Super_Uwe

. Yep I agree. If we do go up this year then I don't personally believe he will go. I have felt for a long time that the loyalty the club showed him when he had his heart surgery may well have more impact than some people think. Also - he could (and it's a big could) be playing Premier League football with Saints in just over 18 months time, and he'll still only be 24. That's worth pondering over IMO.

I've just read the article on the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/blackburn_rovers/9336036.stm If you read the article they've actually quoted how much his wages are going to be for the first year and then second and third years. The word naive springs to mind! How do they propose to fund those wages in the long term at a club where attendances are around 23k on average? What will the rest of the squad think? I'm just grateful that we've got some solid, intelligent and ambitious people in charge of our club. The Blackburn owners seem to be treating the club like some kind of toy at the moment; only time will tell if they actually have the right intentions, but as of now I just think this is some kind of game for them; it seems to be a way for them to show everyone how rich and important they are.

Love the vitriol on this thread...bit sad if you ask me but hey ho. However I miss Dennis Rofe to be honest. Loved the way he used to bang on about helping to suck the ball in the back of the net when we were shooting towards the Milton Road end in the second half. Happy days.

IMO I'm not sure his heart was ever properly in it when he was here. In fact you could possibly argue that his motivation started to wane once SCW and Lowe went; he did after all agree to be part of that structure which was disbanded in 2006. Only he can say whether that's true or not. The major issue I have with him is that he inspires zero confidence. I don't necessarily want my manager to be some jumped-up, "passionate" lunatic, but at no stage in his time with us did I feel we were going anywhere. In the end that proved to be the case. Not sure where he's going to go now, although it would not surprise me to see him back at Ipswich if Keano gets the boot...stranger things have happened!

A quite magnificent set of results over Christmas. Well done to all involved at the club. We are in a super position now to push on and secure promotion this season. It will certainly be tough and as the comparative tables show, this season is much, much tighter. Any poor results will more than likely result in dropping 2,3, even 4 places at a stroke, so the pressure really is on now - not just for the players but for the fans as well. Watching Cardiff faltering away at the moment in the Championship hardens my beliefs that there will be plenty of twists and turns left in League One as well...

You just know we are going to lose away to Dagenham and Redbridge!!

At least he's not as bad as this... Or...maybe he should be more like that for comedy effect! Back to the topic - I know what you mean but I guess it's his way of dealing with the media. He still sounds like he knows more than GB ever used to anyway...

Nothing surprises me in football. I've thought long and hard about Big Sam, and at the end of the day he's a decent manager. I don't blame him for one second for being the way he is because football nowadays demands instant results due to the financial hardship caused by relegation. If you want someone who will keep you up, there's no-one better; in six seasons with Bolton in the Prem he finished 16th, 17th, 8th, 6th, 8th, 7th, and with Blackburn he finished 15th and 10th (obviously Newcastle was a blip but he wasn't there long!). I can only assume the new Blackburn owners are extremely ambitious and have a rabbit to pull out of the hat.

Quite right. Whether you like Nigel Adkins or not, he needs to be given the opportunity at least to buy his own players, sell the ones he doesn't want, and get the side firing on all cylinders ready for the season run-in. I cannot believe for one second that, come Feb 1st, we will not have done anything to strengthen the squad and get rid of players that don't fit in. We need to do well over Christmas to help compensate for that steaming cack of a result at the weekend, and provided we do pick up a few wins, we will no doubt be in the promotion mix. This is all we really need to worry about right now - making sure we are in contention rather than being 20 points clear at the top of the league with a goal difference of +576.

What always makes me laugh on here is when we lose (in a pathetic manner yesterday I'll admit), there's always calls to get rid of player X or Y for being utter s****. If we were ever to employ this zero tolerance strategy for poor performances, I doubt we'd even have a football club left to support as no f***** would want to play for us.

This is 100% unequivocally correct - simple as.

A very depressing result. Perhaps a bit further away from emulating Barcelona than we'd hoped...

Pardew is a brave man. He simply has to hit the ground running - that is the only way he will be able to get through this IMO. If you've ever been to St. James' Park you'll know that Newcastle are a massive club, albeit a pathetically unsuccessful one. I never believed the hype until I actually went there - if they could somehow manage to win something it's the sort of place where there would be pandemonium. I think that's a massive pull for any manager even if the reality is that it's a bloody hard task.

