Nelsen called up into the NZ team to play this month If you look at the squad list you can see why an unfit Nelsen has been drafted.

This is the Guardian's Sunderland match report but in reality it is simply an article in praise of Mark Hughes

Thank you- that was just wonderful to see again.

Stiff back kept Benni out of the squad. Apparently he was watching the Academy game this morning.

Absolute MUST READ article from NZ about the admiral and all things Rovers. Yes, sure modern Premiership players are lazy....

Early days but five clubs have lower average gates than us in the Premiershipthus far. Our gate is up over 2,000 on last season's average. Seven clubs are averaging over 40,000 for home games.

Tough to call offsides to favour the attacker. This should help Benni, marginally.

Chelsea struggled to sell seats at £45 against Rosenborg so Rovers get a mauling for poor crowds.

Celtic and Rangers' turnovers fluctuate greatly with how they do in the Champions League. They have both been increasing their basic income impressively recently but if Rovers under the current media deals achieved a top 6 finish and one of the Old Firm had a season in the UEFA Cup at the same time, the respective incomes would still be pretty similar.

I believe the number now is all but 15,000 season ticket holders. I hope that last night was a function of: 1) Birmingham at home again ten days from now in a Premiership game which for ST holders is "free" ie nothing extra to pay. 2) Birmingham home being a prospect of a game at best after two sub-standard Rovers' efforts. 3) Everyone saving up their mid-week night out passes for next Thursday when the club really needs another 20,000+ crowd on to cheer the lads forward and make the difference. For what its worth, I am told by friends in Thessaloniki that every man and his dog in Larissa are scraping the readies together to be at Ewood next week and we can expect a huge outpouring of Greek national pride as every Greek waiter in the UK is trying to get the night off to be there as well! 4) It was 24 degrees and balmy here last night with everyone sat outside their front doors in shirtsleeves chatting to the neighbours. In Blackburn it wasn't.

Hughes on Dunn

Yesterday Arsenal released a staggeringly fabulous set of financial results which must have sent waves through the football world and rattled Man U, Liverpool and above all, Abramovic (Chelsea are just an appendage now). It clearly is a case of the tortoise and the hare- Arsenal have endured three relatively barren years whilst rebuilding in every sense and have re-emerged under the same corporate and managerial control as a powerhouse it is difficult to see anybody stopping in the foreseeable future. This analysis of Man U by the Arsenal Supporters' Trust shows again how weak Man U are in the longer term. Thankfully the Rovers are well-managed and in the hands of a Trust that can and will only sell when all the boxes are ticked.

The way Pompey play, this is a fixture Benni should thrive in. Any sign of a Pompey preview?

I think speeedie has made some excellent points. I find Benni one of the most likeable personalities in modern football- the guy just tells it as he sees it in a very engaging way (even when he wanted to jump ship) and no doubt if that impression is true to life it explains why he is so popular with the players. Will be interesting to see how Roque and Benni click on Thursday. I think they have the potential to be the best Rovers forward partnership since the SAS (and we know those two didn't get on) and I think it is only a matter of time before they combine to give some unfortunate defence an absolute thrashing. Incidentally, Derbs would have got no change whatsoever out of Chelsea on Saturday. Roque is probably just about as quick as Matty and the only runs he got with the ball were on the touchline.

There's a very readable piece on the official site of Brad paying tribute to what Sparky is achieving.

Article about Benni from a Chelsea perspective- it says a lot of nice things about rovers as well.

Rovers promoting the game to the Pompey fans.

Here's hoping Mark Hughes celebrates the third anniversary of his appointment in the style he will want to- a win at Chelsea. I was in the Yes camp and now he is Yes- the first and only choice! He is that good.

I watched Slovakia beat France in a friendly recently and they were a tidy outfit. Remarkable result for Wales- didn't Slovakia win 5-0 in Cardiff recently?

That is true- 13/17 October is an international break as is 17/21 November so looks like (hopefully) nicko's chums got it wrong. Just hope Air NZ do the decent and give him a full length flat bed otherwise he's going to be cream crackered when he gets back.

If neither South Africa nor Samba's Congo go to the African Nations, that is a fantastic afternoon for the Rovers. Keeping fingers crossed that this is the outcome!

Glazers quick to rebuff the independent supporters' claims.

The Independent Man U Supporters' Trust has calculated that the cost of servicing the Glazer debt has now soared to £100m per year.

Yes I do. It is no different from Government doing the same with tobacco for which the cold facts are: - removes ten years' high quality of life ON AVERAGE from every user - will kill more people in the next twenty years than were killed by the Second World War and Stalin combined I would far rather have Government raking the profits than the Taliban, Yardies, UDA, IRA, Mafia and street gangs making billions. I want to see a 10% drop (at least) in most other forms of crime because there are no longer desperate people trying to find cash to pay criminals. I want to see insurance premiums go down. I do not want to see drug users in jail because it is completely bonkers putting them there. Some of the money raised by could be used to fund serious rehabilitation and prevention programmes rather than the weedy efforts at present by a dedicated but vastly overwhelmed and underfunded group of people in the field. Criminalisation of drugs is zero deterrent, be it zero tolerance, cold turkey or confusion. The scenario of Government taking the profits would be a huge improvement.

That is so obviously a para- military action. Section 6 of this report gives an insight into the particular issues in Northern Ireland My case is simple- Human beings have been altering their states of consciousness since the dawn of time. Whether it is legal (alcohol) or illegal ("drugs"), it seems to be a basic human need which different individuals deal with in different ways. Some of the greatest achievements of humanity have been conceived and realised by individuals under the influence of hallucigens. They are all harmful to health to a greater or lesser degree. There is a random divide between what is societally acceptable and not and what is illegal or not. 90% of all schizophrenics are tobacco users for instance. Prohibition of alcohol in the States was a dismal failure. Prohibition of drugs is causing far greater human misery and misallocation of resources (from funding the Taliban to hoodlums operating in gangs from Belfast to Palermo to Tirana etc. to private armies in Colombia) than other means and ways of attempting to regulate and moderate drug "abuse".