That interview was on roversworld, whereby he was trying to say that Dickov would be a good role model for his younger players. He did include Cole shortly after.

Well if that's the case, no worries but it's a glaring omission from the journalist.

Mr bob

1) Generally Cole works his socks off on the pitch.

2) The notion of Dickov being a role model either on or off the pitch is a curious one although I will refrain from saying anymore on that as he is one of our players now.

3) JW has said he wants Cole to stay - that'll be much the same as Duff then.

Don't think I'm reading too much into it. The article also says "The Blackburn Rovers boss is relishing the prospect of adding the ingredient of Dickov's experienxce to the raw talent of Paul Gallagher and Jonathan Stead next season." How much clearer could that be?

P.S. The article also quotes GS as saying "I'm a great believer in having senior pros because they show the way for the young players and ones who are not so young." Blimey Graeme you're not wrong on that one are you, we had noticed.

Some strange comments from Souness in yesterday's LET indicating yet again that Cole will not be at Ewood next season. Either that or he's being incredibly peevish.

"At this time I couldn't be bringing in a better striker to the club than Paul Dickov for Johnathan Stead and young Gallagher to look at and think "that's how I want to be when I'm 30."

Errr...... earth calling Graeme, HELLO - what about the 2nd highest ever goal scorer in the Premiership?

I would venture to suggest that the drop in sason ticket sales over the last couple of years has more to do with the fact that 3pm kick offs on Saturday are as common as hens teeth.

In the good old days, you knew that every other saturday you would have a home match that kicks off at 3pm. These days there is no rhyme or reason to the fixture list and you have no clue when the next game is. It's impossible to plan, and with monday, tuesday and wednesday night games, I for one just can't make it to every home game. Therefore I no longer buy a season ticket.

I can't believe that I am the only one in that position.

That's probably the main reason Chesh. In our case we're affected to a greater degree by being in a small town. No - one in their right minds wants to pay for 19 games when they can only make it to 16. However at most places you've no choice otherwise you aren't going to be able to get in. At Ewood you can.

I would wager that the natural drop off rate and turnover of season tickets is no better or worse here than anywhere else. The difference is that elsewhere there's far more bodies to replace them. Poor home form and sales of high profile players will also be secondary factors in our case.

Again it shouldn't be a criticism of the support or a reason to go jumping off Ewood aqueduct, it's just a fact of life.

Yes but the town and surrounding areas isn't given enough credit for its support of the club.

I couldn't agree with you more on that FLB. As I've always said, if the "big" clubs had our level of penetration of support they'd be playing to gates of over 200,000. We're a club in a small town, so what? That goes with the job description.

I'm sick to the back teeth and I bet 99% of the fans are as well of reading John Williams whinging about attendances every time they pick up a paper.

If he had been here in the Bill Fox era of the mid 80's when consideration had to be given to selling the boardroom table to stop us from going bust and cheques for the electricity and gas had to be sent out unsigned, he really would have had something to whinge about.

Rant over, sorry if it's gone off topic.

It may be the most attractive league - but as a player do you go to Rovers - who consistently fail to fill the ground, or Southampton, Birmingham, Charlton, Man City, Tottenham, Everton - all clubs roughly on a par or below Rovers but regularly sell out.

What earthly difference does that make?

Assuming everyone's offering roughly the same wage you'd go to the club you thought was going to do the best on the pitch.

You could say we're a big club who's fans have a small club mentallity.

Exactly right Den.

To my mind the correct definition is that (thanks to Jack Walker) we are a big club competing in the most attractive League in the world situated in a small town.

The other JW seems to have done a fantastic job of brainwashing people into thinking that we've no right to expect to see anything other than the very mundane when exactly the opposite should be the case.

We're currently in probably the most attractive League in the world as far as attracting talent goes and by definition only a very limited amount of players can play for the top three or four clubs.

Expecting Pederson to perform to a reasonable standard is a whole different thing to saying "Go on son, no pressure at all, just go out and be the next Damien Duff. That is ridiculous and I can't believe anyone will be thinking that.

If he's good enough, he'll be fine. He might take a few games to acclimatise to the pace, he'll have the odd bad game like anyone else and given his age you would reasonably expect him to improve over the next few seasons.

