I know it's an old clich but what a difference a week makes!!

Penning last week's column was hardly an enjoyable experience. What with losing in the two cups, both strikers being injured and contemplating the eventual loss of our manager through his ambition not being matched I could hardly put a positive spin on it.

But this week it's a case of dusting down the party hats and streamers and getting on down because I can officially reveal that it's great to be a Rover again!!

Maybe the New Year resolution has come a month late but who cares, I'll now officially forgive the players and management down at Ewood anything after doing the double over Manchester United this season.

If you were to cast your mind back to the Shearer and Sutton days when we were challenging for the title we could hardly ever boast one win never mind two in a season.

The games were often dogged with controversy, usually to our detriment and the sparring between Dalglish and Ferguson was generally reduced to the red faced one goading his counterpart on how they were by far the deserved winners.

I always remember feeling like the bullied child in the playground after these games but that one day I'd be the one to overcome the odds and have the last laugh.

And since last Wednesday I have been laughing - maybe not all the time because I don't want to get locked up - but metaphorically my sides are splitting.

The coup de grace for me was in the after match interviews where our old friend Sir Alex played the old bully boy Rovers' trump card.

Where once I'd have been hurling whatever I could get my hands on at the TV screen this time at the end of the interview I allowed myself a quiet chuckle. Maybe he'd enjoyed a glass of wine with his old charge Sparky after the game but to my mind it was probably whine' made from grapes that were almost certainly sour.

When Mourinho coined the bully boy' phrase originally the press were falling over themselves to slaughter Rovers in print. So having worked so hard to eradicate this tag, Sparky must've been livid by Ferguson's cheap shot and possibly worried that open season on Rovers would begin again.

He needn't have worried.

Where once the press hung off every word Ferguson uttered these days they tend to afford him the same amount of time that one may give to the nutter on the bus. The day after I saw no reports that Rovers were over physical and all were particularly complimentary about us.

Proof indeed to me that Fergie's star does not burn as bright any more, while Sparky's continues to flourish.