HERE I am placing a £50 charity bet courtesy of Ladbrokes bookmakers.

The wager is on Rovers to get into Europe at odds of 4-1, and the NSPCC will be £250 better off if the team bring home the bacon. If the bet goes down, the bookmakers have still kindly agreed to donate £50 to the charity.

Whether or not the charity will actually see the larger amount seems very much open to question in the light of some of the manager's negative comments about the UEFA Cup over the last ten days.

As a supporter, I was very disappointed with Souey's remarks, which I feel are extremely damaging. Surely the message that should be coming out is that the aim is to finish in the very highest position possible, whether that proves to be good enough for UEFA qualification, sneaking into the Champions League, or whatever. What are we going to do if we're in a qualifying position with a couple of games to go?

On the one hand we have the manager of the club saying that in effect, the UEFA Cup is a waste of time. On the other hand we have had chief executive John Williams in his new column for this paper doing his level best to persuade the floating fan it is worthwhile coming down to Ewood for the remaining home games. These two conflicting messages are completely counterproductive.

We saw in 1995 that if you stand still in this game you actually move backwards at a rate of knots.

If we express no ambition as a club beyond Premiership survival how on earth are we going to attract, and just as importantly retain, the quality of player necessary to maintain our current position? The answer is we won't.

The problem is easily rectified. Instead of making people feel miserable all year by saying our aim is to avoid relegation when the squad is clearly performing better than that, what's the harm in saying we've a good bunch of lads and the aim is to finish as high as possible and do as well as possible in the cups? It might just work wonders.

Finally commiserations and massive respect are due to my fellow correspondent this week after Stan and Sam's big day out at Watford ended in disappointment.

I never quite realised until now what utter garbage Stephen has to endure in the line of duty.

It was Andy Warhol who famously said that everyone enjoys 15 minutes of fame at some point in their life. Or at least in the Clarets case, a graveyard slot on BBC2.

Mind you, in the light of what subsequently passed as entertainment, someone at BBC programming obviously knew something the unsuspecting British viewing public didn't.