They're only 4 points behind (??) and there's still plenty of points to play for. Norwich don't have to win it One thing we have to say though - losing it would be a big blow for us and swing momentum and confidence Norwich's way. A draw might suit both teams.

Like our many defeats we were often over-run in midfield yesterday and shows a signing like O'Brien was badly needed. The failure to sign such a player and of course the lack of options up front could yet cost us a playoff place. Similar to last year, the lack of transfer business in January could be our undoing Norwich is important because we must not lose it. A win would be great but losing to the team to below us would be a big blow from which we might not recover.

edit- wrong thread

Third division fixture Avoid

Great news I'm hearing on the grapevine that Rovers owners Venkys are close to a deal to sell the club. Talks have been ongoing for several months and an agreement was finalised this week with an announcement scheduled for Monday morning. The deal includes all the debt and the chicken farming conglomerate will cut all ties with the club after more than 12 tumultuous years. The possible bad news The buyers for Rovers are Butterball, one of America’s most iconic brands and best known for its turkeys and turkey products, which it sells around the world. Butterball is headquartered in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area. Butterball, led by CEO Kerry Doughty who has connections in the area Lancashire going back to the 1850s, are said to keen to follow other US corporate investors into the English football market and see Rovers as the ideal club to further their ambitions. So there it is. That's all I know and while many Rovers fans will be greatly relieved to see the departure of the Indian owners there will be some trepidation at the prospect of another unknown foreign buyer taking over. I would say however that the information comes from a reliable sauce

Ayala will probably be put out to grass in the summer. Fine player but I don’t think we need him in the squad now. Shame about Brereton - he’s been coming back into form recently and I’d prefer him over Dolan. I’m feeling optimistic about tomorrow - usually a bad sign

You are joking? The lad hit a brilliant strike into the top corner. In fact, there's not many goalkeepers in the world who would have stopped it It would be incredibly harsh on Pears if he were dropped. Has he made a mistake? I can think of one maybe since he came in but he's done little wrong otherwise, whereas Kaminski has cost us quite a few goals this season and looked lacking in confidence before he went out of the side Dependent on form the rule is you play your best XI but I'd say it's a toss-up between Pears and Kaminski as to which is the better of the two. Pears certainly is better at playing the ball around at the back - which is a key part of our game

Staggering. I remember a defeat at Reading (we always lose there when I go) and he was all over the place - he made John Filan look world class. I couldn't understand how he had made it in the professional game.

I remember the old stand burning down. Most of the Lancashire town clubs rallied round with offers of help including Rovers but the so-called "big" clubs in Manchester and Liverpool said nothing.

Yes, agree. And what a good replacement he would have been for Shearer compared to the likes of Blake and Ward

You don't win 62 England caps and play about 150 games and scoring 40 goals for Liverpool by being "shit"

Pears's distribution is better than Kaminski's too. Pears doesn't deserve to be dropped and is entitled to feel cheesed off if he were.

Confession time ...... this information came from Heskey himself By chance I met Heskey at the weekend when he told me that Rovers tried to sign him. Rovers offered £1 million, which Leicester accepted, but he decided to stay at his home town club because he felt he was too young at 16 to make the move. Fair enough. He went on to have a wonderful career (he's 45 now and coaching the women and kids at Leicester) during which he made more than 600 league appearances scoring 130 goals, and won 62 England caps - which he's rightly very proud of (have to say it came as a surprise that he won so many) But it got me thinking. If Heskey had joined Rovers in early 1994, is it likely that we would then have gone out and signed Chris Sutton in July of that year - at £5 million the most expensive player in English football at the time - and might the title-winning SAS strike partnership of Shearer and Sutton never have existed? Would it have been Heskey and Shearer - or HASH? It's more likely Rovers wanted him for his future potential rather than go straight in the first team but we did miss out by not signing him because when Shearer left we would have had a top-class ready-made replacement.

I learnt at the weekend that Rovers had an offer accepted for Emile Heskey in early 1994 when he was just 16 and had yet to make his first-team debut for Leicester City If that's common knowledge I'll hold my hands up and admit I'd never heard it before but it was certainly news to me

They're pussies compared to the Italian players of the 1970s. They went on the field with broken bottles in their shorts and hit themselves in the face to get opposition players sent off. The 1960s Italian players carried violin cases on to the pitch. Just ask Cloughie about cheating Italians in the European Cup when he was Derby manager.

It was downright dangerous. We were sat safely in the Nuttall Street stand but I can still see the crowd on the Riverside now swaying back and forth. It only needed one of those barriers to collapse

Is it? They haven't qualified for the past two World Cups and Italy's Euro 2020 triumph (England's abysmal failure) cannot be framed as anything other than an anomaly, one made all the more unbelievable by Serie A's struggles to remain relevant in continental competition. No Italian team has won a major European triumph since Jose Mourinho's Inter lifted the Champions League in 2010 and the golden years of Serie A are long gone because of incompetence, corruption, gross financial mismanagement and a lack of foresight Mancini has questioned why Italian clubs never picked up the likes of Gnoto (sp?) at Leeds and Sacchi said that "Italian football suffers from cultural backwardness, There are no new ideas. Other nations are evolving but we are stuck 60 years in the past. The problem here is institutional." England won in Italy for the first time in 60 years last night - that's how low Italian football has sunk. The second half revival (England sitting back as usual - memo to Gareth) offered some hope for them but, without another boom and bust scenario like 2020, I I don't see a big revival any time soon

You could say the same about Rovers away fans. All our lot sing about is Burnley and how much they "hate the Burnley b****** till my dying day". I find it all a bit pathetic to be honest Growing up in the 1960s and 70s when Burnley were the dominant team they were very much part of our lives - as anyone who attended school at the time would testify we were on the defensive most of the time. When Rovers were in the second division there was a group of us who used to go over to Turf Moor when Rovers were away to get our fix of first division football (always supporting the other team of course). I'm ambivalent towards them most of the time now - I don't like most of their fans and would always hope we crush them in derby matches but otherwise in a one to one would always back a Lancashire town club against any of the southern teams I'm not sure why the East Lancs rivalry is particularly fierce - it's been suggested it goes back to the heyday of the textile industry when the towns' factories were competing against each other for business. I don't know about that but sometimes the football rivalry goes over the top and is downright unhealthy

Far too generous No food and no drink and no toilets and lock them in for 2 hours after the final whistle By that time they should have all killed each other

Italy failed to beat North Macedonia to qualify for the last World Cup. The 2026 World Cup will feature 48 teams - will that enough to enable them to qualify for the first time in 3 attempts? There is no more damning indictment of the Italian game, which has been underperforming at both club and international level for more than a decade. Remember, it's not just that they haven't qualified for the past two World Cups; they haven't even made the knockout stage since winning the tournament in 2006, having failed to get out of their group in both 2010 and 2014. With Italy it's either boom or bust, and they're bust at the moment. A good win for England tonight but a meaningless list of players "playing regular football around Europe for the best teams" doesn't cut it I'm afraid.

By past Italian standards it's poor. Mancini was complaining in the press this week about the lack of quality home grown players in the Italian game. The failure to qualify for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups caused alot of anguish in the country and was masked by the Euro 2020 victory (which they only won because England failed to turn up in the final).

Italy have failed to qualify for two World Cups in a row Please stick to your area of expertise......Gareth Soutgate's "pumps"

It's a Middlesbrough thing.... Southgate and Mowbray from the same stable You can see why Southgate never hacked it really as a club manager.

Couldn't even qualify for the World Cup Try again

England lucky to survive that onslaught. Southgate gets so many things right, but then gets alot wrong too. First win in Italy in 60 years though, so a reason to celebrate