and scored through Essien on 13 mins. Spuds never had a kick until Jenas scored an undeserved equaliser a minute before half time. In the second half it was a different story. Chelsea were sluggish and Jenas actually missed the best chance of the half when clean through after 78 mins. he late introduction of Duff sparked some life into Chelsea and Drogba missed a glorious chance to seal the points on 90 minutes, striking the inside of the post, Robinson getting the faintest of touches. All looked lost for Chelsea in terms of the 3 points then in the second minute of 3 minutes injury time, Duff and Gallas swapped passes on the left, Gallas cut in and unleashed an unstoppable shot into the right hand corner of the net from 25 yards. GAME ON!

Just noticed as well that Spuds play Chelsea and Arsenal play Liverpool this weekend. Perhaps all bets should be put on hold for seven days? Although it would be typical Rovers for Chelsea to beat Spuds and we then fail to beat Villa in the 5.15 game.

Very cute. tnr the "big" clubs have always got the decisions as long as I can remember. It's only when it's "big" club against "big" club the officials seem completely unaffected.

Mixed feelings, from the half hour mark until we scored our second we've completely dominated the game and probably not played better all season, yet as jim says playing well and losing is no good to anyone. Ultimately we've defended certain situations very poorly today and it's cost us. We also started slowly, Spurs were much sharper in the opening 15 minutes. The first goal whilst good play by Keane saw indifferent defending by 2 Rovers players. Prior to that we were the victim of an appalling decision by the linesman, Mido miscontrolled the ball and it went out for a Rovers throw, Todd the covering defender, was nowhere near the ball. The linesman inexplicably gave Spuds the throw but from that position there was no way Keane should have been allowed to score. For the second goal Emerton seemed to handle on the corner of the penalty area and without the benefit of replays, if deemed deliberate, it seemed as though it should have been a penalty straight up. The linesman bottled it and it looked as though we had earned a reprieve. Unfortunately though from the resultant free kick Friedel committed the keeper's cardinal sin of parrying the ball back into the six yard box instead of pushing it wide. No defenders were tracking back with Keane either and it was unfortunate the referee didn't spot the handball. To be fair no-one else round me did either until we saw the replays. At 2-0 down it looked to be game over but we retaliated quickly with a superb goal out of the blue. Superb run and cross from Bellamy, equally good finish from Pongolle. Up to that point the Frenchman had been having a bit of a mare, and was guilty of a shocking miss from two yards out a few minutes previously. After the goal however he looked a completely different player and showed enough in partnership with Bellamy to suggest he could become a real asset. We had dominated possession from the half hour mark onwards and the second half continued in much the same vein. I thought Reid unusually had a first half in which he could do little right, he was another player transformed in the second half and was excellent. The equaliser was well deserved and the roles were reversed from the first, excellent run and cross from Pongolle, super finish from Bellamy. At that stage it looked as if there would be only one team going on to win it, but we were undone by more poor defending. Gray got caught out initially but again we didn't defend the situation well as a team. After that deep down you suspected there wasn't going to be a sting in the tail for a third time. So we'll probably play a lot worse than that and win several times before the end of the season but realistically Champions League hopes would seem to be over. Can't believe anyone thought Emerton played well. He was awful but then again no different to what he's been for most of the last 3 seasons. I didn't think Bentley did quite as well as some people are suggesting either. Excellent in small flashes but not involved enough most of the time. Savage had another really good game, Gray was nowhere near as bad as people are suggesting. The main plus arising out of today was the potential partnership developing between Bellamy and Pongolle. And if we play as well as that for the remainder of the season we should be able to clinch a UEFA spot.

Eh? It's only a week since you said our UEFA chancs wouldn't be dead if we lost both the Arsenal and Spurs games. (Due to your pathological need to post immediately after me disagreeing with me. ) Tally ho, off down to London in an hour or so. COME ON YOU BLUES!

Hopefully gordon, if we qualify for the Champions League and he is on top line remuneration the "right clubs" will be veryfew and far between indeed. If Hughes wants to go anywhere else at any point he will of course do so, what we have to try and ensure is it's some while off yet and make sure we squeeze the approaching club until they squeal when it eventually does. Much too soon to be getting excited about this until the deal is actually done. But the signs are very encouraging. And I love his quotes about how the club have matched his ambitions so far. - keeping the Board on their toes. Also very encouraging that he sems to expect being in the market for top quality players in the summer. No more Matty Holmes's for us this summer hopefully.

For me there were 3 truly great games in the 70's, Plymouth, Boxing Day '77 but this ranks for me as arguably the finest Rovers performance in all the circumstances. We went to Bolton, who were riding high at the top of the table, midweek night match, and fought a ferocious rearguard action, for the majority of the game but then with about 15 minutes to go we swung a corner over, Bolton keeper Charlie Wright missed/dropped it and Faz turned the ball home from close range. The game was watched by an astonishing crowd of 33,309 for the time (old 3rd division.) At the end of the season Bolton were still comfortably champs and we heartbreakingly missed out on promotion by 2 points finishing 3rd. Heartbreaking because the very next season saw the introduction of 3 up 3 down! Funnily enough, never hear this epic encounter mentioned much. Anyone else there?