Not even a massive surprise for me, there have been rumours flying about for months now about his position at Newcastle. On the face of it a deranged decision, but it would come as little surprise if there were indeed other things going on behind the scene. Seems to be the in-thing now of course. When you look at what position Newcastle were in when he took over, being 11th back in the Premier League is a magnificent achievement. Yeah, it's maybe not all that exciting, but surely the whole point of this season (as is the case for every promoted club) is to consolidate? Glad I'm not a football manager!

Yes that's true, but my point was rather to do with a sustained period of cold weather each winter. It's not just about whether the pitch is OK but whether the local infrastructure is able to cope with long spells of snow and ice (we saw this week that in some places it's not the best!). Sure, the Premier League/some Champ teams would be fine for the most part with their undersoil heating etc, but if it stayed below freezing for a long time then there might be more cancellations/fixture backlog etc. So in that respect a break might be needed if it's likely to happen every December/January. Anyway, these are all big ifs and I would not really want to see a winter break as it would mean the end of the festive fixtures.

To a certain extent, Theo has suffered from the sheer weight of expectation placed on him from a very young age. Due to injuries and lack of form at times, he's never quite managed to deliver the performances we know he's capable of on a regular basis. But he's still 21 - that's right, TWENTY ONE. We seem to have this bizarre view in this country that if you're not a world-beater by the age of 21, you never will be. It's crazy. Even by the time the next World Cup is held, he'll be 25. As for Ox, hopefully he'll stay here for a while. Don't forget that when Theo was with us, we were very much on the way down. Now we're on the way up again, there's maybe less need for our best players to go.

It's difficult to see how it would work as the Christmas and New Year football schedule is so important to everyone in the UK. I absolutely love Boxing Day matches; yeah, the weather can be fairly crap, but there's just something about it that makes it great. Although I must say I haven't seen many Boxing Day classics though...! The only way I could see a winter break coming in is if we do indeed start to experience colder winters on a regular basis; as we saw this weekend, a lot of games were called off, so it might then make sense to put in a four week break that everyone can work around. Depends what our planet decides to do!

Indeed. In my opinion Plymouth was also selected due to being right in the middle of a tourist hotspot (my wife comes from Salcombe so, like you, she knows exactly what that means in the summer...), it would have offered something a bit different anyway. But never mind, don't matter now!

Antartica's a great shout for 2030. If nothing else it might bring about goalline technology due to the raging blizzards; the lino's definitely won't be able to see anything otherwise:lol: Oh, and Sepp Blatter will be 94 by then - he'll still be in charge of FIFA I'm sure...

It's clear that Sepp Blatter wants the World Cup to make an impact in new places, so on that basis alone I don't think we could ever have won. People keep banging on about it being the best technical bid, but if the main criteria was to give the World Cup to somewhere that needs developing, then the technical quality of the bid mattered very little. We keep telling ourselves that people all over the world love English football; well, maybe other countries like our clubs and players, but they certainly don't like our constant droning on about being the home of football. Sadly that is all we have left to cling to these days!

Jose Froste

Kind of agree with you here, with any luck he'll have made a decent enough impression and can go on and actually do something with his career rather than waste away with us. However he is going to be 27 next year so a little unfair to compare him to the development squad!

Couldn't agree more. He's hardly an "old war horse", he's 28! OK, his best years probably aren't all that far ahead of him now, but at the end of the day he's not some has-been either. Technically he would have no problem in my opinion playing in the Premier League, however his mobility might let him down - but if he could find some sort of role a la Sheringham then I have no doubt he'd do well. I personally believe that he's struggling with injuries, and coupled with his physique as well, I doubt he's the quickest healer either (just my opinion again, could be wrong). But it's difficult for us to leave him out even if he's not fully fit as he's a real force to be reckoned with at this level. Maybe a couple of weeks off might do the trick both physically and mentally, something needs to be done to get him back to his best ready for the end of season run-in.

I like Dave's enthusiasm, at least you can tell he cares about his football. Could do a bit better on foreign player pronunciation but so could 98% of the British population I'm sure... Generally speaking, there's never been a particularly great reception for him on this board - is it just purely down to people not liking what he says on the radio or is there another reason?