Sounds like he is behind Walcott and Obi in terms of two other much-hyped 16 year olds. Messi is a grand old man in comparisson. That said, there is plenty of time for him to develop. Obi and Adu in the same Chelski side sounds an awesome proposition.

Frozen Squirrels are a menace. Insurance claim.

Gally back at Ewood with trapped nerves in his knee. His loan is still continuing at Stoke but Rovers want to supervise his treatment and recovery.

When something bad is being said about Shearer, Hughes, Souness, Cole et al, Blackburn Rovers gets added to their CV. Whenever they are being praised, the media always omits the Rovers link.

I agree that Chairmen's reports are typically a work of spin which is why l called this one fair. With regards to out-sourcing, the key is the levels of service/customer satisfaction specified in the contract. Perhaps BRISA could ask how the club is monitoring the contractors' performance and whether the supporters' could have a direct line of feed back to the contractors. I think the decision to outsource those two activities given that the catering in particular is in reality a twenty or so days a year operation was very sensible.

John Williams' commentary on the annual report. I think what he has written is very fair and points to a healthy future. He is right to highlight that Rovers have done well to increase turn over after outsourcing the catering and shop businesses- now the club just takes fees without commercial risk whereas before all sales from those outlets went into the club's top line.

This is worrying about Gally.

Just as I thought- this wasn't correct.

It was obscene but the obscenity is all FS's. He wrote a contract guarranteeing Souness some £6m. Souness wrote he would be Manager of Newcastle United for three and a bit years. Souness would be turning up to work with Newcastle in the Prem this season, the Championship in 06/7, League 1 in 07/8 and thank you and good bye handing over a League 2 side to his successor if it were up to him. As it was FS has said, "no its OK Graeme, here's the rest of the cash I legally promised to give you- good bye." There will have been a downwards adjustment, there always is in these circumstances- and provision for Souness to repay part if he gets another job. What a surprise that GS is hanging up his Managerial boots for a while (literally in his case). At 55, he'll still be young enough to come back when he has finished his Newcastle contract period. That is why rolling contracts are much more normal now although I wouldn't be surperised to see Rovers re-negotiate a new fixed term deal with Sparky if the Trust were to make an advance on their investment into the club. A case of the Trust saying; OK we are making our commitment but we need to manage the managerial risk over the period the investment is intended to cover. At least, that is what I hope will happen.

Dunn is out for another six weeks. Makes him even more of an unknown quantity but makes Brum's relegation even more certain. There certainly isn't going to be a queue of clubs in for him with his injury record. Amongst our own resources, Tugay can still do it if we can stop the opposition from doing a West Brom on us. To a certain extent, Saturday could be extremely useful- the Baggies were text book in showing how to beat the Rovers. Hughes and the players will be learning from the experience. Second half of the Manc game at Ewood showed that a Pedersen, Savage, Reid, Emerton midfield can do the business and that we can survive without the creative genius that is Tugay. Any good young central midfielders coming through the Academy?

I thought we'd established we'd beaten the Mancs to sign him from Cardiff? Anyway, it was a cracking good win from the youngsters to send them back top. Good luck in the Cup game Wednesday lads. Incidentally, are Liverpool allowed to play games on a pitch with steel structures on the touch line? Looks pretty scary to me.

Everton have gone top of the current form league. The optimistic side of me says we have a chance but the rational side says 1-0 to the Toffees as we suffer our only double against of the season.

