FOR the long-suffering Ewood faithful, Saturday was a time to forget.

Forget 'doing a Sunderland', getting 100 points, being champions by Easter. Forget superior class showing through against inferior opposition. Forget the players that let us down so badly last season repaying the first instalment of that debt straight away.

In fact, forget that there had been a close season at all. The Port Vale game might have been, say, the sequel to the Middlesbrough match at Easter, lots of possession and a complete absence of any sort of spark once we got within hailing distance of their keeper. Depressing? You bet your life it was depressing!

I don't know whether any Rovers players read this column (they've never phoned me about it) but in case they do, I've got a message for them. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, but you'd better get used to it: Rovers fans will expect you to beat every other team at Ewood this season, better teams than Vale too. Expectations are high, but we've got a right to expect, haven't we?

The fact is, we know we have better players, and we want those players to prove it, week in, week out. Or...well, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Someone behind me on Saturday was stoically trotting out the line that 'it's early days yet'. The worrying thing is, if the League is a Marathon (or should that be 'a Snickers', nowadays?), then Rovers seem to be having trouble getting the wrapper off!

So, the pressure is on already at the court of King Jack. Judgement on the two Brians and their band of not-so-merry men is suspended - for the present.

The funny thing is, as individuals, I don't think the Rovers players did badly on Saturday. I couldn't honestly point at one player and say 'he had a bad game'. Yet, as a team, they were largely inept, unimaginative, ineffective.

Until Saturday, I'd forgotten too. I'd forgotten how bad last season felt as we stumbled from one crisis to the next, playing football with blindfolds on.

But, through the haze of amnesia last saturday, I couldn't forget how much Rovers need a bustling, harrying target man to put pressure on such obdurate opposition. Hurry back, Ashley Ward. We are, as the Americans would say, 'missing you already'.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.