The Rovers Return

Steven N'Zonzi celebrates scoring at Arsenal, chased by, among others, fellow youth star Martin Olsson.

Most successful teams of the past are assembled around a core group of established, senior and experienced team members, while bringing in top quality youth players to learn from said core senior players and, eventually, carry on in their place when they move on.

Sam Allardyce, somewhat covertly, is doing this now. It’s been a bit more than a year since he took the reins at Ewood and, having spent his first season concentrating on avoiding the drop, he was then able to begin moulding the side as he wants it.

Over the course of this season, we’ve seen the emergence of some great young players. Martin Olsson, Steven N’Zonzi, Junior Hoilett and Nikola Kalinic are the four main stars.

All of whom have played, I think, a much bigger role than they were expected to at the start of the season. N’Zonzi was brought in to play the odd game while developing into a better player. In the end, through a succession of injured midfielders and his own solid performances in that role, he has become a first team regular. Read more »

Two games, one point. Not a good return from these encounters.

At Hull, we deserved a win. We were the better side and had Nikola Kalinic been capable of scoring goals, which I’m beginning to be convinced he is not, we would have done quite comfortably.

As for Hull, they were shite. Their ground is nice to look at, but the ridiculous narrow walkway you have to traverse to get to the stadium is ridiculous, and it’s even worse coming out at the end of the game when there’s 15,000-odd folk trying to get over it.

Then there was no beer for sale at half time. Why? We had beer last year, and I know for a fact Everton had beer this season, so why not sell it to Rovers fans?

On top of this the toilet facilities leave a lot to be desired!

Back to the match and, apart from his lack of scoring, Kalinic’s introduction certainly saw us creating a lot more chances.

Robinson was superb again also. His save from Fagan was of huge importance and from that point on Hull didn’t really have any clear cut chances, but everything they did throw at Robbo, he was more than a match for. Read more »

England's number one! Paul Robinson is a hero

Wow, what a night, and I didn’t even go.

Before you start shouting at me for being a part time supporter and all that, I finished work at 6:30pm, more than two hours from Blackburn! But boy, do I wish I could have been there.

I hope Sam gave this one a miss, otherwise his heart may have taken a bashing. Taking the lead came as a surprise, and when we were 1-0 up at half time I was feeling quietly confident we’d hang on. How nice was it to see Nikola Kalinic score as well? More of the same please Niko, if we ever see you play again…

Cue a Chelsea shake-up and we were 2-1 down pretty quickly. That’s it, we’re going to get steamrollered. Oh ye of little faith.

A shock equaliser, plus a disallowed goal, which I haven’t seen a proper replay of, saw us take the league leaders into extra time.

Then, an almighty shock as we are awarded a penalty! And Benni scores it! 120 minutes passes and it looks like we may have sealed the victory. Then, in the dying moments, Robbo flaps at the ball, his poor punch fins Ferreira and it’s 3-3 and penalties. Read more »

Michel Salgado celebrates his first goal for Rovers.

Headline copyright Richard Boardman (2009)

Rovers showed their class by brushing aside Championship strugglers Peterborough to avoid any cup embarrassment and progress through to the League Cup quarter finals.

Despite having players quarantined because of the swine flu illness that swept through the side, goals from Pedersen, Reid, Salgado, McCarthy and Kalinic ensured an entertaining cup tie ended in success for Rovers.

It’s great to see all of those names on the scoresheet.

Pedersen finally reminding us what he’s capable of from a dead ball situation. Reidy grabbing himself one, despite it being a penalty, after all that has been said in the press recently. Salgado has been far from impressive so far, but his goal that restored Rovers lead after we’d been pegged back twice was a lovely finish from a tight angle. Benni hasn’t featured much this season but his goal showed he’s still got the finishing touch. While £6-million future of Croatian football Nikola Kalinic finally got on the scoresheet (yes, another penalty) which should work wonders for his confidence!

It was also good to throw all those smug comments from Fergie Jnr well-and-truly back in his face.

On top of that, Sam was able to run the rule over a number of fringe players, whether he wanted to or not. Jason Brown, Michel Salgado, Phil Jones, Martin Olsson, Junior Hoilett, Brett Emerton, Steven Reid, Benni McCarthy and Nikola Kalinic all started the game. Read more »

West Ham's Scott Parker battles with Pedersen and Grella.

I know I’m a bit late posting my reflection on the draw with West Ham United on Saturday, but I’ve only just woken up.

The match was comfortably up there in my top 10 worst games of football that I’ve seen in my lifetime (as far as I can remember anyway).

Big Sam’s defensive tactics were boring on the eye, but certainly didn’t merit the disgusting jeers from some sections of the Rovers faithful, one of which was roundly told to “please be quiet”, or words to that effect, by yours truly.

The jeers, whether aimed at the hopelessly isolated Jason Roberts or at Big Sam’s refusal to revert from the one up front tactic, were downright unnecessary and a sad thing to hear in only the third game of the new season.

Despite that, the tactics were crap, but, as Sam has said himself, forced upon him. With Di Santo and McCarthy out injured and Paul Gallagher departed to Leicester, we were left with just Roberts and Kalinic, who apparently isn’t fit enough to play a full game yet… What we’d give for a player like Derbyshire right now…?

We played too deep and defensively and lacked a sense of urgency against a very poor West Ham side who if we’d attacked a bit more often, I’m sure we’d have scored at least once! Read more »

Gael Givet gives Rovers the lead

Rovers have succumbed to another defeat, making this a terrible start to the season, and I can’t help but feel we should have a minimum of four points from our opening fixtures. A bad day all round as, just half an hour before kick off, I was sacked from my post as manager of Rovers on Football Manager…

It was another case of missed chances costing Rovers as two from Kenwynne Jones cancelled out Gael Givet’s first goal for the club.

Last time out against City we dominated for long periods and should have scored at least twice, and had a penalty, but we didn’t, and paid the price.

Yesterday, we dominated, took the lead and threw it all away.

Granted, we had two goals disallowed, one very questionably and another which seems fair enough. The first was a daft decision as Samba collided with keeper Martin Fulop, which Alan Willy Wiley judged that to be a foul, excuse me for assuming football is a contact sport… The second I can understand as Samba is stood next to the keeper and, although he didn’t touch the ball, he was right under it as it sailed into the net.

Those unlucky decisions – which could have gone either way – aside, we should still have won the game, and comfortably.

Sunderland couldn’t cope with the height of N’Zonzi, Roberts and Samba as the ball was pumped up-field to good effect. Unfortunately we couldn’t turn the domination into goals. Read more »

Di Santo with Rovers chairman John Williams

You wait for a signing and then two come along at once…

Franco Di Santo has finally completed his loan move to Rovers and was quickly followed by ‘the future of Croatian football’ Nikola Kalinic, for £6-million.

The signings relieve a lot of the tension surrounding our apparent lack of fire power heading into the imminent start of the new season, now just under two weeks away.

According to certain sources, we may also be tying up a deal for Man City’s Benjani, who would be available for a reported £5-million, leaving us with a bit of loose change to look into strengthening other areas of the squad.

Both signings excite me, mainly because of their age. Di Santo has impressed the Chelsea management in pre-season, and they now want to see him play some first team football. Ironically, he was signed from Audax Italiano by Chelsea, where he was teammates with a certain Carlos Villanueva, but he appears to have what it takes to make it at this level. Read more »