RevidgeBlue

Well it's 15,004 now, just ordered my tickets at tea time. At £45 a throw thank goodness I'm only paying for my own ticket. How anyone can possibly criticise say a family of 4 for not going and paying full whack for the kids is beyond me.

I was with you in not being an admirer of Matteo, but I feel he's played very well in the last three games. This topic should be divided into two categories: "Worst value for money" Davies and Grabbi out on their own with "Bad back" Dahlin deserving of an honourable mention. "Worst player" The likes of John O Mara, and Paul Mckinnon that I've seen.

Well ok, perhaps you're in "pedantic moderators mode" this afo. By "last couple of seasons" I meant last season and the first 32 games of this 38 game season. OK?

Hopefully Saturday's match provided a few selection headaches of the right kind for Mark Hughes ahead of Saturday's semi final. BTW we've been grinding out results but Saturday's second half was the first passage of REALLY ENJOYABLE FOOTBALL AT EWOOD for a long long time. Let's keep it up!. I thought Thompson was again completely lost even prior to his injury. By contrast when he came on Emerton put in his first really worthwhile shift in a Rovers shirt since the opening day of last season against Wolves. Amazing what the prospect of a Cup semi final can do to your performance level. On that form he'd be a real threat. Similarly in the middle Tugay was sensational when he came on, the player of two or three seasons ago albeit against a beaten and demoralised side. On the basis that you need to find something a bit special when you play a team like the Arse, do you give Tugay the nod? Alongside him a fully fit Savage as opposed to Flitcroft is a no brainer but do you risk throwing the former straight in after a prolonged absence? Reid must be one of the first names on the team sheet in his current form and was my mom on Saturday. Personally I tend towards the view that Mokoena is so effective in the defensive midfield role, playing the far less influential Flitcroft in a similar role is surplus to requirements. Could you even say the same to a lesser degree about Savage? Up front Stead has looked far livelier and likely to find the net than Dickov in recent weeks. Will he be given a fair chance on Saturday? Quite nice questions to ponder all in all after the last couple of seasons.

I wouldn't say the the footballing bubble has quite burst tnr and Paul but it definitely has a slow puncture. (For many of the reasons you've mentioned.) Having by far the smallest geographical fan base this impacts on us harder than "Bigger" clubs. Read somewhere over the weekend that the Taylor report recommended at the time that a fair price for a ticket in an all seater stadium would be five or six quid. Allowing for inflation that would be ten or eleven quid. That said, if we'd played the whole season under Hughes and his backroom staff and in current form, would any of us be bemoaning the state of the game in general? I think not!

Two points and closing. To paraphrase a former Newcastle manager: I'D LUV IT, LUV IT IF WE FINISHED ABOVE THEM!

Not anywhere near as limited as Dickov who yet again was very poor yeterday IMO. His sole worthwhile contribution was doing very well to keep the ball in play in the 91st minute. Stead played far better at Goodison and Anfield than Dickov has for several months now. Yet all the more senior player has to do is run around ferociously for most of the match and can do no wrong in many people's eyes

Play the ball into the corners, pull the other one it usually ends up in row 16. Athletic certainly and quite effective bombing forward. That apart he seems incapable of passing the ball to a blue and white shirt. More importantly he has no defensive positional sense at all and has played abysmally for a season and a half. Anything over £2m and we should snap the buyers hand off. (Or if you're reading this Graeme, you're quite right he is the best right back in the league and should be worth at least £6m more of Newcastle's dosh.)

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.