I would happily settle for buying a player who turns out to be top class after acclaimatising to the EPL, rather than some plodder like Damien Johnson.

A so called "plodder" in a side that finished considerably higher than us though last season you will have to admit!.

We need to stop having this huge pressure by claiming that he NEEDS to come in and perform from day 1.

What a load of old tosh.

All eleven players whoever they are, in whatever position, NEED to come in and perform from day 1 next season. There's no room for any passengers at this level unfortunately.

And what if they don't perform from the first day? Get rid of them because we can't afford any passengers?

If that's the case, we would never had seen Henry, Pires, Okocha and a list of other foreign players if we adapted your view on new foreign players. The only recent foreign player I've seen come in and play well from the start is Nistlerooy.

If anything clubs like ourselves need to be more patient with new players because we can offer them a chance to play regularly and without the pressures of Man Utd or Chelsea where they need to win every single match or they wont play. That should be one of pros for a young player to join our club.

Thank god you aren't our manager.

O.K. then lads, just come in and start playing when you feel like it, doesn't matter if we get relegated down a division or two, you can always find your feet from the middle of division two.

Why should foreign players be allowed or expected to come in and play poorly simply by virtue of the fact they are foreign?

IMO the reverse of what you say is true in our case. Arsenal or Man Ure can afford to carry a bigger squad arguably allowing a foreign player a bit more leeway and time to acclimatise. We can't.

We need to stop having this huge pressure by claiming that he NEEDS to come in and perform from day 1.

What a load of old tosh.

All eleven players whoever they are, in whatever position, NEED to come in and perform from day 1 next season. There's no room for any passengers at this level unfortunately.

We need someone to come in from the first game and put in some performances.

Of course we already have someone in that category............... Douglas .

As far as Pederson goes I haven't seen him play, so can't comment on how good he is, but how old is he, 21 or so?

The age thing is a red herring IMO, he's either good enough or he isn't. If he isn't good enough now, he never will be in all likeliehood.

I hate all this "punching above our weight syndrome".

I'ts just a convenient way of excusing poor performances in advance.

ROVERS INCREASE PEDERSEN BID!!!!

http://www.skysports.com/skysports/article...1138335,00.html

If the content on the Sky site is correct we have offered only £900k with £600k dependent on appearances etc. then?

Very good post indeed from philip l.

However I do feel that this "punching above our weight" and "defying gravity" stuff is somewhat overexaggerated.

If we had to rely solely on our gate income and merchandising receipts then yes we would have difficulty in competing. The way the place and TV money is allocated offers a unique opportunity to the smaller clubs. Gate receipts form a relatively small proportion of turnover. So if we were to finish 5th next year we would have one of the largest income outside the Champions League Clubs regardless of fan base.

Secondly to that, no other club enjoys the backing of a trust fund regardless of whether it's "only" £3m per year or a larger amount on special request.

No club has had an academy and training facilities of such quality laid on for them by a benefactor.

Is Souness the man to take us forward and capitalise on these unique advantages? Personally I agree with KSB on this one, Souness earned the right to lead us into next season courtesy of that four game rally but there must be a huge improvement this time round.

If it is intended to provide competition for places behind Cole and Stead I still don't think he's a patch on Gallagher or even Jansen so I'd put it in the "squad player, no better than what we've got" category.

The Jansen of today or pre accident?

If the former your comments fall in the "insane" bracket.

Let's at least give the guy a chance before writing him off.

Errr........ no not really, it's not in dispute that the post injury Matt has lost a certain "Je ne sais quois" but even now on an off day I reckon he's more than capable of running his socks off (like Dickov) and chipping in with 5 goals a season (like Dickov).

Still hope he doesn't sign, but if he does I'll be more than happy if he proves me wrong.

P.S. You still sound a bit peeved I was right all along about Grabbi!

This signing comes into the "insane" bracket if it is intended as a replacement for Cole.

If it is intended to provide competition for places behind Cole and Stead I still don't think he's a patch on Gallagher or even Jansen so I'd put it in the "squad player, no better than what we've got" category.

Wonder why he chose us over the other clubs. Higher wages or the promise of first team football?

Either way I do worry about the direction the club is taking.

When we were promoted Souness said that staying in the Premiership for five years would be the making of us. In practice quite the opposite seems to be happening, we seem to be going backwards at a rate of knots.

I shall be taking advantage of it and upgrading to a more expensive seat.

We don't want any undue noise in the JW Upper , Rev....

Turn your hearing loop off then!

Maybe not, if we sign Breen and Dickov and lose Cole and Tugay.

Excellent news on the interest free direct debit front, really well done to the club on this one.

I shall be taking advantage of it and upgrading to a more expensive seat.

Just hope that the offer is in place permanently and not withdrawn at a later date.

Surely now, no-one can use price as a major excuse for not buying. Poor performances maybe but not price.

Perhaps if Shearer had gone to The Red Scum declaring that he wanted to win medals & further his football career then we might be able to empathise with the Leeds fans. But he didn't.

Shearer wanted to join Man Ure for those very reasons. Uncle Jack wouldn't allow him to move to OT and back at the time Newcastle were a viable looking alternative in that respect.

Looking at it from a neutral standpoint, still very harsh on Smith. Leeds wanted to sell him far more than he wanted to leave and given a free choice where would you expect him to go, to one of the two clubs where he's guaranteed to regularly win things or somewhere else?

Of course if I was a Leeds fan I'd be hugely brassed off and wish he'd gone anywhere else but.

Perderson's club are obviously angling for more dosh to release him immediately with this "We want to keep him until the end of the season" line.

It depends how good Rovers think he is. If we really think he's that good then there should be few qualms about signing him up now for £1.5m and allowing him to arrive in October or whenever.

Then he can be patient and await his chance behind Douglas.

Good signings (seriously) IMO

Hypia £2.6m

Henchoz £3.5m (though personally I'm not a particular fan)

Riise £4m

Kirkland £6m

Kewell £5m

Possibly Finnan £3.5m Total: £24.6m

add Homegrown Owen, Gerrard, Murphy, Carragher and one or two lads from Melwood and bingo you've saved over £90m!.

Is this football management lark really THAT difficult?

The thing that got on my nerves about Houllier was that he always insinuated anyone who criticised his record was in some ways a traitor and not a true supporter of the club.

Mottman if you see this thread what do you reckon?

He had to go really. They've gone backwards since winning the 3 cups in 2001. When you look at all of his signings, it's a wonder it's taken so long.....

Jan 1999: Jean-Michel Ferri from Istanbulspor £1.5m

Jan 1999: Frode Kippe from Lillestrom £700,000

Jan 1999: Rigobert Song from Salernitana £2.7m

Feb 1999: Djimi Traore from Laval £550,000

May 1999: Sami Hyypia from Willem II £2.6m

Jun 1999: Titi Camara from Marseille £2.8m

Jun 1999: Stephane Henchoz from Blackburn £3.5m

Jun 1999: Sander Westerveld from Vitesse Arnhem £4m

Jul 1999: Dietmar Hamann from Newcastle £8m Jul 1999: Vladimir Smicer from Lens £4m

Mar 2000: Emile Heskey from Leicester £11m

Jun 2000: Bernard Diomede from Auxerre £3m

Jul 2000: Nick Barmby from Everton £6m

Aug 2000: Christian Ziege from Middlesbrough £5.5m

Sep 2000: Gregory Vignal from Montpellier £500,000

Nov 2000: Daniel Sjolund from West Ham £1m

Dec 2000: Igor Biscan from Dynamo Zagreb £5.5m

Jun 2001: John Arne Riise from Monaco £4m

Aug 2001: Milan Baros from Banik Ostrava £3.4m

Aug 2001: Jerzy Dudek from Feyenoord £4.85m

Aug 2001: Chris Kirkland from Coventry £6m

Sep 2001: Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama Pongolle from Le Havre £6m

Jan 2002: Abel Xavier from Everton £800,000

Jun 2002: El-Hadji Diouf from Lens £10m

Jul 2002: Bruno Cheyrou from Lille £3.7m

Aug 2002: Salif Diao from Sedan £5m

Jul 2003: Steve Finnan from Fulham £3.5m

Jul 2003: Harry Kewell from Leeds £5m

£15m for Diouf and Diao - ouch!

Who the hell is Diomede? Does he even exist?

If Liverpool could tempt O'Neill down you could see them becoming a real force again.

I reckon next to go will be Sir Bobby who seems to be similarly going backwards at a rate of knots at Newcastle.