Blackburn Rovers manager Tony Mowbray

FLP Focus: Blackburn Rovers’ start to the season

DON'T count your chickens, they say. But it's something the Venky's do on a regular basis with a chicken business worth billions.

With football though they've been burned, or roasted, time and again since buying Blackburn Rovers for £23m and covering £20m of debt ten years ago next month.

Now might be perched on a comeback.

Before Saturday's game with , Blackburn had hit nine goals in their last two games. They had lost once in the and won the other two, 5-0 at home to and 4-0 away to Derby.

Rovers scorched Derby off their Pride Park pitch last Saturday, Wayne Rooney and all, with a performance of pace, daring, and goals.

They were very impressive and look an outsiders bet from a league that has no outstanding favourite this season.

Manager Tony Mowbray can be as downbeat as Morrissey but his football is all attack, optimism and smiles.

Derrick Williams is one of those who has benefited from Blackburn's surge of form, getting into the Republic of Ireland squad for the first time.

Williams is in the Irish 25 for the Euro 2020 play-off semi-final against Slovakia and the Nations League games against Wales and Finland.

He's picked with his Blackburn central defensive partner Darragh Lenihan, who has already been capped.

Besides rattling in the goals, Blackburn have been keeping them out as well with only three conceded in the league before the weekend, all of them at .

Williams describes the new, reborn Blackburn like this: “We are dangerous at the moment. Adam Armstrong (six goals) is on fire. Ben Brereton's been very good, he just needs a goal and his confidence will go through the roof.

“Tyrhys Dolan (two goals) is looking good as well.

“But we're also defending well when we lose the ball. The gaffer has drilled that into us. If we do lose the ball, we press and have our bodies around it.”

Bradley Johnson (three goals) is another wild Rover. He does what Derby paid Norwich £6m for five years ago – sits in front of the back four, helps secure them, gets the ball, gets up, gets goals. Only he's doing it for Blackburn for free.

Mowbray got him on a free transfer four months ago after Johnson turned down Derby's one-year contract extension offer that was on less money.

Who's totting up the balance now?

“Our last two results will have caught the attention of other sides in the division,” says Johnson. “I'm playing in a formation that suits me, that I've played plenty of times in my career, including during my time at Derby.

“My role's one that sees me protect the back four but also gives me an allowance to creep forward to get on the end of any cutbacks.

Jostle: Derrick Williams closes in on Kieffer Moore. PA Images

“With the pace we have in the team, we always know we can break and score. Tyrhys Dolan, Adam Armstrong, Ben Brereton, Joe Rothwell, they are frightening with their pace.

“We need to keep these standards high. We go into games full of confidence, we've all bought into the work that's going on behind the scenes and the way we're playing suits everyone.”

There are two things Mowbray, 56, loves – attacking football and chocolate.

When he was managing West Brom, the fridge he had in his office at the training ground was stuffed with chocolate each Easter.

Celebrity Baggies fans Frank Skinner and Adrian Chiles sent him a chocolate football boot once and he munched it through a pre-match press conference.

Mowbray has a sweet tooth and, unusually for an uncompromising ex-centre half, he loves his football sweet too.

“Since he's been at Blackburn we've been an attacking side,” adds Williams. “But we've also been quite vulnerable when we lost the ball. We don't feel as though we are so wide open anymore, we are more secure.

“That seems to be the main difference so far this season.”

 Last season Blackburn were up and down more than Jose Mourinho's mood swings. They'd climb to the edge of the on a good run and then go sliding down the ladder again, finally finishing up at 11th after a run of only three victories in their last 13 games.

Blackburn have been out of the top flight for eight years so Mowbray has some very lean years to overcome.

They were relegated from the Premier League after 11 years, and were runners-up and champions in a seven-year stay before that.

Blackburn dropped into League One under Mowbray only three years ago.

He got them back at the first attempt and Rovers were the 15th best team on their return to the Championship as Mowbray launched his rebuild.

So it's progress, despite the debt that is thought to stand at £130m with £108m of that owed to Banda Balaji Rao and Banda Benkatesh Rao, the people who actually own the club via Venky's.

It puts into perspective the £7m Mowbray paid to Nottingham for Ben Brereton 20 months ago. Brereton landed flatter than a pancake, his progress poor, seven million quid looking a seriously wasted investment.

But Brereton has come alive and well, a fierce attacking force that previous Forest manager predicted was a big star in the making when he was showing that form for him.

“The front three look a threat to – I hope – all teams this season,” says Mowbray. “One of our issues was dominating games and not finishing teams off. We can't be too greedy, but we've had some amazing chances to score one or two more.”

Lapsing into cliché, Mowbray adds the predictable: “We have to keep going and keep our feet on the ground. This is the level for the next 40-odd games.”

Mowbray is under-playing, deliberately, what Blackburn could become. He's getting the best out of Brereton, Armstrong and the very tricky Dolan, who was out on loan from Preston to Northern Premier League North West club Clitheroe last season.

Tussle: forward Ben Brereton battles against Doncaster on the Carabao Cup. PA Images

Dolan is only 18 and he found out in May that Preston didn't want him. But Mowbray remembered how Dolan played against Blackburn in an Youth Cup tie and got in touch in June. Carlisle and Fleetwood both wanted Dolan, who loves a trick and a side step and doesn't lack confidence.

But it was Blackburn where he signed his first professional contract and he bagged his maiden professional goal in the 5-0 romp against Wycombe two weeks ago. He followed it up with another at Derby, a tap- in after Brereton had hit the post.

Johnson, in all honesty, did not set the world on fire for £6m at Derby, but he will be key in keeping the door to Blackburn's defence shut and prodding their midfield into action

“We're looking okay in the midfield department at the moment,” says Mowbray. “Johnson's standard has been that high. I just think he's bought into how we want to play. He's an athletic player, he's strong, big, yet he can run, he's right at the front end of the training.”

“We know we can go anywhere and keep clean sheets as well as attacking the way we do. We're not too adventurous, we're defending really well.”

Blackburn were the top scorers in the Championship with 11 before the weekend and had the leading goalscorers in Armstrong and Johnson. They're as hot as chicken piri piri.

JOHN WRAGG

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