Let's be honest, everybody has known that the Mancs have benefitted from dodgy reffing for over a decade. We have our list of getting on for a dozen refereeing aberrations against them but find a Premiership club which doesn't have a similar list of complaints. The difference is this- when they had a great side, you were going to get beaten irrespective so a helping hand from the ref was the cherry on the scum's cake. Now, the Mancs are to all intents and purposes, just another Prem side but boosted by Shrek and the donkey, the reffing bias they benefit from is very exposed for everyone to see. The ref was the difference between the Mancs and Fulham last night. End of story. It is wrecking our game and now that the Mancs are American-owned, it is the patriotic duty of the FA to sort it out. Where is AESF's flag? Whilst we are about it, Ferguson pops up in Simon Jordan's column in the Observer. The reat of the column has a look at Rupert Lowe's Southampton but this bit deserves it's place here: "I've finally found out why Barry Bright's FA disciplinary panel set my fine for last year's 'improper' refereeing column at £10,000. It was because, I'm told, there was 'no evidence that any fine of any kind would be troublesome to him'. In which case why not make it £100,000? Or £1? It's textbook compliance office cleverness. "My appeal has been submitted: at the hearing I'll demand the allegations against me be withdrawn, a full public apology, and failing all that, I'll move to libel action. I'll also ask the panel to talk me through - really slowly - how Alex Ferguson has escaped censure for the third time in five weeks after allegedly calling referee Steve Bennett a '###### cheating @#/?' who'll 'need a police escort out of here at full time'. It wasn't mentioned in Bennett's report, but was quoted in full in every national newspaper. At least it clarifies things in the short term. The next time a referee performs woefully in a Palace match, I won't write a constructive column on refereeing standards, Fifa's refereeing structure and the use of technology, I'll take the new FA endorsed route, find the bloke at half time, threaten him with a beating and swear my face off. Thanks for the guidance, Barry." (The swear word appeared in The Observer)

Glad that there is more balance in the posts. Agree that Hughes must have called something wrong in the approach to this game but it sounds like half the side were only at 75% and against a Baggies side who would have been told; "lose this and we're back in the relegation places", we needed to be more like 90%+. If Hughes had made more changes, it would not have been showing much faith in the squad which did so well against the Mancs. He knew they were dog tired- tough call for him. Aren't Gresko and Matteo both still injured?

Second week running one of: - the NoTW bottled it - NoTW realised its notoriety would keep sales going so they spiked the story for a better moment - m'learned friends found a new angle for threatening the press - there was no story in the first place ...or some combination thereof.

I am sitting here laughing. I know I shouldn't but these comments are so funny. Hughes will pull them together for a difficult game at Everton next week. The Premiership clubs 2nd to 19th are all basically capable of beating each other. Rovers had to be 100% today and clearly were not. Throw in a lousy pass by Gray for the killer second goal and probably the second best keeper in the League in the Baggies' goal and it was over and out for the Rovers.

That is a very good set of points 92er. Watching the first 30 minutes, was I alone in thinking that the Mancs were extremely reliant on physical strength against us and that when referees rumble that apart from Cristina, Donkey and Shrek (the last two do their own muscling as well), their game plan will fall apart. I am more certain that RFW's double rant against Mark Hughes is aimed at directing attention away from the extreme physical nature of their approach. As we saw at OT, the heavy shoulder lead body slam into the centre of the opponent's back is a key part of the Manc game- they got away with it twice (RvN on Savage followed up by kicking his head and an attack on Tugay to set up their winner). RFW must be very worried that when the Mancs are reffed by the same standards the rest of the Prem are, his sides are going to get over-run. The Sun repeats Ferguson's bile. A slightly more balanced Independent report but Ferguson's rant has succeeded in shifting the media's perception of us back to a thuggish one. Ferguson is a nasty manipulative piece of excrement.

The site is not a company with liability limited by law. It is a group of individuals whose assets and livelihood are at risk if somebody with deep pockets and a litigous nature fancies his/her day in court. Quite simply, true or untrue, on other boards or not, it is very unfair on the team who voluntarily run this site to even remotely put them at risk. My guess is that the 606 Board run by the BBC will get shut down after this. The posters have been clever with their thread titles (for the most part) and the one or two people the BBC use to moderate those threads cannot cope with a forum which is exploding in size to such an extent that the BBC's servers cannot cope, let alone the moderators. I was amazed at the volume of traffic on just the Blackburn Rovers sub-heading.

Scroll down to the 7th post on the thread- it's explained there.

Seems that the NotW is on a one paper mission to wreck England's World Cup.

Excellent Billy- had a good chuckle. Rovers feature prominently in this Newcastle paper article on Souness.

NO Please NO!!!!

You mean this one?

The condescending git.

I am pretty sanguine about Bert- I think the guy is going to come really good in the second half of the season. Rovers having strong players all over the park takes a little of the pressure and focus away and gives him that extra bit of space which he was using on Wednesday evening to great effect. His short passes always find their man and we could see him causing havoc to the opposition rather than our attacking intentions if speed merchants like Bentley, Pongolle and Bellamy come short for him.