I think a bit of sense of proportion is needed here. Harrison and Langton were before my time (as were the days of Clayton and Douglas at their peak). I heard of them and good things were said but nothing to match the awed reverence towards Eckersley, Clayton and Douglas or Bob Crompton and Syd Puddefoot (for the 1928 Cup Final) from an earlier era. I can remember the pensioners talking about Forrest when I was a child in the early 60's and how that Johnny Forbes was a bit sharp. Yes Harrison and Langton were very good, I guess in the same way that Willcox was very good. My favourite memory of Jason was a Sheffield Wednesday defender literally left wondering where Handbag and the ball were (they were both behind him bearing downon the young Kevin Pressman) in a vital 1-0 wiin at Hillsborough in the Championship season. For all Willcox not looking like an athlete, he was a phenomenal product of the Rovers' youth system, very reliable t converting chances and a tremendous supplier of damaging passes and crosses. Suffice to say,had Willcox in his prime been playing left wing yesterday, we would have beaten Spurs. Waggy was utterly exceptional and it was a privilege to see him ply his trade at Ewood. I have never seen passes hit with so much back spin. A 40 yard driven trajectory into the space behind the full bcks and the ball would stop within a few yards of where it first landed. Both Brotherston and Sellers were huge favourites. Noel brought a touch of glamour to the grimmest period in Rovers' proud history. What fun it was waiting for his substitute appearances in the 1980 World Cup finals in Spain. So many marvelous moments- the goal against Luton at a frozen Ewood in front of the Match of the Day cameras and the destruction of Pompey when a 0-2 half time score turned into a 4-2 rout at Fratton. Scott Sellers was a man for whom the adjective silky was invented. My favourite memory was taking some Swedes and Dutch friends to Ewood Park and them being left stunned that such a player could be operating in the English second division. Which brings us to Duffer who undoubtedly had the beating of all of them. My only reservations are that he was with us for so little time and that Blackburn Rovers' all time greatest left winger is only the second best left winger in the current Chelsea squad.

The good news- the bottom three all lost so we are still one point above the relegation places. Lucas Neill looks to be getting back to his best and Friedel was solid. The bad news- there is no other good news. Before I went out to watch the game, I looked at the two line-ups and was very apprehensive. That Rovers line-up including subs cost a little over £20m and the Spurs line-up including subs cost in excess of £60m. With a decent Manager, the more expensive players will on average win out and that is what happened this afternoon. About ten minutes from the end, the camera focussed on Mark Hughes and the look of exasperation showed he knew there was nothing more he could do with the players available to him. A few bubbles of hope got popped tonight. Bothroyd was abysmal. When Tugay was replaced by Thompson all the rhythm went out of the side- I fear my memories of Thompson's inability to pass at Premiership quality came back to haunt me. First half Gallagher was way below Prem quality. Dickov faded from the moment he got booked- until then he was doing a first class job as a pest. Whatever NEJ is, he is not an overlapping full back. Sorry guys, Todd played to the top of his ability today but he is not good enough. The first half apology of a volley and him and Tugay's non-tackling of Brown for their goal.... Well, another huge game next week. I rather suspect Rovers and Palace will be battling it out for 17th/18th at the season end. At least we will have the more expensive squad at Palace.

Been reading the previews for the Spuds v Liverpool Carling Quarter Final tonight. Looks like Jol sees this as Spuds big chance for silverware this year and is fielding a full strength side. Liverpool on the other hand see the Carling as relatively low priority but with European and Premiership campaigns faltering, perhaps Benitez would be glad of winning something. Certainly there are a couple of less familiar names in his squad but he won't be putting out an all star Reserves Arsenal style as all his first team are listed as well. Here's hoping Liverpool make a real fight of it tonight. The last thing we want is Spuds rolling up to Ewood buoyed by handing out a drubbing to an under-motivated Liverpool. I am pretty indifferent about the winner tonight (would prefer Liverpool) but will be delighted to see an attritional, bad tempered, kick anything that moves, mistake-ridden game officiated by a card happy ref settled 21-20 on penalties after extra time. Nothing better than hanging around in the centre circle for 50 minutes in wet sweaty football strip late on a nasty London December evening for messing up the muscles and bronchial passages. Unfortunately, it looks like Liverpool will be fielding a weakened side.

