philipl

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.

A hasty press statemennt saying one fan was involved is going to look pretty stupid if it turns out several were being racially abusive. There is probably a mass of CCTV footage to wade through and for all we know there could be teams of Sky or BBC Radio people listening to every mike in the ground trying to work out if they are picking up a wheezing asthmatic or monkey sounds. Damage limitation does not have to be public- getting your friends in the media to run more positive stories which is what I believe was happening an hour ago. I would also expect Hughes to be on the phone to Bruce and quite possibly Yorke working the old Manc chums routine to try to minnmise whatever next comes out of Brum. Getting a handle on the clown in the Sun photo is going to be very important to make sure he doesn't give a choice interview to the press. Bruce has said a few more things to the Mirror. Understandable in the circumstances but pretty damming. Why did Yorke go into the crowd to confront these people? I thought pros learnt not to do that after the Cantona incident.

The newswires are now leading with "Rovers investigating claims". Lookslike someone has got up early to startt the damage limitation exercise. This piece in the Trinidad Express mercifully does not mention the alleged racial abuse but puts Dwight Yorke's performances at both Blackburn and Birmingham into perspective.

Some unconnected thoughts: - I think Abbey is right when he says the initial booing was for the linesman. I know I was yelling at the screen and they hadn't shown Yorke coming on. - Once it got going, the crowd made so much noise booing Yorke it became self-sustaining. However, Yorke made so little contribution there was nothing to boo after the origional commotion had subsided. - the Rovers have always booed returning players. I remember Mike Ferguson gettting a huge amount of unwarranted abuse when he reurned with Villa in the '60s and I've always felt the reaction against Shearer was unjustifiable. Johnty goot a bit of stick last night and I was surprised that Dunn was spared. - Yorkie wasn't that bad for us but was still a huge disappointment when compared with what he could/should have been. 18 months of his time at Ewood coincided with the whole club being a huge disappointment so he became a cypher and conduit for the rage and frustration. - Chances are journos from around the world will look at this thread. Chris/Tris tiff- please don't tell me what that was about because I rarely understand Chris' posts! - I never did like Steve Bruce. The sensible thing for everybody would have been to make a quiet but very strongly worded complaint to the Rovers and Premier League. Yorke clearly allowed the altercation to upset him. Bruce has made sure every biggot in the land now knows that. - This is a PR disaster for the Rovers. Every newswire from China to Porrtugal seems to be carrying the story. JW is going to have to use every ounce of his media savvy to rescue the club's good name from this one. - With the Spanish fall out escalating (little matters of an Olympic bid and the future of Aragones as Spanish coach at stake) lots of people have lots of reasons for keeping the actions of those two stupid bitter Rovers fans in the headlines for days to come.

To echo and support the acknowledgement that David Dunn was very quiet about his goal which to me and no doubt to him too, spelt relegation for the Rovers at the time it went in. I thought Dunn played very well last night given the time he has been out and I maintain that keeping him fit is going to be a major factor on whether England pose a serious threat at the 2006 World Cup. It is also clear that Dunn had enough character and backbone to stand up to Souness even though the lad had been letting himself down off the park.

Blackburn Rovers v Birmingham City 3 Goals 3 10 Shots on Target 4 3 Shots off Target 5 3 Blocked Shots 0 6 Corners 9 14 Fouls 10 3 Offsides 2 1 Yellow Cards 1 0 Red Cards 0 74.8 Passing Success 68.8 59 Tackles 54 57.6 Tackles Success 57.4 53.2 Possession 46.8 51.3 Territorial Advantage 48.7 These are the Opta stats. 75% of Brum's on target efforts resulted in goals whereas only 30% of our's did. Shows what a good game Taylor had in the Brum goal.

Agreed- see my earlier post.

"Yorke said he had been abused by TWO home fans as he warmed up prior to his 74th-minute introduction as substitute. "They racially abused him. Dwight is bitterly upset and angry," Bruce said after the 3-3 draw. " This is the report from the BBC which is head lining the Sports Section at the moment. I have put the word TWO in capitals. One of them was intercepted by the stewards for hand gestures if you read on through the report.

I hope there wasn't any racist stuff in the barracking Yorke received. No doubt CCTV will find the clowns if there was any of that stuff. But the headlines are not going to do the Rovers or the town of Blackburn any favours. I thought Yorke was going to make us pay but he was pretty anonymous when he came on. There was a delicious cameo on the Sky commentary. A feed had obviously come through that Yorke was coming on and the commentator announced it. A minute latter we got a shot of Yorke in the dug out pottering about in his track suit "No doubt Dwight Yorke will join us in his own good time". When he eventually appeared "and here is Dwight Yorke wrapped up in his thermals against a cold and wet Lancashire night".

Well that was fun! Would have been great but for two offsides in the Anderton goal and Melchiott running past Jay like he wasn't there for the other two goals. ...and Gally flatfooted watching the action when Maik Taylor spilled that shot most of the way to the penalty spot. But, great entertainment leaving me convinced we are staying up. We'd better because I told the Mancs in the Bar at half time: "If we don't loose this we will stay up, no problem"- so there you have it! Funny thing was they were telling me that the Rovers would get the draw! It is also utterly clear that midfeld is NOT the problem. Ferguson was not outstandng but was still very good. Reid despite the air shot which set up Savage (who I thought looked predictably ordinary) had a blinder and Thompson came on and showed he CAN play centre mid. Emo was up against the joint second tightest defence in the Prem and they certainly showed he is weak on his left foot. If MGP is not good enough to force Emo out of the side, so be it. Up front, Dickov's lack of stature was certainly a problem- he was pushed around all night but the little'un kept going and forced Gally's goal. Matty took his chance well and disappeared, Gally could have been a hero but as I said, did not follow up- unforgiveable if he seriously wants a place in the starting line up with Bothroyd and Stead surely going to come good. We scored three against a super mean defence so I'm not so concerned about buying a forward in January. So folks- all that £xm has got to go on defenders in January and I don't mean players we all have to kid ourselves could be good enough but I am talking serious long term quality. Definitely a central defender of real class and a right back who can push Neill out of the side iif he doesn't rediscover the way he was playing two seasons ago. And I am going to bed with a smile on my face and forget the League table. The win can come at the Cottage.