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.

Kalinic was brought in, again, as an up and coming player. Although I think he was supposed to play a big role for us. However, the lack of form in Roberts and Di Santo, injuries and the continued bad attitude of porky Benni meant he was asked to come into the fold a lot sooner. After a shaky start – and his debut at Sunderland, laughable as it was, now seems a distant nightmare – he has developed into an excellent striker with a very bright future.

Olsson was probably not really in Sam’s plans at the start of the season. His performances at left back under Hughes and Ince were poor. He never really seemed to be a player that was going to make it. Then, Allardyce threw him into midfield and it transformed the young Swede’s career. He is now a very important part of our steadily improving side.

Junior Hoilett has been at the club since he was 13, although nobody had heard of him until just before the start of the season. Suddenly, reports emerged that someone who had played for Rovers for so long was denied a work permit to return from a loan spell at St Pauli of Germany. Rovers were clearly desperate to bring the young lad back and pushed until it was secured. Since then, Hoilett has been a major player for us in the Premier League this season. He has all the key qualities a young player needs, particularly blistering pace, and the potential to develop in other areas, particularly strength and intelligence!

As well as those four, our first team squad includes Amine Linganzi, another N’Zonzi-esque midfielder who has had rave reviews for his performances in the reserves, Aaron Doran, midfielder, currently on loan at Orient but is promising, Alan Judge, has had positive reviews fro our youth management and has been impressive for Plymouth in the Championship, Phil Jones, defender turned midfielder who has emerged on the scene this season and Frank Fielding, England Under-21 keeper who has become a bit of an on loan journeyman over recent seasons.

Add into this mix the likes of Gavin Gunning, Andrew Haworth, Alex Marrow and Marcus Marshall, as well as youth team players like Jackson Ramm and Michael Potts who are all earning rave reviews while out on loan or playing in the youth side, and the future looks reasonably bright.

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.

A 0-0 draw at the KC Stadium was two points dropped, despite Big Sam taking the positives out of another point and another clean sheet.

See my photo diary for some pictures from the day…

Birmingham on the other hand, what a disaster. The first half for me was reminiscent of my games on Pro Evolution Soccer on the Xbox. Every time the ball went forward, Birmingham headed it back. We had no invention whatsoever in the first half and paid the price.

Edit: For some reason, in the posting I made last night, I neglected to mention the shocking defending that led to both Birmingham’s goals. It looks as though Big Sam needs to show our back four how to mark up in training this week!

In the second half we were just as bad until Junior Hoilett came on. His direct play made a big impact on the game, giving us some momentum and we eventually scored – what a ball from Pedersen! – and threatened for an equaliser from then on.

Our ultra-attacking strategy to try and snatch an equaliser did leave us exposed at the back and Robinson did well to keep the score down, one save in particular from Benitez was excellent.

However, credit to Birmingham, they were the much better side in this game and Rovers deserved to lose in the end.

These were two very important games for us and we have not got the results we needed. Now just three points above the relegation zone, we really need to continue our solid home form against Spurs on Saturday.

I’d like to see more of Hoilett, and I’d also like to see Kalinic given another start as I’m sure a league goal could make all the difference to him. Otherwise, we may have another Grabbi on our hands…

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.

You know what happened next. Robbo redeemed himself with two great saves. The first, fantastic to see a great low diving stop to deny Ballack the Squarehead before sealing the win by saving from Kakuta.

It sounds extremely pedantic for me to say this, but it’s a little disappointing we couldn’t finish Chelsea off outright, without the need for penalties, especially after seeing Junior Hoilett, who has been linked with yet more of Europe’s finest recently, missing the target completely when through on goal.

The BBC’s highlights programme which followed at about 11.30pm left a lot to be desired. Let alone the fact it is presented by that tit with Mark Lawrenson and Steve Claridge as pundits, but they failed to show the disallowed goal at all… So I’ll never know whether it was correctly ruled offside or not.

Either way, a solid victory, and with us getting the easiest (if that’s the right word) semi-final draw, we are not a million miles away from Wembley. We’ve beaten Villa once this season, and now they are all that stands between us and a first cup final since 2002!

