The Rovers have taken The Scottish Sun sufficiently seriously to issue a rebuttal. At least our friends north of the border have provided a £10m starting price in case Souness or Moyes decide to attempt to use their reported £20m January transfer budgets with a raid on ewood.

herbegeehh, I am first in the queue to take you up on that bet! OK second then. There is a hint halfway down this article. tcj and Tris, interesting to see how Souness divides Rovers supporters even after he left! I am not knocking his past achievements, just recognising that his last fifteen months in charge at Ewood were going terribly wrong.

PhillipL I don't think all the time in the world would make it worth beginning with to deal your inability to read. please go and read page 3 where Paul tells us that the interest we were liable for was £750k then tell me more about my 'stabs' I have the club's last set of audited accounts open in front of me. Total interest liability incurred for the financial year £412,088. Interest paid net of interest income earned £388,745 (I was pretty close on the number I remembered). However, I was £10m short on he mount of debt the club had. Borrowings at 30 June 2003 were from Banks £12.4m and from the Walker Trust £14m. On that basis I would say the Rovers got an incredibly good deal from the Walker Trust on the interest rate it pays to them. Yes I can read, thank you for asking. However, I wonder about your abilities judging by your comments on the qualities of John Williams and the people managing the Walker Trust. In my opinion, Williams is of the very highest quality.

That brings back memories AESF! Will be watching this one to see if Hughes can inspire the Welsh squad more effectively than he has been doing in the last six games or so. Sticking with England thrashing them but for the Welsh to get a surprisee result against Poland.

Oh boy, Mattyboy, where to begin? First of all are you speaking with the benefit of inside knowledge or supposition? The last published accounts show an interest charge of £370,000 on £15m debt if that helps you to work out the effective gross interest rate. Hint, its not 5%. I very much doubt that there is any truth whatsoever in your stab at £750K unless we are talking about different years which is unlikely s the club's debt was more than halved by the sales of Duff and Dunn even after before the inwards purchases. The money was partly lent by the banks and partly from the Walker Trust. I have to admit that the marketing side of Rovers has been the one disappointment of the JW period as CEO. Apart from that, there can be little doubt that he is one of the best CEOs around in the Premiership if not the best. I don't know where you are coming from and on what basis you are making your comments about him.

I didn't know that Savage has a "history" with Souness. Perhaps he was simply getting a word in on behalf of Dunn, Johnson and Yorke! The person who comes off worse in this story is Souness. Fancy chasing Savage into the Birmingham dressing room! Savage was on an obvious wind up (no doubt one of the ex-Blackburn trio had tipped him off to make the jibe which would get Souness shouting about his medals) and by all accounts Souness fell for it hook line and sinker. I bet the Brum dressing room were in hysterics after Souness had left. Would be interesting to hear Steve Bruce's views on what happened Despite the success he had at Ewood and the good run Newcastle have put together under Souness, I have absolutely zero regrets about his leaving and am delighted by the manner of it. Souness and Fat Freddie- made for each other even though it took FF five fumbling prods to find him

Oklahoma, love it! An American report, presumably based on watching TV footage. A good read apart from his confusing left and right (well they drive on the wrong side of the road!) He likes Amo! Have a sinking feeling about that Titannic description though.

After saying that Abramovich is here to stay, there are newspaper reports this morning saying his spendinng spree is over. Mind you, if he hasn't got a decent team after running through £200m, I don't know what another £100m would buy. It does seem that he has a closer grasp on reality than the guy blowing Spanish public money at Real Madrid. Another interesting story is the potential acquistion of Man U by Glazier. This could screw the Mancs big time. Glazier's Tampa team are doing badly owing to defections when the purse strings were tied. Unlike Abramovich who is funding Chelsea out of his interest income, Glazier will have to spend all of his reputed $1bn and a bit more just to buy control over Man U leaving the club as just a business/profit making vehicle. Even though there are a lot of very capable and influential Manc shareholders who could organise resistance in the same way they fought off the Murdoch attempt to buy the club, Glazier "only" needs to persuade the Colmore Mafia to sell their 29.9% in Man U and he will be as good as certain of success in buying the club- no doubt the institutional investors would be delighted to take the reputed £3 per share for their admittedly much reduced holdings. In many ways the Glazier bid is unfortunate even though it would (eventually) starve RFW of transfer funding. The arrival of Magnier and MacManus has brought a welcome level of disclosure to the often murky world of top Premiership financial affairs.

England to thrash Wales at least as soundly as the Italians did: 4-0. Hughes to rescue his Welsh swansong with a sterling performance from the boyos midweek but to return to a huge Rovers crisis as Emerton gets cropped in Samoa and MGP bumps into Ferguson in Glasgow.

Matteo in midfield? NO That is how Leeds ensured relegation. With the Rovers, he was failing pretty comprehensively playing in midfield for Souness. Must confess to not being impressed with Matteo in any of the televised Rovers games I have seen so far. Given the flexibility and rotation of the most forward Rovers players on Saturday, I don't think the return of a fully fit Thompson would not neccessarilly restrict Ferguson's forward running. If we get all our players playing to their full ability, I would expect the midfield now to be Thompson, Ferguson in the middle, Emerton wide and Djorkaeff playing the creative disrupting role Hughes made his own at the end of his career. That means a frustrating time for Tugay, Flitcroft, dePedro, MGP, Reid and Rover 6's three little Darlings (Douglas, Danns and Donnelly). I still think a Jansen/Stead partnership would be brilliant up front but I stress only if they are playing to their full ability. However, to have this luxury we need Short to get fit and stay fit at least until January. Much as it pains me to say it but unless Matteo improves, we probably need a fit again Todd as well. However, for any Rovers team to work before the transfer window comes to our rescue, Ferguson has got to keep on improving to give us a totally commanding presence in midfield.

