RevidgeBlue

It was rocking towards the end!

Fantastic night all round. Good performance, we were never in any real danger, and Sparky obviously thinks we can make a real impact this year. I was just thinking Bentley had had a poor first half with his delivery and he screams goal of the season in. Excellent crowd for a televised game with no away following - obviously only superstella's mates didn't turn up. Ooijer got the Peter Jackson mom award but I thought Emerton walked it. MGP had a scintillating second half which makes you wonder why he looks like he's never seen a football before when he's off his game. The most important thing was that there was a real feel good factor at the ground again for the first time this season. Edit: Oh and walked into the Pub after the game and Howard Walker was with Angus loughran aka statto of Fantasy Football League fame. Quite surreal.

It's not "the truth" it's only your opinion! I repeat, if someone has bought a season ticket and chooses not to go tonight that's their prerogative, no-one else's. In exactly the same way if they've bought a season ticket, and choose not to attend a particular League game that's their choice as well! What are you going to do, put them up against a wall and shoot them?

What a pile of crap, if anyone has bought a season ticket then it's entirely their prerogative whether they turn up tonight or not. Personally I find it slightly strange that someone might not take advantage of a free game, and I wouldn't dream of doing that personally but not everyone's the same. In the general scheme of things, would we take an extra 5k season ticket holders who however opted not to go tonight - you bet we would. There will be some people for whom it is genuinely inconvenient being on a Thursday evening but I expect those fans and those who can't be bothered going to be in a relative minority. If the gate is around the 12k or 13k mark i'll be the first to admit it's a poor turn out but let's put the usual self flagellation routine on hold until we know what the actual attendance is! It may not sound much but a gate of around 20,000 would be a huge result for Rovers tonight - about 8,000 walk ons or in other words about 5000 more walk ons than for the City game. Or in percentage terms an increase of of 166%. P.S. The Telegraph aren't exactly helping, no mention of cheap tickets in today's 3 page Euroopean review but a section headed "Rovers hit big screens" highlighting the fact we're on British Eurosport.

Everyone seems to have very low esteem on here. Whilst we are in the Premiership we are not a small club we are a big club in a small town. No shame in that whatsoever nor in not being able to attract 40,000 gates. Our six fingered rivals from a bygone era down the M65 falll into the "small club" category. And for the sake of argument a club like Wycombe are a smaller club still.

If my memory serves me correctly Kinghorn first appeared briefly on Talksport as a spokesman for one of the internet betting firms (Blue Square?) and to be fair, he was very impressive in that capacity. He must have impressed sufficiently to earn a presenting slot. But I agree with everyone else. He's a very poor presenter. Mike Parry and Adrian Durham can just about get away with adopting an outrageously daft point of view in order to encourage a lively response. Kinghorn can't, he comes across as much too intense and seemingly takes himself far too seriously. Not keen on Graham Beecroft on Brazil's show either. Sounds like he's been to the Alan Partridge school of presenting. Brazil and Mike Parry were very good together. My favourites are Hawksbee and Jacobs. I find them absolutely hilarious. Yet if one of them is off and someone else stands in with the other it just doesn't work at all.

I hope it's a bumper gate on Thursday night, not only to help the team, but also to deliver a fatal kick in the knackers to the "We must charge 36 quid a ticket to maximise revenue" policy.

This game could make or break our season imo. It would be heartbreaking to crash out of the competition before it even really starts and see all last season's good work go to waste. There's every possibility it would halt our mini league revival in it's tracks as well. Conversely qualifying for the group stages and being in the competition for a sustained period raises our profile on a different level. (Hopefully West Ham will be knocked out as well.) Don't care what the result is as long as we play reasonably well and go through. I can easily see it being an extremely nervous performance and 1-1 draw. Phew!

OK, so same question in reverse, if you think kids in those areas wouldn't support Blackburn Rovers, (I'm talking about grabbing them from the cradle here) why would they support say Lancashire United?

It's a tad premature to label him "prolific" or "the signing of the season" but so far I like the look of Nonda. His bustling style makes him the perfect foil for McCarthy who occasionally doesn't look the most physically committed of players. And unlike his predecessors in the "nuisance" role, Dickov and Kuqi, he appears to possess a modicum of technical ability. Which is nice.

Don't understand the point of this debate at all Gordon. If a new generation of kids could theoretically be persuaded to follow Lancashire United - why couldn't they be persuaded to follow Blackburn Rovers in the Premiership? What's the difference, apart from the fact we would be in a much stronger position - being there already? Why would Blackburn Rovers be any less successful theoretically IF we had the financial support and charisma of "a new Jack Walker " leading the charge?. (Something we're lacking at the moment admittedly.) Still 6th isn't too shabby, thanks to the skills of Mark Hughes and his coachng staff.

A stoutly blue and white tinted defence of the defence Tris. I saw the game live on ART and we still don't look anything like the part in central defence. As several others have said, we gifted two one on ones to Boro in the first half when the centre backs went AWOL and parted like the Red Sea. One to Euell and one to Yakubu. And should have gone in at HT 1-2 down. Other than that I thought both full backs played well, Savage was immense, Tugay was poor again, MGP and Bentley were disappointing and the front two did pretty well having to feed off scraps. We also played dominated possession in the second half without managing to kill off a desperately poor Boro side. We seem to be gradually improving but I think we might have got lucky in playing two extremely poor sides on the day in the last couple of games. Time will tell but in the meantime no-one can complain about six points out of six no matter how convincingly they were gained. Three points against Wigan, who again are no great shakes, and it'll be a decent enough tally despite a shocking start.

