Until the next footballer is charged with rape...

Sorry wrong country- is it Andorra which has a two club league? (They play each other 20 times a season and have a Cup Final as well if I remember correctly)

Isn't Liechenstein the only other country where the league title has been won by one of two clubs more than 85% of the times it has been contested? 90 League titles between Celtic and Rangers? Its almost the same as the Boat Race.

Obviously a generation gap here. To the babies, he's just another rich alcoholic. To those who saw him, the greatest player ever to grace our game in these islands and one huge loss when he threw it all in so young. It is fair to say that the buzz about Rooney is probably only 10% of the excitement Best generated when he was the same age. There were three mega-stars in the '60s- Eusebio, Pele and Best. That is the level of the player.

...and another one to track- Zak Jones is on a three month loan at Southampton.

No the Glazer Buccaneers are playing West Ham, you lot are playing Cheadle. Well played Thun last night by the way, they made the Arsenal work for their win which was good to see from the Rovers perspective. Villareal Reserves could only draw unfortunately.

Gary Harkins scored for Blackpool last night- the Beeb says so! Quick, sign him up!

Thanks guys. Clearly our loanee is doing very well at Blackpool in avoiding all the confusion....

Now here is an interesting dilemma. Do we want Benfica to defeat the Mancs and knock the Glazers out of the Champs League? There will be some delicious afters- the Manc purse strings are so tight that failure will immediately feed through to a reduced transfer fund, inability to sign the likes of Ballack, setting aside of £5m to pay-off Ferguson and buy-out his successor.... Of course, they might come to Ewood looking for the successor and get up to no good looking for new sources of funds for the Mancs at the expense of the rest of football. On balance, I'm cheering for Benfica.

Well Harkness scored for Blackpool in their LDV defeat at Carlisle last night and I think he is one of our's. The only one of our loan players in the Pepsi Challenge who is enhancing his chances at the moment is Matt Derbyshire by virtue of not being picked by one of football management's neanderthals.... At least we know we can safely flog the rest if anyone will offer anything more than discarded ring pulls for them.

It is reported in The Guardian this morning that Birmingham have signed an out-of-contract Faroe Island defender for the rest of the season. No, I didn't make it up.

Bruce hasn't got the foggiest idea about where he is....

Or both Hearts and Hibs. Small man in a small club in a small league.

Certainly in the last two games against Arsenal, we never looked remotely like winning. That's got to change sometime although Saturday showed that our new effusive entertaining style comes and goes. Will Hughes look to kill the game (and the odd Arsenal player whilst we are about it) or attack them? A huge amount depends on his assessment of whether we can get hold of midfield or at least get 50% of possession. Rationality says Arsenal win but I'm plumping for a 2-2 draw.

As usual in debates with the 'drog, you are correct Colin. It was a record low number of points and record high number of defeats at the time but the Wearsiders relieved us of both unwanted records. Fortunately we came nowhere near Darwen's record of goals against. Unfortunately, the gates that season set the pattern for the next 25 years.

In that case Man U are struggling as Ballack was their "get out of jail with no transfer budget" option. Keane could be going to Juventus on a deal worth £7m over 18 months. A bit surprised but it would give Juve a Premiership engine room.

Ronaldinho is perhaps as close to Best as we will see in this era and I believe he has flexibility which is similar to Best but not the same. However, Best was the better dribbler- those six goals at Northampton on a cabbage patch were a prime example. It is fair to say that Ronaldinho either has the stronger shot or balls are lighter these days.

Those were the gates towards the end of the season when we were looking doomed. What a depressing time that was- defeat after defaet after defeat.

I lost a very close friend and colleague last month who went onto life support/ ventilation. The words being used- "lack of improvement is worrying" are bringing back bad memories. If it comes to the worse, it will be fascinating to watch the reruns of Best in his pomp and to see how the game has changed. Just as the footage of Brasil 1970 is still the most stunning football probably ever played and takes the breath away, I expect an hour of George Best will be as stunning. One fascinating aspect to watch for is that Best had exceptionally flexible ankles which enabled him to twist his boot to some extraordinary angles to his body. There is a goal against Sheffield United which illustrates that when he dribbles the ball across the box away from goal and smacked it in whilst still running towards the corner flag.

The capacity is good for a free account and it files in a different way to ordinary e-mail. I understand that new UK and German addresses have to be [email protected]. However, since the change, I have issued invitations from Malta to people in the UK and they have got [email protected] addresses.

There were some chunky gates in the Third Division as well at Swansea, Forest and Huddersfield. I cannot see good news for Gav in the near term. Even if Wigan drop off in form, their games are entertaining and I bet Whelan/Jewell will go for the big signings in January they were frustrated from making in the Summer. The egg chasing pie eaters have found their way to the JJB for the round ball and are going to keep going. Their average will be aided and abetted by Rovers selling out their 5,000 allocation at New Year- that is exactly the sort of fixture (new venue close by and possible UEFA place at stake) which the Blackburn support gets excited about. In fact, don't be surprised to see 7,000 make the short trip. There is a ray of light in the current recovery in interest in going to away games which usually preceeds Rovers' home gates picking up- eventually. Going back to pre-Premiership days, Rovers had good seasons with dismal home crowds which then suddenly stepped up dramatically with a high profile game or two. I guess it is a similar scenario now... Well we have Bolton (without their five African players tee hee) and Man U in succession at Ewood in January- either side the FA Cup 4th round week-end. BUT, after 10 December, the next 3pm Saturday Premiership kick-off is Arsenal at the end of February and if Rovers have become interesting for the TV boys again, make that Villa on 10 March before a 3pm appointment! This means that lower clubs which always bring good followings- Sunderland and Pompey- will be bringing next to nobody because of the time shifts whilst the armchair brigade can watch the Bolton and Manc games... from their arm chairs. Whilst we on this board know we are doing pretty well, the casual supporter will look at 11th place (perhaps 12th) this afternoon and not notice there are as many points between us and 3rd as there are between us and 14th. We are going to have to make those "kind" fixtures in December produce lots of points to get the place buzzing again by pushing up the table well into the top half for my scenario to kick in. Its going to be a case of on your knees Gav in the hope we are going great guns for the Chelsea, Liverpool Citeh games at the season end to fill Ewood.

With Arsenal returning to something like form, those who predicted 4 points from these 4 tough games are looking good although Chesh's 5 points prediction could be right depending on the sort of performance we muster next week.

googlemail is being used in the UK and Germany because somebody got there with the gmail name first. However, I can invite people to gmail from my Maltese account.

One of the issues we have faced is not only the small population base but the extent to which our hinterland has been encroached upon. I genuinely want to see Accy Stanley do well but they went top of the Conference last night and surely their tiny crowds (1,500 last night) will grow if they keep their push towards automatic league promotion going. Not only that, but since our Championship win: Bolton have become an established Premiership club and have grown their gates having moved into an area which traditionally had good Rovers support and close to Chorley which was very much a Rovers town when I was a youngster. Wigan's rise must be hurting us in the Chorley/Wigan areas where we used to be strong. PNE have had some very good seasons. We still have exceptional support given the base we've got. The club has to be opportunistic and I wonder if any marketing effort is being directed towards Yorkshire given the poor state of football over there?

Spot on USA. Rovers being second in the betting is more a reflection on Keane's employability than anything else! (is that going to come back and haunt me?) Celtic indicating willingness to talk must point the road north of the border unless he emerges as player-manager at Pompey. Keane and Mandaric together- perhaps six weeks at most.