Neutralising The Burn

My best mate is a Blackburn fan, so as you can imagine it's been a good few years for me as we certainly seem to be their bogey team. But, after every win we've put over them I get a feeling that this pleasure can surely not last, and there is no way that the footballing Gods could be on my side this often - I mean Christ even Real-Choker made them look bad a few years ago, and even God doesn't like him.

On the subject of God we also welcome back our old chum Paul "Judas" Ince, and if what the prophets of every major newspaper have said is true, then expect him to welcome Curbs with a warm kiss on the cheek instead of the usual handshake.

Welcome back as well to a couple of our players, which is a refreshing change. Lucas is back after his absence in midweek, but more importantly we see the return of our fiery Welshman Craig Bellamy, who I would imagine will be raring to go against his former club. To continue in this glorious "we have people fit" theme, a deserved crowd favourite - Linda McCartney - is back as well after a long absence from an injury that can best be described as an unfortunate veggie-burger making incident. Linda, I would hope, will take his left back position away from Neil, therefore rendering our defence a little more natural and fluid. Behrami too is back, and excuse me whilst I jump for joy like a little school girl in disbelief that we have for the first time in ages a problem with selecting our back four...does Neil replace Pepperami or Davenport? - For me I say neither as Pepperami needs to get a few games under his belt if he is to progress, and Neil and Upson wouldn't exactly be the quickest combination if both played at centre-back. Guess we'll see come Saturday.

The midfield will see Noble back, and as far as I know we have no new injuries there. The strikers too seem to have wrapped themselves in cotton wool, and Cole is even available after watching the footage of his "injury" last week and deciding that he really shouldn't be hurt - the question though is whether Cole starts with Bellers' return, will Curbs be cautious with Craig and use him as a second half sub only? Get the boy on is what I say, he should be close to match fitness after a decent pre-season. Curbs should also consider strapping a slice of pizza on the back of Bellamy just to make sure Ashton moves this week. Furthermore it will be amazingly refreshing to see our best strikeforce actually be able to play with each other for the first time since the Jurassic period (Ashton-Tevez 0 mins together, Ashton-Bellamy 10 mins together - that's 10 minutes of our best strikeforce in 2 years!), lets just hope they don't celebrate with a golfing trip.

One more thing to note will be if Curbs puts in the youth this week; apparently in the midweek game everyone was playing for their place, and with Reid and Hines both scoring (and Cole), the starting lineup, if he keeps his word, could be interesting.

This should be a good encounter, and we do normally do well against Blackburn - Mark Lawrenson (or "Thatch" as me and my best mate dubbed him after noticing the strange resemblance of his haircut to a thatched roof) has predicted 2-2, personally I'm just surprised he thinks we can score two. But I'm in agreement that we should see at least four goals tomorrow so I'll go with 3-2 Irons.