Ever thought of becoming a Pro-zone salesman AESF? Sounds like they need a license at Ewood.

Gav ought to win his bet now. In fact if the Blackburn/Liverpool public's imagination is grabbedby Sunday's game, the leeway could be made up in one match- surely 28,000 is a feasible number? Signs that things are going rightish behind the scenes. But even with the drummer, Rovers gets a huge thumbs down for crowd atmosphere.

4th is still possible as 69 points is still possible- it "just" needs 5 wins out of 5! Granted an Arsenal win at Man U will push 4th into the realms of extremely unlikely. We should be able to top the other clubs in the race. Spurs were not convincing against a very wonky City (5 defeats on the run for them now) and are definitely going to drop points. The big question is whether Rovers are seeing a slow unravelling of good form as opponents work us out or an Easter Sunday revival? 5th is still very possible and 4th could be with some good fortune. Arsenal are a point behind us at the time of writing.

Having watched it live, we were comfortably the better footballing team but allowed them a good start and to recover after both goals. Hughes will be very angry that probably precisely what he spent all week coaching the lads not to do is exactly what happened. Thankfully Neill and Sav can start tackling again. Reid didn't have a good game but he stood upand was counted. The problem with MGP, when he plays badly, he disappears in a powder puff. Bentley was the only creative element in midfield and besides Bellars brilliant swivel and shot, the second goal was all down to him. We did control chunks of the game but made very little from it. The prime reason for that was that Dickov was even worse than he was against Wigan. He was very fortunate not to get sent off and I am sure the ref compensated by booking Bellamy the first time he opened his mouth when pulled up for an offside which was marginal but a correct call. After these two games, I rather hope City take Dickov off us. I would not be surprised if Hughes were not looking for two strikers this summer. The clubs we compete at the top end usually have four international quality front line strikers (that is how Boro hjave survived to the UEFA semi-final) and we have got one with the others basically Championship players living off rich pickings.

Once again, where is this stupid negativity coming from? After we had lost at Spuds we were looking at five winnable games. We won 3 drew 2 lost 0. 11 points out of 15 against 5 banana skin teams. What the ^^^^ is there to moan about??? We have the best striker at Ewood since Shearer, the best keeper we've ever had and a pretty decent set of players in between. Hughes is absolutely spot on with his comments once again which is a heck of a lot more than can be said about some folks' hearing or reasoning.

Franchise United The Glazers' take over offer revealed that they would have to pay £61m a year in interest before they took another £109m loan at 11% interest to cover the interest payments for the first two years. £21m profits (last published accounts) doesn't go very far in that context. Whether Glazer has re-financed or not will be reflected in whether he sticks to the transfer fee cobenant- £60m max over five seasons with a £26m limit in this season with the season limit progressively reducing as he moves towards the 2010 deadline of repaying the Hedge Funds or handing over control. Anyway, the Mancs late run this season has saved RFW from the chop as Gill has confirmed he will be boss for next season. The more this goes on, the more likely a Clough-style denouement becomes.

Fantastic preview- like the addition of the Toffee! I hadn't realised that our recent record against Liverpool is so bad so it must be time for Sparky to impart that magic again. Man U's record against Liverpool was dire for twenty odd years but when the Mancs started winning that fixture, they didn't stop. Liverpool's motivation will be interesting. If the Mancs beat Arsenaland Sunderland at home, Liverpool will be close to being out of the race for second. Equally, if Arsenal are beaten and Liverpool beat Bolton, they will be within one point of making 3rd place a mathematical certainty when they come to Ewood. I wonder what Bennitez is going to do with the luxury of five meaningless fixtures at the end of this season? For Rovers, to keep a realistic CL chance, it will be a must win if we haven't collected three points at Pompey this afternoon and a "don't let that gained ground go" game if we have won at Fratton. But then we have been saying things like that for a few games now and hopefully will be looking at a tenth "Cup Final" fixture when we play City.

Have a look at the start of the thread... and their profit is towards half that in the last two seasons.

The League Cup win for the Mancs, even with their big gates was probably worth about as much as the Arsenal v Juve two legger. So the Mancs (Glazers) are still in the soup unless they have or are in the process of substantial re-financing. The G14 break-away is probably what the Glazers are banking on at the end of the day. The Prem are very sensible moving to get the next TV auction done in the next few weeks and including internet rights as part of it. The Glazers are held by their promise not to break collective Premiership rights and hopefully there are enough clubs to get the 14-6 majority to redistribute the income more evenly. If I were Abramovich, I'd vote for redistribution just to cripple the Mancs. The national debt of Malta is only a bit bigger than that of the Mancs.

Celtic are also in a sweat about an Arsenal CL win

You score with the last kick of the first half. Your turn to kick off second half and score from that move. But I don't know how the third happens...

About as far as Dallas probably....

Apart from being worth a lot more than our annual turnover, the Mancs at least are going to have to wear plug ugly shirts for the next four years! What a picture...

Academy squad going to Dallas, USA, as English Champions.

List of Chinese restaurants in Manchester. The Yang Sing is legendary!

Flybe to be floated I would imagine that the liquidity this will generate for the Walker Trust would come too late for the summer transfer market. Expect the Trustees to be relatively parsimonious as the Trust probably remains asset rich but cash limited.

I got a premonition about two 1-1 draws this week then forgot about it.... hmmm

Alan Smith really hates us doesn't he? All through last night's game he was commenting from a Wigan viewpoint.

I have been having a good laugh at the contributions by people like revidge blue and tcj. At least DMTP got last night into perspective. Of course its two points dropped but it could turn into the most extraordinarilly valuable point gained. My take: - Nelsen was incredibly good and Zura handled himself pretty well given Roberts had singled him out for some very rough stuff. - Kuqi was much better than recent games and took the goal sensibly but he's not Prem class. - Bentley wasted his chance - Savage had a good game - Bellamy was not going to score last night; combination of not getting his half chances (he had at least four) quite right and a brilliant Filan save at the end. But last night was about Wigan- they were perfectly prepared and played some good stuff at times; they will be a handful for anyone who plays them including Arsenal on the last day of the season, and The officials who were awful. It says a huge amount for the professionalism and quality of both sides that last night at least resembled a game of football. In the first half Dowd was blowing for anything and I doubt that as many as one third of the linesmen and refs' decisions were correct by the time we reached half time. I know Wigan's first half goal should not have been struck off but there was nothing wrong with MGP's goal either and had that stood giving us the lead it would have produced a different game. I also think that Bellamy was unfortunate not to win a second half penalty but equally Kuqi's goal came from a good old-fashioned 1920's style assault on the keeper.

"Fear of the Intertoto is driving the Rovers players on." At least its a nicer fear than relegation! Two reports I saw over the week-end. Apparently seven clubs have said they are willing to enter the Intertoto but Rovers are one of three who have said so publicly. The Intertoto draw will be made in Noyon on 12 April with the countries being drawn out of the hat as the club names are not known yet.

The Robon Oakley clip on CNN in the Condi Rice thread in ICBINF is quite decent I thought. A good site: http://www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?pageid=257

Another reason for so badly needing three points from this game is that Bolton play one of their games in hand by going away to Brum on Tuesday night.

Sparky's rallying call!

Having read this, I am increasingly sure we'll come 4th and play in the UEFA Cup.

I kind of get the impression that Simon Jordan isn't terribly fond of the owners of Birmingham City...