NO pressure at all then Rovers. Just the pride of the country and the Premiership at stake.

I had been expecting an uneventful week club wise due to the forthcoming internationals. Instead excitement was raised to fever pitch by the UEFA Cup draw.

I called for the start of many memorable European nights in my last column and they don't come any better than this. It took Sky all of ten seconds to dub this the latest "Battle of Britain" and judging by initial reaction from both sets of supporters ticket demand for both legs will be red hot.

From a Rovers perspective, people who haven't travelled away for some time are suddenly talking about attending the away leg and I only hope the club request enough tickets to satisfy demand ie. me!

This mouthwatering tie just about sums up what being in the top flight is all about. Over the years, starved of success, and at times dreaming of mediocrity, our claret and blue friends have had to keep up the self pretence that they are our main rivals based on historical perspective and long memories.

You will never stop (and wouldn't want to stop) banter between the fans but any meaningful competition on the pitch ceased to all intents and purposes a generation ago.

Back in the real world Rovers fans are gearing up for the visit of the Toon army and a certain Mr Shearer gunning for his 300th goal.

There then follows the little matter of two visits in five days to 'The Library' aka Highbury and a once in a lifetime experience at Celtic Park.

The passiveness of the Arsenal fans at home has been well documented but is more than compensated for by their team who are playing some of the best stuff I think any of us can remember.

Passive home support will most definitely not be the problem in Glasgow and the experience in Sofia will hopefully be a useful taster. In the wake of excitement over the UEFA draw the England game was almost a case of after the Lord mayor's show.

It was significant from our point of view for the well deserved call up for of David Thompson. The thing that struck me was how quickly Tommo seemed to have leapfrogged over David Dunn in the pecking order to be first reserve for Trevor "air-miles" Sinclair.

Hopefully this will in turn spur Dunny on to the sort of consistency and performance level shown by his pint sized team mate in recent weeks.

The game itself was nothing to write home about and I thought were we were extremely fortunate to get the victory helped greatly by the fact that, like the people in the deodorant ads, the Slovakian keeper appeared incapable of moving his arms away from his body.

Having seen the pitch I was quite pleased Thommo didn't get a game as he might have been the latest in a mysteriously long list of hamstring victims this season.

So back to the serious stuff, it's first up the Geordies. Such is the contribution Alan Shearer made to Blackburn Rovers, it would be almost fitting if he scored his 300th goal at Ewood. Only as long as we're 3-0 up at the time.

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