The Drog displaying self-knowledge of the highest order. Whilst certain individuls are whipping themselves up over this matter, let me point out that: I have just searched the Guardian web site and have failed to find the article which purports to say that any authoritative body is advocating the introduction of sharia law. I have visited several Islamic web sites including the Lancashire Council of Mosques and have not found anything advocating the iintroduction of islamic law. I know of no political party which has the introduction of sharia law in its policies. The British Council of Muslims most recent public statement includes the following: "The Islamic faith strongly exhorts its adherents to be a positive influence on their community, both Muslim and non-Muslim, and discourages Muslims from becoming insular and retracted. Furthermore, I would be able to supply you with many examples of practising Muslims with a deep knowledge of their faith who have succeeded in historically closed careers such as investment bankers, solicitors, barristers, academics and medical consultants etc." What I have found is a deep frustration that Abu Hamza (an Egyptian) has been used as an example of extremism amongst the British Asian population and the fact that the efforts of all the major islamic bodies in the UK to avoid the radicalisation of their young people and initiatives to play a positive role in society in general are being ignored by the mainstream press. A rough equivalent would be, as an English Protestant Christian, for my views to be represented as the same as some loony creationalist evangelist from America's Deep South. Different Continent, different (totally opposite) value set, different social context, nominally the same religion.

I have a nasty feeling about this one. Spuds won at Everton earlier in the season and their mean defence could well achieve a shut out if their under-performing front line grabs the opening goal at Ewood. On paper the prospects for this game look the same as the Brum match did-hardly any sign of a goal- but look at the 3-3 that happened in that 5.15pm kick off! Spuds have also had their goal fest in a season otherwise full of 0-0s and one goal outcomes with the 4-5 aganst their nearest and dearest Arsenal. Apart from that game which so impressed Jose Mourhino- ahem, Spuds have been offering some pretty turgid stuff and Martn Jol doesn't seem the type to appreciate show ponies. So will lightening strike twice and Saturday evening turn into a goal riot?- I doubt it. Hopefully, beating Boro will turn into a false dawn for Spuds. By all accounts, Boro lost it- they had been found out by Villareal midweek and offered little after Queudrue got sent off at White Hart Lane. This will be another massive game for the Rovers- we will almost certainly be kicking off in the bottom 3 again unless Fulham get an unlikely win at Norwich in the 3pm games. It is even conceivable we will start the game back at the rock bottom of the Prem (Southampton at least drawing at Man U and West Brom winning by more than two at Pompey)! A defeat will deflate all the confdence and optimism building up at the moment and reconfirm that this season is going to be one long relegation fight. Victory and we will be thinking of mid table at Christmas. With no Andy Cole to embarass Ledley King again, this is going to be the long overdue 0-0 draw.

Was at a conference all day yesterday but managed to get the Reception to ring up a bar to get the score with about five minnutes of the game remaining. Just want to say what a superb job Sparky is doing and an enormous thank you to Fat Freddie for relieving us of the problem of firing a Manager who had achieved so much for us before self-immolating. We took two horrible 0-4 beatings- one down to a justified sending off, one to a team which found its goal scoring ability and hasn't stopped since as Charlton found out yesterday. Sparky and his coaching staff have set out their strategy and stuck to it. They have worked extremely hard on our defending, tried 4-5-1, rejected it and finally the defense got a first fully-deserved clean sheet as opposed to fluking one (let's be honest, Pompey should have had a pen at Ewood). Their training methodologies are also finally producing a fully fit squad and gone are the days of being embarassed by the team runnning out of steam and generally not pressing the way they should have done. We started the Season with a horrible set of fixtures with a couple of refereeing howlers thrown in (D'Ursoed at Soton and the 93rd minute rugby pass v ManU). Now we not only a favourable run of fixtures with two teams most people would choose to be next up, but I suspect we are playing a number of teams at just the right time- Fulham yesterday- Spuds before they get themselves sorted out and a decent chance that Everton and Bolton will be suffering from altitude sickness when we play them. Now Hughes has to move on and finally sort out the set pieces and give players the confidence to recognise great shooting positions as well as keeping defensive concentration levels high. The task in the transfer window is also changing. Perhaps on 1 January the table will be making very much more attractive reading than it did at noon yesterday. If we have built rather more than a one point cushion above the relegation places, the challenge will not be to find the right talismtic scrappers which has been the depressing litany of journeymen littering this MB's transfer thread so far. Hughes' three tasks will be - to get rid of players whom he deems have no future (after the TP episode, nobody can deny that Hughes does not take tough decisions), - get the right new defender(s) - and to find one or more players who solve the problem Rodney Marsh rightly identitified when he said "when you look at the Blackburn team, there is nobody whom the opposition has to be really worried about." Looking forwards with faith in the new management team and a great deal of optimism. So far, Sparky is doing as well as I had hoped and better than I expected.

Andy Cole's comments in the LET show he has a deep respect for the club and its fans. Let's face it, he was right about Souness too but he made some big mistakes in the things he did. He got a great reception from the Rovers' after he Brum game at Ewood at the end of last season. So why shouldn't he get a great reception when he runs out today? I am sure he will.

