This Boro web site makes a convincing case for a Boro win this afternoon. Another Boro site- Fly me to the Moon has this to say: "Fmttm Prediction: Boro to hold Blackburn to a draw. Maybe even a repeat of the 2-2 draw we managed a couple of Boxing Day's ago. There will be a big and very young crowd cheering us on today, Rovers running those £5 under 16 tickets again. Such a good idea. All clubs need to do everything they can to get schoolkids back to live football." I will be very surprised and extremely disappointed to see a sub-20,000 gate today.

G14 look to avoid the "lottery" of having to qualify Some interesting posturing- They need certainty of Champs League millions for future planning they say. Domestic football is the core of their activity they claim (oh yes and with control of the Champs League they are not going to dictate to the national teams and domestic leagues are they?) Membership of G14 is closed so no place for Abramovich or Fart Freddie (that was a genuine typing mistake but why correct it?) Will be interesting watching two of football's most unloved organisations- UEFA and G14- going toe to toe in a battle of strength. As I see it at the moment, the G14 position is too weakened by anomalies to work. Yes Real Madrid, Man U, Arsenal, AC and Juve are massive clubs but they all have massive weaknesses (Madrid City Council, Glazers, Ashburton Grove debts, Berlusconi's fate when he has lost the Italian Election and no fans respectively). The Rovers can quite comfortably look the likes of Leverkusen and Eindhoven eye to eye financially and has a more impressive trophy cabinet than Leverkusen by far whilst Burnley would be embarassed to get Monaco's home gates. On that basis only the recently cleaned up Barca looks to be a true mega-club. Oh and Clelsea who could turn nasty and with £7bn in cash, Roman could cause mayhem just by showing them what he is capable of without actually having to do anything. If he wanted some fun, £100m cash bids by Roman's friends to buy out current owners could quite easily see a third of the G14 change hands. If this sees the light of day, I think it could be time to refer the G14 to the European Competition Commissioner on the basis of an abusive cartel. If the EU found England's TV rights anti-competitive, the G14 running the Champs League as a closed shop surely stands no chance.

This is terrible news for the lad. With it being a hamstring injury, the question has to be asked whether the surgery in the States has failed. If that is the case, his whole career is at risk. I guess this points to Dunny being at Brum in the Coca Cola league next season.

Boro will be coming to Ewood elated by the UEFA draw. Whilst the strength of the remaining teams should not be underestimated, Basle should be beatable and then they get the winner of the Bucarest derby in the semi (that could be tricky given the teams both of them have knocked out on the way through). Sevilla and Schalke are in the other half of the draw and so one of them is likely to make it to the Final.

Good points in that article. Clutching at straws: - Unlike the other Managers mentioned (including Sir Bobby), we have a Manager who knows what it takes to win the Prem and have a decent CL run year in year out, - I strongly suspect the signing of Zura and the contract extensions offered for Dickov and Tugay are indicative of Hughes preparing a squad deep enough on quality for the CL. Wouldn't be surprised if neither of those extensions are signed until/before we know we have got UEFA at least. - With those three on board, the summer signing requirements begin to become more manageable providing we don't spend all our time fending off raiders for our players. As Hughes has said, European football makes the type of player he wants to sign more interested in Rovers. That is probably an indicator he has some top class Bosman or near Bosmans in his sights. That Bosman thread might not be dreamland after all. Back to reality: - It is going to require an extraordinary effort by Rovers to qualify for the CL although I do think we would need shooting if we fail to qualify for the UEFA from the position we are now in. - So CL is a dream, an attainable dream but still a dream. Nice to see the Telegraph sharing the dream but saying beware the wicked witch in the fairy tale.

I agree with the posts from Darth Paul and Billinge End Blue. For what its worth: - my anger was how this suddenly became an issue for LFC AFTER they had lost to Benfica. I hope the FA and Premiership have noted where their competitions stand in Liverpool's very obvious order of priorities: 1 Champions League gazilions, 2. HJC 3. the rest. - Rovers were probably stuffed BEFORE LFC made the announcement of asking us for a change. Parry would have used his influence from having been the Prem's founding Chief Exec to square away the Premier League and Sky before they publicly announced their request. - No doubt LFC's hairtrigger posting of the announced change yesterday afdternoon bounced the Rovers out of a position Rovers were still negotiating on. - I wonder (and hope) that having heard little from the Norwegian supporters means something is being done to help with rearranging their trip rather them being too disappointed/disaffected to post.

Does it going out on Sky1 mean its no longer PPV? In which case are the clubs going to compensate the fans out of their increased Sky money? I hope the Rovers have done a sly deal to move the Chelsea game to the last Wednesday of the season as part of all this. Our game clashes with the FA Cup semi-final.

On the official site, Lee is complaining that Liverpool FC have no right to make that announcement.

Irish paper claiming a quote from Hughes that it is going to Sunday 16. Too late Phil!

Rovers hope to complete new Hughes and back room deal before the end of the season.

Congratulations to Boro- fantastic result. It will do us fine as well- have the players sobered up yet?

If Sky agree to reschedule, if Rovers don't feel that moving the fixture closer to the Wednesday game harms Rovers' chances of Champions League football, then provided LFC recompense all the fans who have already made financial commitments to go to the game (including buying their match tickets off them), there is a case for moving it. Why should Rovers' fans be inconvenienced, out of pocket and generally mucked about because Liverpool turned in two performances against Benfica that made the Mancs' efforts look heroic in comparisson?

