"Expect Pardew to be sacked early doors." Will 17.00 on 13 August be early enough? Rog- I really enjoyed reading your predictions posting.

Pre-season friendlies are pretty irrelevant but still it was nice to see Swansea 1 Rovers 4 when I looked for the score. Savage can be forgiven at this stage- he is two to three weeks behind his colleagues in preparation and at this stage, it is a big gulf, especially playing opposition which kicks off its season next Saturday. The encouraging signs are that Savage might not be an automatic pick in central midfield as others are quite possibly challenging him on merit. That's not knocking Savage. Bit concerning that the defense is leaking and by all accounts Brad conceded a soft one yesterday. Better at Swansea than West Ham though.

An accident waiting to happen. Slovakia and Scotland have the same population. However, Slovakia has a somewhat competitive domestic league and Scotland doesn't. Perhaps more pertinently, Slovakia are still in with a decent chance of World Cup Finals qualification. In that context, is this a suprise result? I suspect one or more of Liverpool, Everton, Rangers and Man U are likely to discover that third qualifying round of the Champions League is far from a formality. Martin O'Neill is slipping very rapidly off the radar screen as a candidate for "big" jobs in England which can only be bad news for the Rovers over the coming months and years. rover 6, I recall rather more support for Paul Sturrock than Gordon Strachan when the Rovers management was being discussed on here.

These people own and run The Express. No doubt porn boy Desmond wrote that headline this morning.

Just looked at the official board- Lee will do a report later but apparently Rovers played very well and completely dominated until the subs were made. No doubt our boys out there are just going to bed so it will be another 24 hours before they find an internet cafe!

Australian Bar? Beating Mallorca 2-0 in what sounds like an easy victory is a seriously encouraging result for what its worth pre-season. Disappointing to read the list of absentees- particularly Vratty. Another sending off to all intents and purposes- seems keeping eleven on the pitch is going to be a bit tricky this season.

I don't want to belittle the danger posed but I am in two minds about this documentary from what I have been able to see on line. 1 a) Consider the sexual images now freely available on the web. Unthinkable that this sort of thing would be accessible outside of criminal rings thirty years ago but "free" at any number of web-site locations today. Has society collapsed in a moral swamp as forecast by Lord Longman and Mary Whitehouse? and 1 If internet accessibility (by its very nature all but uncontrollable) is the core of what we have to be worried about, I'm uncomfortable but not worried. After all, how many men are copying the do it yourself cannibal who cooked his best friend, are shagging sheep (outside Bumley) or tying their wives up and suspending them using block and tackle? or 2) This stuff is seriously sick and seriously sick people must look at it and perhaps be influenced towards emulating it and on very rare occasions actually drag themselves away from their screen perversion to acting out their fantasies. On that basis it is scary but I can think of many more much scarier angles driving Islamic "fundamentalism" (why don't we call it its proper name- "sexual repressive psychotic Islamic perversion"?) which really would keep me awake at night. After all, on the odd occasion I see a hell and brimstone American preacher, I am usually in hysterics rather than nauseated. No doubt 99% of all Muslims react the same way to the semi-illiterate immans straight off the north-west frontier, imman hook and all their merry bands.

Doesn't matter- Rovers' first home win isn't until sometime back end of November.

Isn't the first 28 in Germany?

The whole thing is a tragic mess and my condolences got to the bereaved family. Ken Livingstone got it absolutely right when he saild that the Brasilian is another victim of the bombers. We live quite close to Stockwell tube station and an acquaintance has said he was in his car when there was a Keystone Cops-style chase between the traffic into Stockwell Tube Station involving at least one uniformed officer who seemed outnumbered by the guys he was chasing. He realised the others excepting the victim were the armed under-cover officers. He did not see any arms but there was a lot of shouting and it all was over very quickly with uniformed officers immediately stopping anyone going into the station when the others had run in. He wondered why he immediately guessed some of the guys running were plain clothes officers and realised that the way the public was getting out of the way with nobody having a go (unlike the rugby tackle attempts on the fleeing would-be bombers last Thursday), made it seem to him that the message had got over to the by-standers that they were police officers. He just wanted to get through and past the incident as he expected (rightly) that the whole area would be closed and sealed off.

I agree about Thorpe but not sure who should make way. At least the rain is sticking better than England's catches.

How sober is Orvil today? Perhaps he's calling anybody with a sun tan Benni!

The crunch is ripping out the Australian tail. This morning is all about holding catches and taking the run out opportunities. If the England performance in the field hadn't been so weak yesterday, this match would be extremely winnable. Instead, assuming the target is 50 runs on from the Australian over night score, the second innings will be the supreme test of the England batting.

MCMC, I agree- a flight of imagination on my part. Just read that the explosives they are using degrade dramatically if not stored in the right temperature/humidity. That would seem to be the likeliest explanation. The fact the intended bombers all ran away and presumably are hiding at sympathisers' will expose more of the network when they are eventually apprehended.

Either London was incredibly lucky yesterday or perhaps the secret service has infiltrated and had nobbled the devices. It seems astonishing that four out of four went off two weeks ago (albeit perhaps the bus bomb had not gone off when intended) and four out of four failed yesterday.