...and the first professional player to be selected for England. That must give you an idea how outstanding Forrest must have been to have broken through that particular barrier. A Great means being better than all your contemporaries. On that basis, Tim would be the first entry into this list who was only a great at Blackburn as opposed to having been a great amongst his peers in the game. Forrest embodies everything that the proud Rovers tradition stands for. Look in the front of every programme and see the list of major honours won. Half of them are at least as much down to Jimmy Forrest as the 95 Championship was due too Tim. Having already voted in Crompton, England, Clayton and Douglas whom greggy and his friends almost certainly didn't see either, why change the ground rules now?

Just to enlighten people, the-photographer will have done the following deal: National rights face clear EXCLUSIVE £25,000 (bought by the Sun) National rights face blurred £5,000 (bought by the Mirror) Local rights face blurred syndicated out perhaps £5,000 Conspiracy theory behind the arrests. -A freelancer with a Sun contact tailed the morons out of Ewood whilst he mobiled a Sun mate who in turn mobiled Bruce to tell him there's £5K cash in it if he makes an issue out of Yorke getting abused when he does the press conference. -Morons get taken to the freelancers hotel shown cash, given £100, whisked safely out of Blackburn, get more cash and put in a room with a minder outside and told not to contact anyone and that they are famous/ minor celebrities. -Morons are told mini bar is free but they have a limit on what they can drink (which is substantially below what is in the mini bar) -After milking the story for what its worth, the Sun's solicitor (a big name London firm) rings Blackburn's Chief Super and negotiates the Press Release concerning the morons voluntarily giving themselves up and does some plea bargainning. -Minder tells morons they are in deep trouble but they will looked after, oh and by the way they exceded the minibar limit in the agreement so they have invalidated the agreement and had better behave themselves or else.... Probable events behind the arrests. -Mum picks up the Sun "Oh my God, that's my little Jimmy." -Mum's best friend knows a solicitor who does these sorts of things -after 36 hours recovering from the bender/hangover, Jimmy and his mate go to the solicitor who negtiates with Blackburn's Chief Super - Solicitor drives the morons the three hour journey up to Blackburn for the 4pm appointment.

Perhaps he was too drunk to do a convincing monkey impression.

how exactly does that sound then !!!!!!!!! On the official site board, one poster is saying the guy has an Australian accent. I suppose that is somewhere between Birminham and London if you go the long way round. Someone else said he abused a Rovers fan over us losing 1-3 then tried to drink two pints at once during half time but the common message is that he was totally drunk. The red scarf had a letter "Z" on it in the picture I've seen of this fool. Don't know which club that would link him to.

One of the great pleasures of supporting Blackburn Rovers is knowing that our club was pivotal in the creation of modern football. When Jimmy Forrest scored what proved to be the winning goal for the Rovers in their first FA Cup win against Queen's Park in 1884, two largely amateur sides were competing. By the time of Forrest's fifth FA Cup winning medal in 1891, two professional sides were in opposition and the Football League had been founded and was thriving. I find it unthinkable that the era when the Rovers dominated for the best part of a decade and shaped the game of soccer would go unrepresented in the supporters' greats. Forrest was at the centre of all this, was an England regular for six years and captained his country.

This piece seems to bethe best balanced this morning. JW calling in the Chief Super was an excellent PR exercise all round. Revidge, if you heard the Brady interview, she did not call for a criminal investigation, she observed that if it were a racial incident, it fell within the parameters of the criminal law. The Sun apart, (and the BBC website which is STILL leading is sports section and home page with the same story) the fact that the matter is now sub judice and therefore cannot be reported upon easily hopefully will now starve the issue of newsworthy publicity although Brum are scrapping among themselves following David Sullivan's reasonable statement yesterday (never thought I would write that). I know this is a bit of a cop out but I hope the youth whose features adorn page 9 of The Sun is not from Blackburn. It would deflect some of the bad smell away from the club and town. The last thing we want is The Sun scooping they found him but perhaps I am being too cynical when I suggest the kid is already in receipt of a Murdoch backhander and is with a Sun-paid for lawyer. Would they have pulled the stunt jim has told us about if there were risk a Mirror reader would hand him in tomorrow? As for the scarf, I think Dukla Prague no longer exist. If it is Sparta Prague, they are notorious for their racism (no strangers to UEFA disciplinary action for it) and this moron wearing a scarf like that raises all kinds of questions about his links and motives.

Tris. Great preview- how the memories came flooding back. This is a real "who wants to win it the most?" game. No fence sitting after (correctly) calling the last four draws (but got the scores wrong!), Rovers to win 2-1.

For all our reservations about the accuracy of Tugay's passing, Opta stats are still showing that Rovers out pass most of the Prem and with better than average pass completion rates. I am pinnning my hopes this season on Reid or Tommo emerging as capable of being the central midfield partner for Ferguson and for MGP to be strong enough on the left allowing Emo to return to the right. In any game, at least one of those five will be unavailable through injury/suspension and there is enough proven flexibility to shuffle all of them except MGP with Tugay and Douglas also capable deputies when required. No doubt de Pedro, Danns and Flitcroft will be pressing for a place at some point. Brum's decently organised defence rumbled Emo's weakness on the left on Sunday and went a long way to neutralising him. That will have been noted by the rest of the Premiership. A big worry now is that after Sunday, opposition managers will be targeting isolating McEveley and getting people to run at him. Fortunately, not all will be as strong and fast as Melchiot who had been looking relatively ordinary for Brum before they came to Ewood. Everyone who is disappointed that MGP did not come on is forgetting that Andy Todd went down with cramp after 75 minutes. Sparky had to be ready to bring Matteo on and had him warming up- that scuppered any chance of MGP appearing.

jim has a good point about the watching media. Would be good PR for the fans and the club to give Andy Cole a cheer when he comes out. Unlike Yorke, Andy did make a major contribution to keep us in the Prem and scored the winner at Cardiff. He is also the second all time greatest Prem goal scorer and just like the top, spent a significantt amount of time at Ewood.

This is still the main sports story on the home page of the BBC. What a quiet news day! It is Sky Sports controversy corner. The comments seem pretty fair. To sum up, a legless teenager with a strange accent and an even stranger scarf together with his mate jesticulated and shouted causing a 33 year old multimillionaire to lose his cool and jump into a hostile crowd. His boss then told the media saying he felt physically sick by what happened. The world's media gathered at Ewood and the Rovers have been besmirched.

Good statement Paul. I am sure the board members fully support it.

Hang on, now isn't the time to be having a go at the neighbours.

LD Rover and revidge blue in the LET Thankfully the press seem to be moving onto other things although lack of football news means the Yorke story is lingering as the lead item on sites such as the BBC. Hopefully the Villa v Spuds game will pass without racist incidents tonight but there are some likely racial flashpoint games in Europe this week: PSV v Arsenal Real Madrid v Bayer Leverkusen Kiev v Roma Bayern v Maccabi Tel Aviv and Schalke v Fenerbahce could get unpleasant with the wrong elements in the grounds.

A Roma scarf? Those peaceable, law abiding, never an abusive peep out of them, cigarette lighter chucking tifosi down at the Stadio Olympico? Will be interesting to see what address this guy gives if it is ever released for public consumption. As for him being a drunk teenager, I cannot express any surprise.

Forgot to add. Karen Brady stressed that inciting racial hatred is a criminal offence and that there is a police investigation which might lead to a prosecution. World Soccer News reporting the Sports Miniser reaction. Thankfully reference to two fans and an isolated incident ppears prominently as well as John Williams' statement. Unfortunately Steve Bruce talks up the incident here. Meanwhilst David Sullivan, Chairman of Birmingham City is almost going overboard to play it down. He obviously heard the lazy chants though!

Blackburn chief executive John Williams said: "We want to talk to the police, we want to talk to our stewards, we want to review all the CCTV footage. "We'll be very disappointed if it shows that there's been any evidence of racism, but if there has, we'll take the strongest possible action. "This is not something that we want to tolerate at Ewood Park." From the BBC web site.

Accordiing to Radio 5 News, the FA are also investigating what happened. Steve Bruce has said he felt physically sick about the taunts. Shame he is not as level headed as his Chief Exec. Karen Brady has just been on Radio 5 now and was being very sensible. She says that she is surprised it was Blackburn because of the good relations at Blackburn. She says Birmingham are waiting for the Blackburn investiigation to report before Birmingham do anything and was extremely complimentary about John Wiilliams and the Rovers. She expressed full confidence in the club's investigation. She said that the tiny minority at Blackburn bore no relationship at all to the events the "poor England players" went through in Madrid. She would not be drawnn into saying that it was inevitable that one or two fans would copy what happened in Madrid nor did she call for the perpetrators to be banned for life when pressed by the Radio 5 inerviewer. She said she had not spoken to Dwight Yorke this morning. Have to say she went up in my estimation.

"Rovers boss Mark Hughes said he was unaware of any incident and would only comment when the facts were made clear. The club, who have done more than most to tackle the problem of racism head on, did not immediately issue a statement but were investigating the alleged incident." From the Manchester Evening News.