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Have to say that the broken knee cap did for Ferguson who went from moderately talented to a total non-entity. It was quite a shock to see he scored against Mould. In retrospect, we did very well to get £4m+ for him (now he's done time, oops that Bellamy, er Rangers appearances). I really hope we draw Rangers and shove a well-deserved thrashing down them. It will ease the Celtic pain where we were disgracefully mismanaged.

Fancy retiring to Hawaii? We'd win the Champions League and the dingles drop to the Unibond!

Sorry Palermo- which is in my first post. Was on phone whilst scanning the posts. Will concentrate next time!

It is all becoming clear, 'drog works in a toilet factory and judges others by his own standard.

Three monitors side-by-side in the Dubliner- kept focus on the Rovers game but the ball is in action only c.40 minutes in any 90 minute game so it was easy to keep peripheral vision on the screens either side of the Rovers' game. Flopsy, if you say so, it must be the one. What on earth was the Ref doing at Ewood if he is suspended at home? Good job that Salzburg were basically just a bunch of ill-disciplined wussies. That ref would have had a riot on his hands if we had been playing a bunch of hard cases as he and his linesmen were utterly incapable of keeping control. I thought all the marginal decisions went against us by the way- don't know what it felt like in the ground.

Scotty, that's pretty well how I'd expected it- four higher ranked clubs got knocked out so we moved up into pot 4 which contains a bunch of clubs we wouldn't have minded drawing. Avoiding Palermo coming out of pot 3 could be a key to Rovers' progress as we can expect pots 1 and 2 to produce tough opposition. That said, I could quite easily pop up to Palermo if we play them away. Do we know whether letters A, B, C, D and E denoting order and venue of play coincide with pot numbers 1 to 5?

Very very happy! Another clean sheet, team gelling, no weak links, but to be honest collectively and individually that had the look and feeling of Rovers still only achieving 75% of what they are capable of yet. There isn't the fluidity about the side that Rovers showed towards the end of last season and when we really click into the groove we are going to be fantastic. Thought Benni and Chris (Nonda) looked a real threat all night and it was refreshing to see Benni looking so gutted about that missed header at the end of the first half- he really cared and it hurt him to miss like that. Another clean sheet and Brett just gets berter and berter. We shouldn't undersetimate the Austrians. Thankfully we were English so Spuds and WHam weren't lurking in the bottom half of the draw but Red Bull were one of the strongest teams we could have drawn with a great coaching set up and we totally nullified them. We can look forwards with confidence on the basis of that performance last night. The Rovers crowd came over very well on TV- looked a great atmosphere at the end. Watched it with the Newcastle and Parma games on adjacent screens. Newcastle are really poor and would have been embarassed last night except for two moments of sheer quality from Martins. Duff came on from the subs bench and the kindest thing you could say is he should have stayed on it. He is a million miles away from being the player he was at Rovers and is frankly now an embarassment to Rovers' greatest ever team. Don't be mislead by the 3-0 scoreline for Parma; WHam could easily have won that game as they dominated the first 20 minutes when Parma couldn't cope with Tevez. Outstanding goalkeeping, getting tight and hard and three complete cock-ups in the West Ham defence won it for Parma. The last was hilarious, a three man last line pushed up for offside 40 yards from goal so Parma dinked a through ball from the centre circle and two runners went through from onside positions. It was like watching the parting of the Red Sea. One final note. Those Potuguese officials were terrible. There are referees worse than in the Premiershipafter all!

McLaren's agent makes sweeping bungs claim. English football the dirty man of Europe and millions have gone out of the game.

Monaco have a history of eccentric transfer dealings. They almost went bust at the time they shipped Nonda out which is probably why Roma picked him up the way they did. Anyway, unlike Nelsen and Mokoena, Nonda has long been a well-known name outside his home and adopted countries.

This is a nice preview.

With the windfall coming from Sky next season, probably nobody would be more pleased to see well over 20,000 at Ewood on Thursday than John Williams and the Board. It would be a pointer for how to price next season and good evidence for the football attendance committee of the Premiership John Williams is a member of.

It is quite a while since I felt such anticipation and excitement about Rovers. It may all go flat but if Benni and Chris are shaping up in training the way Mark Hughes and the boys want them to then we could be going into that run of tough games starting in mid October with one heck of a potent front line- and one which the opposition don't know too much about.

Following the banning and fining of Ashley Col's agent, the FA have reportedly asked UEFA to go after Zihavi for his role in the affair. Spurs alomost ended up playing with themselves when they were drawn against Slavia Prague! The Guardian on the unravelling of ENIC's crazy football empire and the prospects for greater limitations on ownership. Have to say the ENIC plan was singularly dumb. I feel sorry for Vicenza which seemed a nice club in the sleazy Italian football world.

Interesting to see notlob not having any problems beating Pompey tonight. That's a shame as I'd been hoping Pompey would prolong Spuds' misery in the next game. As it is, Big Sam popped 'Arry's bubble.

Judging by the first few weeks, only AC are going to make light work of their points deduction but -8 might yet be enough to deny them the Championship. Irrespective of whether the match fixing is at an end, there is refreshing feel to Italian football this season.

The Guardian uses the Boro match report to comment on Rovers' lack of support.

Determining point of the season. Win and we lay the UEFA bogey plus have four more European nights to look forwards to no doubt popping out of bag 4 in the UEFA draw with 3 higher ranked clubs already waiting for us but what the hell- boro and Bolton topped their groups last year so we should be ok. Lose or draw 3-3 and all last year's good work in coming 6th are down the loo. What is there left to kick-on with? Rovers to win 3-1 in front of 19,000.

50 transfers worthy of further investigation... Looks like the Stevens Report will be as big a damp squib as the Panorama programme. I thought he'd been hired to do the investigating?

It is highly improbable that Nonda will recover the explosive pace he had before that horrific break but Sparky keeps saying he hasn't reached full fitness level yet and that must be a promising sign that there is much more to come from him. What I do like is his directness which for a team that tends to pass it about is a valuable dimmension to his game. He has good touch and if he and Benni get an understanding going so he rather than the opposing centre-half is the recipient of Benni's flicks, it could be a very exciting season to be a Rover. Incidentally, what happened to Chris? It was back to Shabani yesterday.

Not necessarilly a bad draw- result on the night after extra time and penalties. Great for Rovers' supporters that we will be getting probably the best team in Europe at Ewood a second time this season. We've beaten Chelsea in the recent past and gave them a bit of a fright when they came to Ewood during our poor start. Chelsea will have not been wanted a trip to Ewood, that's for sure.

Not particularly funny nor accurate but a Boro preview that is a bit different.

There is also Ewido anti-spyware from AVG as well. You have to manually update and run it in the free version but unless yyou are coming into contact with naughty sites and e-mails, running it overnight once a week or so is fine. It usually picks up a tracker or two coming from somewhere.

Just out of curiosity, is anything happening about the live screening of matches? It does seem that the collapse in Rovers' support has coincided with games being available in pubs, the 50 minute highlight programme and the drummers. I think the other reasons such as lack of local lads is somewhat peripheral to the argument. If it were true we would have seen a massive loss of support when Duff and Dunn were transferred but that season was well within trend.

Just out of interest jim, were there any drummers at that Charlton game back in 2002?

I was at a meeting in Central London that day and saw the results coming off one of those old tickertape machines. Middlesbrough 1 Blackburn ("we lost today" says I) 5- stood there dumbfounded. I think we won 3-0 at Ayresome the next season and won the two after up there as well. If there is any pride or motivation up in Boro these days, Rovers are in for a torrid opening 20 minutes after Wednesday's Boro result.