If England make a good start at Lords, it will be a competitive match which the Aussies will shade. If Australia makie a good start, England will have one good session but will otherwise be humiliated.

I would bet odds on Rovers are looking for a second front line striker to play alonside Bellamy so Dickov will be competing with Kuqui and perhaps Matty for a place on the bench. He did what was asked of him last season and with his groin healed is likely to be capable of being even more a handful this season. Interesting poll by that article- get voting lads!

Jim, I think Andy Cole was at Ewood for two and a half years. Are your other numbers as accurate? Two points about his last two transfers- Fulham took over his Rovers contract plus payment of the £1m end of contract bubble Rovers were due to pay. So surely, Cole earned at least as much in wages at Fulham as he did at Rovers? Rovers saved either £3m or £4.5m in wages depending on whether he earned the widely reported £40K or the £73K figure you have suddenly produced. In transferring to City, Cole is being paid up the whole of next year's contracted salary from Fulham- at least £2m. No doubt City are funding Fulham for that pay-out so getting a mere £25K a week is no hardship for Andrew and no bargain for City.

61 is the letter in the cyrillic alphabet which means silence.

Anyone know what the operation Thommo had during the summer was?

Joseph Whitechristian blew up 3,000 during the Irish "troubles". I was in Hyde Park when they blew up the soldiers and horses. Why do you think London reacted so stoically to the outrage of 7 July? The city has had a lot of practise at handling terrorist attrocities over the past thirty years. Joseph Whitechristian massacred 8,000 boys and men in Srebrenica just ten years ago plus were undoubtedly the aggressors (Catholic or Orthodox) in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

The 500 leading British Muslim clerics have put aside their own denominational divisions and issued a fatwah declaring suicide bombing a crime and not a route to martyrdom and heaven. And before anyone jumps in, this is simply a reiteration of what is in Koran and not some new invention to please Tony Blair. When did the Irish Churches ever issue so authoritative, united and unambiguous a condemnation of Irish terrorism? Picking up on two threads from yesterday- Chatham House is an independent foreign policy research establishment and not a Government body. Their report focussed on the diversion of British intelligence efforts towards Irish terrorism and animal liberation threats when the threat of Islamic fundamentalism was becoming apparent in the 1990's. As a result, the intelligence communities are very under-prepared for handling the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Qaida sympathisers in the West. The report argues that Britain was unable to influence USA policy on Iraq even in areas where the USA was totally half-baked: the preparation and policy for the victory and post-war pacification of Iraq. It argues that Britain's inability to influence the USA Administration to avoid the blundering mistakes made (e.g. there is $8.5 billions of USA Government cash hand outs unaccounted for- quite possibly making the USA military deeply corrupt in the process) despite saving Bush from total isolation on Iraq, has made Britain a uniquely vulnerable target for a violent backlash. The second thread is that Islam is aggressively designed to grow (so is Christianity for that matter if you read the Bible) and nation-phobic. The nation state is very much a Western Christian invention- Iraq itself is a product of map drawing in Whitehall in 1921 and bears little relationship to historic divisions or tribal, ethnic or religious reality on the ground. It is worth pointing out that the current USA Administration owes its election to, and is most influenced by, Christian Fundamentalist sects which: - claim prime sovereignty for God over nation states - refute scientific evidence and wish to set back scientific advance in areas which conflict with their theology - are aggressively recruiting new converts - reveres martyrs - favour physical punishments and the death penalty Sounds familiar? It is trite to say it, but the Christians nut cases are a lot closer to trying to run the world through their man in the White House than the currently much more unsavoury Islamic nut cases. The fundamentalist Christian right cause as much despair for Christians like me as the fundamentalist radical Islamic elements do for the majority of Muslems. A final point, the Koran is a massive assemblage of literature/ revealed truth created over millenia in the same way that the Bible is. Both Holy Books contain material which is deeply disturbing to modern society- according to the Bible, employers should nail the ears of employees to the door for instance (that's in Exodus or Deuteronomy)! The key point is both fundamentally espouse a life of peace, love and piety. The argument that one is superior and the Koran is inimcable with universal suffrage, democracy and equity between the sexes is utterly specious in my opinion. Amongst the most enlightened rulers in Europe were the Moors of Spain who presided over a society of exceptional advancement and tolerance, bequeathing some of the most stunning architecture in the world and, arguably in Aberlane, the philosophical father of the Renaissance. It was the Christians who expelled the Jews and brought in the Inquisition.

If you read the official site, he massively upset the Cercle people by his superior attitude not being matched by superior performances.

This appeared three posts before mine Thenodrog. I think describing it as odious was quite mild.

I'm happy to correct you thenodrog- I wrote: "Three posters have been posting views I profoundly disagree with and whose rantings on a thread about the horrific events in London last week I find odious in the extreme............ ( note the selective editing by you) Not letting the bombers win means not siding with the views of AESF, blue phil or thenodrog." I said nothing about extreme right wing views. I have now reached the point of reading you for your comedy value- the nasty insults for anyone who disagrees with you and then sniffling when they answer back.