Looking it up in the record books the game (Feb 15th) wasn't as close to the end of the season as I thought. But it was the catalyst for a 15 game unbeaten run which didn't see us lose again until the third last game of the season. (That game was the 2nd in the sequence.) We pipped Plymouth to the Championship by one point. 60 to 59.

I'll be very upset if we throw away any realistic chance of winning by playing 4-5-1. Last week I didn't feel very optimistic about our chances. After beating Arsenal my view has changed somewhat. One thing is for sure Spurs aren't miles ahead of us as a team as some people on here would like to think. We'd already have plastered them all over Ewood at the start of the season had we had a competent striker playing in place of Kuqi. No prediction from me (as that worked last week ) but we MUST come away with at least a point.

That's exactly how I read it. Couldn't care less who Bohse supports. The only way you could realistically say things had "turned sour" is if the relationship between the Rovers Board and the Trustees had broken down. Which is certainly not the case from all available indications. The only genuine cause for concern would be if there is indeed a club "source" leaking damaging (and generally inacurate) rumours of this nature. Has the Tony Parkes "mole" resurfaced again?

A few points: The piece by Mihir Bose is a particularly sloppy piece of journalism. The 4m loss bit is particularly misleading, given that we actually recorded an operating profit. I'll bet many clubs would like to be in the same position. Given our overall record and current success on the pitch it's stretching things to te extreme to suggest that things have turned "sour" That much said, the article is much ado about nothing really.Rovers are probably the only one of Jack's businesses not to be a large profit maker so I have little doubt the club would be sold if but only if it was in the club's best interests By this the Trustees would have to be satisfied a) about the new owners long term intentions for the club and perhaps more pertiently The new buyers would have to have the ability to put in at least as much if not more bunce in than the trustees if required. I would imagine this would require them to have very deep pockets indeed. I know the trustees "only" currently choose to advance 3m per annum plus concessions to Rovers but that's only the half of it. Could the new buyers instantly find 10m to buy another Andy Cole if we were ever in danger of being relegated?. Could the new buyers inject 15 or 20m to keep us solvent if we were relegated? At the end of the day the Trustees are under a legal obligation to carry out Jack's wishes contained in the trust deed. Without knowing the exact terms we can be as certain as can be the deed requires them to act in the best interests of ALL the Walker businesses. I also think that people are confusing the wealth of the Walker family and the trust fund. As I understood it these are two separate things entirely. The family (most of which will be Fred) may or may not now be worth around 600m, although that figure will be sheer guesswork and probably includes an estimate as to the value of the Walker Companies. I understood Jack had set aside a separate fund(The trust fund) for the benefit of all the Walker businesses which was to be constantly supplemented by the profits from the businesses. So as for it being the case that the Trustees would be prepared to sell if a suitable buyer came along it's like '''big deal tell us something we don't know". There's a world of difference between that and being so desperate to off load they'll sell to anyone.

Great minds USA. I was also going to start a thread for this as one of my best 4 or 5 Rovers games. Huge gate for the time, huge travelling support. I was sat on the front row of the Nuttall Street with my dad and a friend of his who never usually went. Behind us we had some middle aged Plymouth fans who thoiught it hilarious to bellow "Bye Bye Blackburn" at us to the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird" They weren't nearly so vociferous by the end. Plymouth had probably the hottest striking partnership outside the top flight, and probably better than some at top level in Bill Rafferty and a very young Paul Mariner. Accordingly the game began disastrously, 2 down after about 19 minutes then we even managed to miss a penalty. All seemed lost. On the stroke of half time Don Martin sidefooted home from close range to make it 1-2 and give us hope and in the 2nd half Mike "the rock" Hickman completely terrorised the Plymouth defence with a Shearer like performance to transform the game as we eventually ran out winners 5-2. The only game I've seen at Ewood to compare was the 4-2 Derby play off game. Unbelievable even now.

The only thing I can clearly remember from that great day was Jim Smith coming out from the tunnel and having to walk diagonally across the pitch to get to the dug out. He got a welcome from the crammed Rovers half of the Longsight like I've never seen before or since. Oh and coming out of the ground some greasy long haired Burnley oik about 14 or 15 years old old waited until my dad got in the car and then tried to kick me in the wotsits. He caught me sideways on with his shin across the thigh and it didn't hurt at all. He scarpered. I'd just turned 14 at the time. One of the best Rovers days ever.

Brilliant stuff bob. Not seen anything better anywhere nationally, let alone the LET.

Would you have bought a 6 game card at full face value in a fancy presentation box with maybe a signed team photo or something similar?

No it shouldn't, as long as the ST was more competitively priced per game than the individual/block ticket. (I still think that needs to be examined independently if the average take is only 13 quid per game) Fans can still look at the fixture list now and if the attractive fixtures fall at the end purchase on a match by match basis and/or only buy a half ST. As for the point about priority that could be determined by ST holders OR fans attending a minimum number of games easily checkable by applying a filter to the database. We have had the Ski Data technology in place for nearly 2 seasons now. Silly not to use it.