Yes, but that's also the Chelsea team totally out of form and struggling to beat poor Premiership opposition. You have to look at the form, more than position of the club. Arsenal are in a form that is better than the 5th place they currently occupy, but Juventus are also still in good form in the league. There is no doubting for me that the premiership is better than Serie A which somehow manages to maintain this sense of glory despite the fact that all they do is sit off of each other and wait until someone can score, if that even does happen. If you look at how the three Italian teams performed in these quarter finals you'll see that it does give a pretty good reflection. You can outwork them and create chances fairly easily. The only shame was that Lyon decided to sit back when you could and should have killed the game off.

Does this include own goals? Then it could be someone like Hendry.

I'm guessing the answer the second question is Nottingham Forrest? Not sure though. Might be something important about the use of the word British though. As for the first part, are you including things like City, United, Rovers?

One of the worst articles I have read in a long time. Shearer wasn't perfect and certainly isn't of the style of Rooney or Henry, but he is, or at least was, a very fine footballer.

I'm not sure what happens in that scenario. I don't know for certain whether the UEFA cup winner is guaranteed their own seperate spot or if they take it from the league, if they take it from the league then Boro winning the UEFA cup would mean that they take 6th spot qualification away and then by making the Cup final they would effectively give it back, if you see what I mean. However, if there is a place put aside for the winner then yes, Boro winning the UEFA cup and making the final would see the top 7 qualify. Yes, we would also be guaranteed of an intertoto place if we finished 7th but I was looking at the possibility for direct qualification for the UEFA cup, I very much doubt that we could mess up our remaining fixtures so much that we could not qualify for at least the intertoto, it would simply be a nice thing to avoid.

Also, another interesting landmark to pass in comparison to that season is the number of goals we have scored. That season is often rememberd as one where we saw Rovers playing wonderful attacking football with the likes of Duff, Dunn, Jansen and Cole playing some of their best stuff. That year we scored 52 goals, we have currently scored 43 with 6 games to play there is no doubting that we could still pass that tally as well.

There is no way that 7th spot will see us qualify for the UEFA cup.

No. Manchester United winning the Champions League pushed UEFA cup qualification down to 6th. It's only when the FA Cup final is contested between two sides that have qualified for europe through the league that the top 7 all make europe. I have to say the longer this goes on the more it starts to confuse me, but I'm pretty sure that is right.

Anytime.

No. If Arsenal win the champions league then 4th spot is now a UEFA cup spot if they don't make the top 4. As long as they make the top 6, which they will, then 6th spot will certainly be a UEFA cup spot, it could only not be if they let's say finished 7th and won the champions league. Then 4th and 5th would be UEFA cup spots and 7th is now a champions league spot. I'm not sure how clear that it is now that you read it, but basically Arsenal winning the champions league will only matter to us if we finish fourth.

What is nice about that run of fixtures is thay maybe now we could get to a point where Bolton could help us out in that game against Spurs. This is a very big weekend for us. I also can't help but feel that Birmingham winning tonight improves our chances at Portsmouth. Portsmouth were on the crest of a wave and had pretty much everything going their way, this may have given them a slight knock to see close rivals pick up an unexpected three points.

Well. With them losing then I'd take our draw. Overall the two days have gone quite well for us. They can't overtake us now so if we wan't to stay in the top 6 all we have to do is get better results. Finally it is entirely in our own hands...why am I more worried?

Darren Royle?

Yeah it is.

I agree T4E. That's why I think even though the decisions probably evened themselves out we can feel really hard done by. I don't think we would have given up the lead and would probably have gone on to score more.

Correct

Whoops...he scored the first...ok who scored the first goal of the new millenium?

That's right

Ferdinand hasn't played this season has he?

Actually, come to think of it, last year he was just in the championship.

Oops

BBC team of the week eh? Sheringham...I'll go for the obvious haha.

It seemed as if he was hedging his bets. I don't think it was very malicious, but he did swing the elbow round and it wasn't a jumping with his arms raised sort of thing, so I can't really make my mind up.

I thought at the time there was certainly a case for a red, but a yellow would have been the correct decision. Giving no card made no sense, much of what the officials did last night made no sense though. As for us getting the better of the decisions I'm not sure. Bellamy was called offside several times when he wasn't and Roberts should have been sent off for the elbow (I would have understood had they given nothing, but once they decided it was a foul and he should be booked he had to go).

Either that or he was talking about the De Zeuw one where a foul was given, that was just outside of the box, couldn't understand how he wasn't booked for it though.