He's already ruled that out. I'm thinking it has to be a situation where teams are scoring own goals. There doesn't seem to be any other way. I know there have been stuations in which teams have intentionally scored own goals. It doesn't really seem to make sense though, please put us out of our misery.

Dickov?

Lawro has predicted us to lose again, so some good news there. The BBC match preview also includes this: "BLACKBURN ROVERS lost ground midweek in the race with north London duo Spurs and Arsenal for the much coveted fourth place, when held to a one-all draw with Wigan at Ewood Park. A controversial late equaliser from sub Shefki Kuqi ensuring they took something out of the game." Someone explain to me how we lost ground on a team that lost and on a team that didn't play by picking up a point?

Own goals?

I'll also throw my name into the hat if you are looking to see things in and around London. Guildford won't be useful to getting to Blackburn, but I don't know what the rest of your plans are.

I actually think this has been a great season for United. True they performed poorly in the first half of the season, but now things have really turned around. A massive sponsorship deal, a trophy (even if it would have been their last choice) and they are now everyone's second club (I'm sure that isn't true for everyone but you know what I mean). It hasn't brought the success on the pitch they might have wanted but I think the club image has really done well in the past few months. Their total failings in the first half of the season have enabled them to win the hearts of a lot of people.

The opposition didn't show up and the match was forfeited, with the score being 3-0. It has happened to us, against Forrest wasn't it?

Canaries (Norwich)...I think

Yes, but that's also the Chelsea team totally out of form and struggling to beat poor Premiership opposition. You have to look at the form, more than position of the club. Arsenal are in a form that is better than the 5th place they currently occupy, but Juventus are also still in good form in the league. There is no doubting for me that the premiership is better than Serie A which somehow manages to maintain this sense of glory despite the fact that all they do is sit off of each other and wait until someone can score, if that even does happen. If you look at how the three Italian teams performed in these quarter finals you'll see that it does give a pretty good reflection. You can outwork them and create chances fairly easily. The only shame was that Lyon decided to sit back when you could and should have killed the game off.

Does this include own goals? Then it could be someone like Hendry.

I'm guessing the answer the second question is Nottingham Forrest? Not sure though. Might be something important about the use of the word British though. As for the first part, are you including things like City, United, Rovers?

One of the worst articles I have read in a long time. Shearer wasn't perfect and certainly isn't of the style of Rooney or Henry, but he is, or at least was, a very fine footballer.

I'm not sure what happens in that scenario. I don't know for certain whether the UEFA cup winner is guaranteed their own seperate spot or if they take it from the league, if they take it from the league then Boro winning the UEFA cup would mean that they take 6th spot qualification away and then by making the Cup final they would effectively give it back, if you see what I mean. However, if there is a place put aside for the winner then yes, Boro winning the UEFA cup and making the final would see the top 7 qualify. Yes, we would also be guaranteed of an intertoto place if we finished 7th but I was looking at the possibility for direct qualification for the UEFA cup, I very much doubt that we could mess up our remaining fixtures so much that we could not qualify for at least the intertoto, it would simply be a nice thing to avoid.

Also, another interesting landmark to pass in comparison to that season is the number of goals we have scored. That season is often rememberd as one where we saw Rovers playing wonderful attacking football with the likes of Duff, Dunn, Jansen and Cole playing some of their best stuff. That year we scored 52 goals, we have currently scored 43 with 6 games to play there is no doubting that we could still pass that tally as well.

There is no way that 7th spot will see us qualify for the UEFA cup.

No. Manchester United winning the Champions League pushed UEFA cup qualification down to 6th. It's only when the FA Cup final is contested between two sides that have qualified for europe through the league that the top 7 all make europe. I have to say the longer this goes on the more it starts to confuse me, but I'm pretty sure that is right.

Anytime.

No. If Arsenal win the champions league then 4th spot is now a UEFA cup spot if they don't make the top 4. As long as they make the top 6, which they will, then 6th spot will certainly be a UEFA cup spot, it could only not be if they let's say finished 7th and won the champions league. Then 4th and 5th would be UEFA cup spots and 7th is now a champions league spot. I'm not sure how clear that it is now that you read it, but basically Arsenal winning the champions league will only matter to us if we finish fourth.

What is nice about that run of fixtures is thay maybe now we could get to a point where Bolton could help us out in that game against Spurs. This is a very big weekend for us. I also can't help but feel that Birmingham winning tonight improves our chances at Portsmouth. Portsmouth were on the crest of a wave and had pretty much everything going their way, this may have given them a slight knock to see close rivals pick up an unexpected three points.

Well. With them losing then I'd take our draw. Overall the two days have gone quite well for us. They can't overtake us now so if we wan't to stay in the top 6 all we have to do is get better results. Finally it is entirely in our own hands...why am I more worried?

Darren Royle?

Yeah it is.

I agree T4E. That's why I think even though the decisions probably evened themselves out we can feel really hard done by. I don't think we would have given up the lead and would probably have gone on to score more.

Correct

Whoops...he scored the first...ok who scored the first goal of the new millenium?