I can see it now- East Lancashire United kick off a Premiership match season 2006/7 in a Breezeblock mark 2 at junction two and a half on the M65 in front of 500 paying home spectators, 2,000 bussed in school kids and 1,000 bemused away fans. Meanwhilst in a cow field at Oozehead, 10,000 traditionalists watch FC Preston NE open the Unibond Division 2 season away to Blackburn Rovers 2006 FC. Unfortunately, like so many of your arguments thenodrog, humanity just doesn't work that way when you take it to its seemingly logical conclusion. Reading by the way are an extremely good bet for automatic promotion to the Prem this season- I bet the dingles would appreciate gates and prospects as bleak as their's are at the moment. Back to the Villa game, at least the Rovers are playing with zest and tactics that suggest a Premiership club with a Premiership future. One of the things which used to boost attendances would be a "big" match to get the town buzzing. Unfortunately, we get those at least once a month so that's not much use and the cups, even European competition don't get the pulses racing the way they used to. I think beating Man U soundly would have helped but MGP hit Row Z instead of the target. Shame our nine reserves got us knocked out of the League Cup because that was one competition we could really believe we had a chance in. One aspect that is a huge put off in this time pressured age is the amount of time wasted getting to/from Ewood. The jams are not much fun and the parking restrictions are a joke- Ewood is only used 22 times a year on average so surely all those residents only parking schemes could be lifted when the Rovers are at home?

I don't know if my memory is playing tricks on me but isn't the Welsh game a reward for the near capacity crowd at Ewood for the preevious u-21 fixture. In which case the Blackburn public had better get snapping up those tickets or we are not going to see representative football at Ewood again.

...or a Given punt to set Shearer through. Tiny is not even on the subs bench. Seem to have been a number of offsides since Yorke came on

Why not read the thread about the reserves this week rather than post non-amusing questions?

Thanks scotty- that neatly articulates my feelings. At last, Rovers re going into mtches with a tactical game plan that makes sense. Still many worries- will Jansen make it all the way back? will Stead keep plugging way until the confidence surges back? can Djorkaeff keep going through full season? who can make the midfield berth next to Ferguson their own? And that defence- rightly slaughtered by all match reports this morning. But deep down, I'd rather have the players and management I now see at Ewood than the squads and managers in at least half a dozen other Premiership clubs. It is probably going to be a long haul to survive in the Prem this season but I don't feel the numbing worry I was beginning to feel with Souness at the start of this season.

Gordon McQueen on today's game. Hmm, Bertie Vogts will be delighted by the performance of two Rovers' players but Mark Hughes will not?

A Villa view of the game.

Just watched the replay. What a wonderfully entertaining game! Definitely a point gained- Villa could easilly have turned us over had they a touch more faith in the munificence of Lorenzo. Suffice to say that the recoveries of Short and Todd in time to face Chelsea and Liverpool should avert the cricket scores Amo and Matteo would otherwise incur. Sad that Jansen did not show the confidence he should have taken recently but Emo is really beginning to look the genuine article. Bravo Djorkaeff and great to see Ferguson ram the critical words I penned about his Charlton performance back up the Word Processor. Dickov is fantastic- forget whether he has quality or not; just think what he would do if the quality around him were playing quality football! Huge black marks against Tugay- sorry you are one of my heroes but you should have run that game. Villa were (relative) softies and tthere was no excuse for invisible friend passing today. Tempus fugit. And the Blackburn public... that attendance was utterly pathetic. This is the mid- 1960's all over again.

Could somebody invite maltese rover to the aol chat please?

HT 1-1

Sounds like we are indebted to Friedel for at least four saves so far this afternoon.

We have the worst record in the Prem for conceding the first goal. Haven't won yet having concedeed first.

Very smart new interface but getting unable to connect status null. Now error not connected

Plus £50m+ a year walking in through the gates. Plus revenue from Sky etc etc. They are even able to ditch their Emirates sponsorship for a more lucrative deal six weeks into a new season. No doubt they will sell plenty of the new replica shirts. MCMC, at the time Abramovich bought into Chelsea, I showed how he stood to make a £250m growth in asset value from his initial investment in Chelsea. His outlay in Chelsea is still "only" around £300m. He is into Stamford Bridge for the long haul if you ask me. Part of the reason for buying Chelsea is to get positive publicity and make it politically more difficult for Putin to bust him. Leaving Chelsea in the lurch is therefore not on the agenda.

Sadly, this brings home the realities of the new economics. Spending £40 (for the cheap tickets) is no issue for large numbers of affluent Londoners just as it is perfectly affordable for them to spend over £100 on lunch for two or £300 on a couple of opera tickets. Quite apart from Abrmovich's millions, this has a dramtic impact on Premiership economics. The Rovers will probably sell 20,000 tickets at an average yield of £20 each for 20 home games this year- £8m through the gates (the last accounts which covered 02/03 showed gate revenue of about £7m). Chelsea will probably sell 40,000 tickets at an average yield of £50 each for 25 home games this year- £50m through the gtes or SIX times as much as the Rovers will earn.