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.

I think the game was especially well summed up by The Times’s Tony Barrett:

When you have defied a bitterly cold Lancashire evening and a swine flu scare to attend a Carling Cup tie, the least you deserve is to be entertained, and the 8,419 hardy souls present at Ewood Park last night could not complain on that score.

Seven goals, two penalties and a sending-off were the edited highlights. Throw in one of the misses of this or any other season and a chant to live long in the memory — “Five-two and we’ve got the flu” — and it is hard to imagine anyone asking for more.

On to the next round and, unless Scunthorpe United pull of a major shock at the City of Manchester Stadium, there will be no non-Premiership clubs left in the competition. Assuming that’s the case, the best we can hope for is a home tie against Portsmouth I reckon.

Having said that, we’ll probably get Manchester United away.

One thing is certain about the quarter final draw. I’m willing to place a large bet on Manchester United, Chelsea (who will beat Bolton tonight) and the winner of Arsenal v Liverpool all avoiding each other in the draw for the next round!

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!

Now to the positives. Chimbonda had an excellent debut. Slotted straight in at left back and was extremely solid and looked superb going forward. He put in some crucial tackles to make sure West Ham’s ineffective attacking players got nowhere.

Six-million-pound future of Croatian football Nikola Kalinic looked a lot better in the 10 minutes he got at the end of the second half. He looked lively and a handful for the West Ham defence, unfortunately he wasn’t given a clear opportunity to shoot. Here’s hoping by the Wolves game he’s in a position to show us what he’s made of.

David or Junior Hoilett looked impressive again. Sam obviously rates this kid as he never got a look in under any other manager, but now he’s right in the first team setup. Came on in the second half to support Roberts and was agonisingly close to giving us the goal we needed when his chip over Green went just over the bar. He looks like being a good youth player and hopefully his development will continue.

Tugay’s appearance part way through the first half was nice. He appeared from nowhere, walking around the edge of the pitch, to a standing ovation from the Rovers fans. The reason he was there of course was to do the half time draw, but it’s always nice to see a legend at Ewood. It must be such a good feeling to be able to walk around the edge of the Ewood pitch with everyone chanting your name, knowing that everyone in that ground wearing blue and white would happily have your babies…

Next up Wolves, surely three points are on their way?

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.

Then, as Franco Di Santo went off with an injury, as did captain Ryan Nelsen to make this defeat taste even more bitter, new £6-million signing Nikola Kalinic, the future of Croatian football, took to the field.

If this is the case, the future of Croatian football looks very, very bleak. For £6-million future of Croatian football Nikola Kalinic missed his first chance as he scuffed an excellent chance wide. Then, £6-million future of Croatian football Nikola Kalinic was presented with his second chance, which he scuffed wide again.

Sunderland go ahead but Rovers continue to dominate but without reward. Then, in the closing minutes, Chris Samba hits the bar. Is that it? Just one of those days? But then, £6-million future of Croatian football Nikola Kalinic found the ball at his feet near the penalty spot. The whole goal to aim at. Get it on target and Rovers have registered their first point of the Premiership season. £6-million future of Croatian football Nikola Kalinic crowned off a miserable debut by dragging a tame shot wide, gifting another three points to Rovers opposition.

What has become extremely frustrating, even with the season just two games old for Rovers, is our lack of firepower. We have dominated against two good sides. Manchester City have an excellent squad this season and we gave a great account of ourselves, we just weren’t able to scor. The same can be said for this encounter at the Stadium of Shite.

We had our chances. We had the majority of possession. But we couldn’t finish it off. If this continues to go on, no matter how good our performances are, if we cannot score, it will be another long, hard season for Big Sam and Blackburn Rovers.

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.

Kalinic is a proven goalscorer at club and youth international level and, as I said above and in a previous post, has been been labelled the ‘future of Croatian football’ by Croatia boss Slaven Bilic.

Nikola Kalinic in action:

Di Santo in action: