Lasted fewer games than Curbishley had years. Was my marginal preference for the Ewood job last time round. Good job the Board made the choice and not me!

Manchester Evening News' verdict Just a shame that Benni's snap shot in the 95th minute was straight at van der saar rather than past him!

Neill has been pulled out of the Australian squad to face Ghana because of injury.

Interesting take by the Guardian on the differing reactions to Ronaldo from differing parts of Ewood. You could say the division is reflected in the posts on this thread as well. From an English football point of view, it is good to see that there is a real threat to Chelski and it is coming from a team that plays exhilerating football. When Ferguson signed Vidic and Evra blowing all his Glazered pocket money, I was rather puzzled but it has to be said they are excellent acquisitions which are giving a platform for the consistently brilliant performances the Mancs are producing. Now Chelsea have a real threat (and Arsenal will be in the mix for the title as well), it will be interesting to see Mourinho under pressure. The huge differences for the Mancs this season are: - Scholes back to something like his best - the fluidity Saha gives compared with RvN - above all the renaissance of Ryan Giggs who is playing better than he has done for at least five seasons. In Arsenal, the Mancs and Chelsea, the EPL probably have three of the four best club sides in the world at the moment. Good posts by YSB.

The Belgian lad won't be coming- he did his ankle ligaments late in the Cercle game this week-end and is out for several months.

One plus nobody mentioned. MGP's corners were all top class again.

We played damned well against an extremely good full strength Manc outfit considering the spine of our team was out injured. Shame we didn't nick a draw as nobody could have argued against it if we had done. There is a bit of a worrisome gap opening ahead of us but none of these 4 defeats have been of a nature which makes me worry about a relegation scrap.

I think you'll find non-travelling Season Ticket holders had a priority position but that period is now past. Feyernoord holds 51,000 and about 40,000 are expected for this game so I'd say you are pretty certain to get a ticket. If I go, it will be very much a last minute decision depending on business commitments.

The Hughes quotes make this something more than just paper talk- just! It would be a coup but so were Archibald and Ardilles. How many times have I got to write about the impact of next year's Sky deal? A top ten EPL finish and one half decent cup run will lift Rovers into about 25th place in the World Rich Club league even if supporters get in for £15.

Hugthes has said he won't loan out Matteo and Todd. However, the implication is there that they might move in January. Cannot see Gomaa for Matteo being anything other than a squad strengthening. If that leaves Nelsen, Ooijer, Gomaa, Zura and Todd (in that order probably) contesting the two central defender spots, that is exactly how it should be at a club with the target of European football every year.

Premiership Chairmen cannot block publication of Stevens' Report. I suppose the sneeking question is whether any of Souness' doings have netted Rovers in the list of 8 clubs/ 39 transfers under investigation. We should know next month.

Rovers apparently have bid £2m for Amr Zaki- the Egyptian forward. Man City, and two continental clubs are also reportedly interested. Also Reading have rejected Rovers' reported interest in Kevin Doyle.

The Stevens Enquiry presses on despite attempts by Bolton and Newcastle to stop it.

There is some real tosh being written here. Rovers did look to strengthen during the summer but not all targets came our way otherwise Gudjonsson would be leading the line. I suspect Dunn will be at Ewood in January (Brum confirmed w made a formal bid so there is no speculation about it) and that Hughes will be looking for a terrier-like back-up to Savage. He's also clearly signalling his determination to get Warlock from Liverpool as I suspect that avoiding Liverpool beating us to the £10m CL pot will be an academic issue so far as Neill leaving is concerned. Back to Ooijer- the lad is a class act and is the obvious partner for Nelsen when he returns.

"At the very highest level, strikers need to do more than just score every couple of games."

My hatred of the Mancs goes back to the early '60s. Coming from Darwen, Burnleh were not quite the object of hatred so much as the big city club at the other end of the A666. Since then we have had reffing decision after reffing decision from reffing Manc-loving referees. Cannot see us winning this one though- the Mancs will be desperate to get back to winning after the Copenhagen and Southend reverses. Rovers 2 Mancs 3 if we score from our chances.

I am not a scientist but in my view much as I hope they are right, the climate change-deniers are in the same camp as the Flat Earth Society. It is an undeniable fact that human beings have dramatically altered the face of the Earth in the last 150 years. About 50% of the tree coverage has gone, there are 10 times more of us and we are the first creature to create a deficit- about 50% of the planet's stored fossilised hydrocarbons have been consumed in the past 150 years. That's the equivalent of having a 600 million year long forest fire covering all of the Americas, Europe and Asia. The science of carbon dioxide trapping heat is very basic and unchallengeable. The figures for the composition of the troposphere and atmosphere are a matter of data records and historic fact. The climate warming-deniers have to explain why these two simple phenomena are not responsible for the shift in average sea and air temperatures which are also fact. Metatrends in global temperatures are also a fact so they have to explain why a meta rise in temperatures is conveniently happening now to mask the impact of industrial man as opposed to any other time. In a minimax regret scenario, Stern has to be taken seriously and acted upon. EVEN IF CLIMATE WARMING THEORY IS WRONG, the impact of implementing Stern would be worth it in terms of reduced disease from pollution, protection of bio-diversity and conservation of hydrocarbon reserves.

I know, lets replace the Riverside with a bus shed and call it Lancashire United!

Andre on his Drogba introduction to the Prem. Good to read he feels he has more to come for the Rovers.

The quality of post-match discussion is going through one of those periodic lows. We seem to have a bunch of ill-informed knee jerkers on here at the moment irrespective of win, lose or draw.

I watched the game live from the 30th minute. At that point in the first half we were playing very well and looking the better team. I can only guess the part I missed had been all Villa but they seem to have had no clear serious chances whereas Bentley did have two clear shots on goal from 25 yards between the 30th and 40th minute, neither of which were testing. When the penalty decision came, it was not only outragously harsh but totally against the run of play for the time I'd been watching the game. If that was a penalty then the challenge on Gamst four minutes earlier was a penalty and the handball by Petrov from Gamst's free kick in the second half was a clearcut penalty in any game- not just one where the linos have been at the claret and blue happy juice. Zura just made a horrible hash of it for Angel's goal and Friedel was caught slightly wrong for it as well. Overall- Gray played well - the defense coped well - Neill had a relatively poor one in my view, his distribution was iffy as was his positioning - Axe was OK and not bad but not good either - Gamst was clueless when Peter came on and spoilt an otherwise much improved performance - Villa were big and strong (good decision by MO'N to play the tall Sutton); we lost it by being the smaller side if anything - we won nothing in the air up front - Jeffers woeful failure to control that peach of a cross from Bentley certainly cost us a goal; Benni would have controlled and buried that one if he'd still been on - in the final analysis, we were beaten by 14 men. Another bad set of officiating against us. A lot of excessive nonsense being written on here. We have a bad injury list yet were still at the races in this game. The board backed Hughes in the summer when you look at the targets we went for - we were first off the blocks for Gudjonsson remember. The clubs doing poorly this season are the ones where there is excessive rotation of players- Hughes has to balance the injury and suspension disruptions with the need to rest and refresh and atthemoment he's getting quite enough enforced rotation. The table will look terrible after the Manc game but not every week-end will throw up so many unexpected results as this one so that 4 point gap to bottom won't be breached so quickly. On the other hand, we've lost 5 out of 11 yet are still only 8 points off 3rd. December is going to be a massive month for us if you look at the fixtures and hope for no more injuries and suspensions.

Huge test for Huges. Maybe he will out-think O'Neill and expose Villa to be not as good as O'Neill has made them. Perhaps Villa's penchant for draws continues. In reality our injury hit squad's shortcomings will get exposed and we'll lose this 4-1. The gap between 8 points and 12 is going to look awfully small come 4pm GMT.

The capacity of De Kuip is 51,100 so if Feyernoord are only expecting 40,000, sounds like there will be plenty of space if Rovers sell out their 2,500 allocation.

And it was the Full Members- a totally different competition. The challenge for the club is to find out just where the ticket prices should be. The current pricing seems to be beginning to work and I really hope there is a sign of momentum in the gates with more home supporters in tomorrow night than there were for Salzburg. If that isn't the case then why bother with the reductions? I have long felt that at Premier League level, the model would evolve towards the German model of low ticket prices (outside of the Mancs, Arsenal and Chelsea whom seem to be able to sting the glory hunters any which way they chose) backed by growing media revenues. That certainly is the opportunity for the 2007/8 season. However, three relegated clubs will face a triple whammy of having a cost base too high for their new humble surrounds, drop of media revenue AND having to put their prices up to drive more income through the gate. Leeds' gates are currently a disgrace for a club with their catchment area but Ken Bates' sky high prices are still putting more revenue into the club than he could be sure of getting with lower prices. When a club is/has been in the mess Leeds has been, certainty of revenue is critical. Wonder whether publicity Pete will dare go to Elland Road when Cardiff are the visitors?

Good post Scotty- well balanced analysis. This is David Pleat's "Chalk board" which shows that Rovers really should have got something out of that game. We would have done had Mokoena made an effort to put a routine defensive header on a ball chipped towards him instead of buying Sherringham's feinted run which set-up the free header with plenty of momentum behind it for the first goal.