£490 saving.

That comment from Parry is utterly wet. "We'll now honour the Hillsborough victims since we were so pathetic against Benfica in the Champions League." OK Rick, are you going to pay Rovers compensation for all your dithering?

Fair enough but the stats show we rode our good fortune and had more than our share of the rest of the game. I see Sorenson had butter fingers again last night. I wonder if they want Enks back?

Great post by Tris- surely worthy of a Grooby. A point about "businessmen". Where does the club count the income from Executive Suite packages? In the attendance or commercial revenues. If the average income per head is only £13, I guess it must go in commercial which for the guy moaning about businessmen yields roughly the same income from Rovers as ALL the attendance money. Sky revenues go in a third pot.

Arsenal's injured players are on their way back- Campbell and van Persie this week-end, Cole at the end of the month. Have to say that Steve Gerard's inability to see a 6 ft 2 ins Frenchman is going to cost someone.

Got no reference to quote but I think it is £450K for non-ppv and £320K for ppv. The two clubs get half each. Anyway, this boycott thing will fizzle out if Liverpool do the sensible thing and organise coaches to take them from the Anfield service to Ewood. Very least they could do with the extra £160K Liverpool FC are getting.

222 pages of pictures of girls on that web site. Seven pages of posts about remembering Hillsborough and a petition started nine months after the fixture was published. I suppose with that track record, it is not surprising they have completely mangled the facts of Rovers' attempts to support getting the fixture changed and are blaming our club. Certainly now that Sky are involoved, they can take a running jump if they think Rovers are willing to give up their £160,000 TV fee.

Interesting list that dillo apaqrt from including Big Club v Trotters mark two (two 0-0s in that head to head would be perfect). What are the bets for two down out of three on the last day? In order of difficulty- WBA the toughest, Brum next and Pompey the easiest. If it does come to the last day, I'd take the Baggies' trip to Everton over the fixtures of Pompey and B C. That said, who'd have thought Fulham would have banged six past Norwich to banish them to the land of the brown burps? Sunderland might beat Fulham at home.... Anyway, back to the battle for 4th and Squarefootball's latest prediction- it is mighty close

Although Pongo became less effective as the game wore on, I was amazed at how lacking in class Dickov looked when he came onto the pitch in comparisson with Pongo. Had Dickov been playing all game, there would have been a lot more fouls and yellow cards and tempers would have become frayed and perhaps he would have worried a goal out of them. But the skill level of Pongo (even if it is a new signing other than Pongo) is the way forwards for Rovers.

An pessimistic bunch of Spuds (and one Trotter) but rather entertaining.

Funny I had just had the same thought but I think the 55points in the bag are 3 too many to put them in real risk of bombing out. Wednesday, 15 March 2006 Barclays Premiership Liverpool v Fulham, 20:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, 19 March 2006 Barclays Premiership Newcastle v Liverpool, 13:30 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, 21 March 2006 FA Cup Birmingham v Liverpool, 20:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, 25 March 2006 Barclays Premiership Liverpool v Everton, 12:45 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, 01 April 2006 Barclays Premiership West Brom v Liverpool, 17:15 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, 09 April 2006 Barclays Premiership Liverpool v Bolton, 14:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, 15 April 2006 Barclays Premiership Blackburn v Liverpool, 17:15 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, 22 April 2006 Barclays Premiership West Ham v Liverpool, 15:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, 29 April 2006 Barclays Premiership Liverpool v Aston Villa, 15:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, 07 May 2006 Barclays Premiership Portsmouth v Liverpool, 15:00

Didn't Downing have a trial with us?

kenny's magic hat makes a very good post. Those who say Villa were unlucky not to win should consider the following: Rovers had more than 50% possession overall and chances were exactly even in numbers. McCann was fortunate to be playing in such a clean match- he was guilty of three very bookable offences, not just the one which got him the only yellow of the game. OK in a just world, we would have beaten Spuds and drawn with the Villa. Having watched the midfield very carefully when we were being over-run there by Villa, I concluded: - Savage did a brilliant job to stop Villa from turning their upper hand in midfield into a platform to batter us the way we totally overwhelmed the Spuds midfield last week. That said, some of Savage's passing was none too clever but I suspect some of that was because other Rovers players (notably MGP) had not run into the position they were supposed to for the out ball. Sav's complaints to his colleagues looked to be of the "we practise it in training every **** day" variety. - Reid was OKish but his passing and positioning were iffy and his tackling at times non-existant - when on the ball, Bentley was every bit as brilliant as at Spuds but yesterday he had no answer to the physical pressure of the Villa big men. He is not a total flake but he can be got at. - MGP for all his cleverness (apart from crossing) when on the ball was just as weak as Bentley. The fundamental problem in midfield was that we had two players- MGP and Bentley who could not handle the physical pressure. As a result far more attacks came through at the defence which in my view played no worse or better than it has done for most of this season. Only yesterday it had to be involved a lot more than it usually does at Ewood so it showed more very good moments and also by the law of averages, more nightmare moments as well. I think it was significant that with no MGP and even with the problematic Emerton on from the start we crushed one of the best midfields in the Prem at Spurs last week. Yesterday, when Emo replaced Bentley, midfield got more of a grip although the scoreline might have helped. It must be a headache for Sparky realising he cannot safely play both MGP and Bentley in the same midfield and for sure he cannot go with an MGP, Sav, Tugay, Bentley line-up which in terms of the best individual players would probably be the preferred midfield option when all are fit.