Newell was shown the programme during which there were two distinctly dodgy agents who featured prominently, black guys one based in London, one in France. They insinuated there would be seven or eight Premiership managers who would be interested in taking bungs. Newell excitedly identified one of them, the one based in London I think as being someone who had offered him money.

Enjoyed the clip of Gartside desperately trying to offload Okocha whilst publically insisting he wasn't for sale. And I bet you thought you could trust everything all Chief Executives said!. Otherwise the show was fairly disappointing,with no actual evidence of any wrongdoing uncovered at all save for Allardyce's gormless son (who reminded me of Peter Kay in a docuspoof) allegedly receiving irregular payments from the odious prat who apparently represents Todd and Neill. No surprise Neill is playing silly buggers with that guy "advising" him and receiving 150k upwards for the privilege if the player does move. The bit about Kevin Bond apparently proposing that Portsmouth deal only with the fictitious sting corporation on the right financial terms also struck a chord given that a certain ex manager of ours primarily seemed to have transfer dealings with one particular agent - Willie Mckay..................... There but for the grace of god etc.

It was one of those games where the ends justify the means and we were much improved in the second half after Sparky apparently gave the players the hairdryer treatment at half time. It's difficult to say how much we can read into it though, in the first half we were abysmal and could easily have gone in 5-2 down. And City are an awful side. Defensively we have real problems. I agree with Den, we need to go back to basics. Last season we had a really solid back line - Neill Todd Nelsen Gray. Now, only one of those changes is enforced, I would stay with three of the original guys and simply slot Zurab in for Nelsen. Or arguably Neill in for Nelsen and Emerton at RB. There's no need to change all four positions around. In midfield Tugay was so ineffective because he was playing way way too deep, picking the ball up off the centre half"s toes and then being forced to play a 40 or 50 yard ball in order to try and find a man. He should be dictating play from the centre circle or in the first twenty yards of the opponent's half. Up front McCarthy looked completely disinterested first half, and Jeffers completely out of his depth. Every time we got the ball the two of them moved in diverging directions! The introduction of Nonda was a big improvement in the second half sparking a much more enthusiastic performance out of McCarthy, and Nonda put himself about to great effect, big strong and a definite threat. Other positives, excellent performance from Mokoena, looked really fired up for it, and as if he really wanted to impress. Good performance from Savage - he was the only one who turned up in the first half - a much improved performance from MGP - even disregarding the goals - and a stunning execution from Gallagher to a difficult knee high volley. Much improvement still to be made but we did at least show signs for the first time this season after we went 3-2 up that we still remember how to play football.

Calm down SG. Both Rovers and City fans voting with their feet on the ludicrous A+ pricing policy today. If that ends up in it being scrapped for next season, some good has come out of it.

Although to be fair he'd apparently been dropped because he'd been so poor in his first two games.

Just seen Pabby's excellent video (thanks) and don't know about Lucas for the second but it was shocking defending from Zurab for the first. A carbon copy of the first half at Bramall Lane on Saturday when he let Hulse in for what should have been a goal. BTW who was that blonde guy who looked a bit like Savage striking in a free kick like Ronaldinho? Anything Dinnis says has to be taken with a barrowload of salt given his appalling spell as caretaker boss of Rovers in the lofty heights of the old 3rd division c73-74. !!

Maybe not but if he is being realistic he can\t expect anything else. Portsmouth apart I don't think he's been too bad this season but I think he's even less naturally suited to LB than RB. In the absence of Nelsen I'd personally go with Emerton Neill Todd Gray. PS Sorry for straying miles off topic.

Yes he has, he's refused to sign a new contract thereby denying us a realistic fee now, or anything at all in 12 months time. His prerogative entirely, but why should the fans be behind it?

Neill can't really expect anything more or less until he shows his commitment to the club by signing a new contract.

Re: the supposed TV coverage - the Hordens were advertising it outside as being shown. I went early doors to check and was told "Yep it's definitely on - we had a new box put in today specially." By about 7.40 about 300 people had descended and they attempted to switch from Terrestrial coverage of the Spurs game to Salzburg. The game was clearly listed as being shown on an ART premium channel but for whatever reason the signal was shown as scrambled. The landlord complained about them being 500 quid out of pocket (which they weren't because of the number of people buying at least one drink and buggering off) EDIT: Think the Pub was making a bona fide attempt to show the game, either someone cocked up or they were misinformed by the people installing the box.

I'm sure we'd all have settled for 2-2 before the game but without wishing to state the bleedin' obvious it's extremely disappointing not to win once you get to 2-1 up with a couple of minutes to go. Still, nothing worse than a 1-1 draw in 2 weeks time will still see us through.

So from ourselves and Bolton's point of view it's a bloody good job Sky and the Premier League bung us nearly 30m p.a. isn't it? We have to thank Uncle Jack for getting us there in the first place, but I have to repeat what I've said previously. We've never had it so good.

Hee hee, nice to be called a "youngster" these days Fife. Great post, if you as someone who was there in the flesh were enthralled by footie in the 40's and 50's then good on you that's all that matters. As someone who didn't see it I tend to be sceptical when I see footage of say Sir Stan skipping past a tackle on the halfway line and being clear through on goal! As for the sixties, well purely from a Rovers perspective, they were disastrous. On the flip side we saw the worst aspect of the modern game in the Arsenal Champions League tie last night. The Werder Bremen keeper makes a legitimate attempt to get the ball and Van Persie COULD have stayed on his feet and attempted to turn the ball in from a tight angle but in reality he'd pushed the ball that bit too far. So he deliberately left his trailing leg in there for the faintest of contact and just in case the ref was in any doubt twisted round violently sideways as if he'd been poleaxed. To award a penalty was harsh in itself but he also managed to get the poor bloke send off thereby effectively ending the game as a spectacle and a contest. Not good.