RevidgeBlue

Not sure about that Gordon, most people remember him now obviously for his contribution to the 86 and 90 World Cups, but in my view he was much more at his managerial peak during his time at Ipswich (69-82 apparently.) What a side that was, one of the best two or three sides in England and indeed Europe consistently year in year out. George Burley was on the radio yesterday saying he only had to sign about 14 players for money over 12 years, because their youth policy was so incredibly successful. He also recalled how Robson managed to get 400,000 from Arsenal for Brian Talbot and brought in Muhren and Thyjssen (sp?) for 350k!! Anyhow regardless of how good a manager he was or wasn't it was far more important ultimately he was such a gentleman and had such class. The radio was inundated with people ringing in yesterday who'd written to Robson and without exception they'd received handwritten replies. Can you imagine that nowadays?

The situation Lucash finds himself in now at West Ham is completely different to the one he was in at Rovers. If West Ham were insane enough to offer him (say) 70k per week originally then even I couldn't necessarily blame him for refusing to accept a new deal on reduced terms of (say) 48k p.w. If it was however a similar situation to that at Rovers and he was snubbing the offer of a contract extension on the same or improved terms in the belief he could command an even greater amount again as a free agent, then he would deserve every bit of villification going from the West Ham fans. Just as he deserves it from Blackburn fans for his conduct here.

Shows how good Hiddink is tactically. He got his tactics bob on and made Barca look decidedly average over their two legs.

I'm not an Ooijer fan ability wise but there's no comparison whatsoever between Ooijer and Neill. Ooijer has never been a regular first team choice for us, but got on with it and didn't complain, is coming to the end of his career, probably didn't have much on the table from us due to his age, and had one last chance to return home. Neill, due to the lack of competition for his place was always considered a key member of the side, yet snubbed various contract offers. He was even handed the captain's armband by Hughes but chucked that back in everyone's face.

That's why I also think that in reality it's a non starter for us Eddie. Anyone going in for him would probably get him at a substantial discount to the 5.8m Newcastle paid for him, but I still reckon they'll have to pay him a very handsome wage indeed. In relation to the latest incident I can't help but feel Newcastle are looking for a scapegoat to divert attention from their predicament/and/or are looking for an excuse to shed a high earner from the wage bill bearing in mind their impending relegation. I've heard several people on the radio suggesting that had it been Ferguson or Wenger dealing with it, they'd have pretended not to have seen it or publicly supported the player then dealt with the discipline side internally and kept it all inhouse. There might be some truth in that. I wonder who leaked the details of the post match row between Barton and Shearer? If it wasn't the Club themselves trying to ease Barton out, then the player wot did it is even more culpable than Barton imo.

Well yes, I'd think he would be a good signing if there were pretty stringent safeguards in place from our point of view. Whether we could actually get those safeguards put in and Barton would agree to them as well as a pay cut is another matter entirely. Thoughts that he might be prepared to agree to agree to a "pay as you play deal" for example is completely pie in the sky imo. If Sam could somehow pull the deal off on terms acceptable to us I'd be more than prepared to back his judgement on it. I'd far rather we made a risky signing like Barton with massive scope for improvement than a "one last payday" signing with zero scope for improvement like Viduka.

1) Is he better than what we've got already? - By some distance. 2) If we were to sign him, does he deserve a clean slate based on what he actually does here? - Imo yes. 3) Can we afford his wages? Very doubtful. 4) All things taken into consideration, does he represent too much of a gamble? Imo yes. Can you imagine if he was our main summer signing on top wages (for us) and got himself sent down again?

As Barton is reportedly on about 65k p.w. at Newcastle I would have thought this is just a bit of lazy journalism - simply linking him to Sam. Can't see there's a cat in hell's chance of us actually signing him.

Quite unlike your response, obviously.

Usually agree with AESF's essays but tend to agree with you here Hughesey!. If Shearer can focus on Barton's latest indiscretion it deflects attention from his questionable contribution as managerso far.

Well done Sam. So basically we've had about a 2-3 week window around Christmas out of Benni this season when he's been at an acceptable level of fitness. Wonder how much he's earnt the rest of the time. Pity we can't dock his wages - it's a pretty fundamental breach of contract.

Hope you're right, and maybe he has matured to the point whereby he realises "only" drawing 30 kp.w. at a midtable Prem League side with a nice working environment (assuming we survive) isn't such a bad old gig after all. I still find it hard to forgive him taking until Christmas to get fully fit though.

Nice words from Benni although based on his track record I do feel he is being a little hypocritical, I reckon he'd have his bags packed faster than most if one of the "big 4" or Citeh/Villa/Spurs/Newcastle came in for him. Benni in the shape and form he was in against Citeh is a huge asset. Trouble is, does anyone have any real confidence he'll reproduce it week in week out? I don't and I'm afraid I'm starting to have similar reservations about Roque. Thing is though in the Premiership you need players with real talent if you're going to make a decent fist of it, especially when you're playing the top sides.

What Abbey said. It was unforgiveable for him to come back from pre season in that shape. Half the season's gone and it's only now he's properly fit. He was superb on Saturday and I look forward to more of the same, but after eighteen months of underperformance he'll have to do that a lot more consistently before I start singing his name from the rooftops again. Sam actually did make a point of saying in his post match Radio Rovers interview that getting Benni back to his best of two seasons ago was going to be one of his main priorities.

Imo it would be folly to take out our best centre half in the hope he can fill another position.

Most people seem to think we need a right back?

That's a cracking idea in principle, but is only workable in practice if Rovers themselves are entirely comfortable with the idea of a fan giving his own independent opinion which, if it is to be of any value, might not always be entirely complimentary on occasion.

Very surprising news about Andy Neild. I always thought his match reports were quite good, and nowhere near as poor in comparison to Peter White's as people make out. However I also thought that under him the LT coverage of Rovers generally was far too bland and non controversial to be really interesting. No doubt for reasons Ive already outlined above. Difficult to give someone a match rating of 3/10 and accuse them of not trying when you might be coming face to face with them at Brockhall on Monday morning! Nonetheless, I would have thought he was one of the few, if not the only person holding up the Rovers end of things on the LT sportsdesk and If you thought the Rovers coverage left something to be desired under him, god knows what it will be like if the likes of Gavin Gibbon or Gary York get the gig. Wonder if Suzanne Geldard has been lined up for it?

Paul Plunkett is still there as far as I know. Going back to to the original topic of the thread, to be fair to Andy Neild, although it appears on the surface that the LT don't have any original contacts at all, he probably has to be extremely careful what he writes or he probably wouldn't be allowed over the threshold at the training ground. When I was at the LT Andy Neild's Burnley counterpart was a really nice guy called Matt Horne (the guy with the hat) and Stan Ternent was so impossible to work with, he was always banning him from the training ground for writing the most innocuous of things. To such an extent he had a hard job getting ANYONE from the club to give him a quote over the phone. One of the times Matt had merely written about being interested in a transfer target and possibly releasing a couple of players.

I thought the LT was extremely naughty today. The back page carried a large banner headline and picture of Roque proclaiming: [size=7]"Roque absent as pre-season starts"[/size] p22 The inference being there's something untoward in that and he's off. Of course when you turn to page 22 it's simply because he's been given extra time off. I always thought years ago when I penned "A Roverall View" that Andy Neild apart, there was a real anti Rovers bias on the LT sportsdesk and more recently I've noticed that Andy Neild seems to have Mondays off. The pieces written in his absence by the likes of Gavin Gibbon and Gary York invariably seem to belittle Rovers.

I don't recall Neill beng that up front and honest wth the club, merely pontificating for ages that he wanted to "keep his options open" eventually leaving the club with no option but to offload him for a nominal fee in January. Completely irrelevant to Bentley's situation anyway.

I bet you wouldn't dare call him "metrosexual" to his face though!

Short was a great player for us. Wouldn't class Dickov as good though.

No, SG, completely disagree, still gutted, like the Man City chief executive said today I think we have just lost the brightest young manager in the game. Well done the Trustees - take a bow. Still spilt milk and all that. We've got to do the best we can with the next appointment. I think it doesn't really matter who comes in in the sense that they're liable to struggle unless a sensible transfer budget is arrived at. That's at least as important as the identity of the new man imo. Just hoping lack of funding doesn't prevent an exciting appointment. Wonder if we'll see the mooted 10m pre sale transfer kitty disappear into the ether now?

Bulimia?...................The only thing that fella looks like he's ever suffered from is an over active knife and fork.