Blackburn come to Cardiff City Stadium tomorrow having seen their freescoring and unbeaten start to the season rather petering out on the back of a run of one win in seven in which they failed to score in their last four games, the last two having seen defeats at Ewood Park where they had previously taken sixteen points out of a possible eighteen,
With City on a rare winning run at their own stadium during which they’ve generally played a lot better than supporters were used to in home games, the online pundits I’ve seen are almost unanimous in predicting a home win. Understandable I suppose, but a look at the stats from Wednesday’s 2-0 defeat against Stoke for Blackburn suggest it’s going to be far from easy for City.
Blackburn had sixty two per cent possession and twenty five goal attempts to fifteen, they also won the on target goal attempts eight/seven and had a very high forty six touches in the Stoke penalty area compared to nineteen for their opponents.
Apparently, Blackburn could well have won without some great saves by Stoke goalkeeper Viktor Johansson and manager John Eustace has been talking about it being one of his team’s best performances in his time at the club, so, although I’d say it’s going to be still some time yet before you can start to think in terms of City ever being “home bankers”, this would be a tough game even if we had fourteen straight home wins behind us.
Anyway, on to the quiz:
60s. This striker was definitely happy to see out his career in Lancashire – he did play for one white rose team, but, apart from that he was red all of the way. Starting out at a club that was in much better shape then than it is now, he played his home games on a pitch which I remember as having a reputation for being the best in the country – although from what I can remember of him, he probably would have preferred more of an aerial approach. Blackburn were his second team and, although he exactly matched the league goals figure from his first club while playing a lot less games, he was never a regular starter during his two years at Ewood Park and while the country was celebrating a World Cup win, he moved back to his first club. This time, he scored exactly a hundred league goals while playing about half of his five hundred odd Football League appearances. When the time came to move on again, it was only a short distance to a club that were doing well, by their standards, at the time (although better days were to come for a short while in the future) and it was after that he made his move across the border to play for a team that were on the decline after a short spell which was probably the best in their history. His final Football League club were permanent strugglers at that time and his leaving them coincided with them losing their league status. Perhaps uniquely for someone who played so many games, only the less than forty he managed with Blackburn were for a club that is still in today’s EFL, but who is he?
70s. Similar to our 60s player, this winger/midfielder kept himself to Lancashire and Yorkshire during a long career apart from a very short spell in Cheshire right at the end – there are also similarities in the way that four of the six sides he turned out for are former members of the EFL (although the last of them were non league during his time there – their time in the Football League was some way off when he was with them). He was a part of a promotion into the First Division while with his first club, but they were to drop a lot further in the decline which followed (they’ve always remained an EFL club though) and he signed for Blackburn while they were in the third tier. Having failed to establish himself in Blackburn’s first team, he returned to Yorkshire and continued to wear blue for a team that had made their first ever league visit to Ninian Park only a year earlier. By now, he was struggling to establish himself in the first team wherever he was playing and his time at a historic and ancient city did not go well, although he did manage to play around seventy times for another team of blues that were happy to just survive at that time. Again he wore blue when he dropped out of the full time game and crossed another border to turn out for a side that’s current iteration has what I suppose qualifies as a celebrity manager. One final clue, he shared his surname with a City player who he may have played against at his first club and someone from another sport who has, sadly, been in the mews recently- can you name him?
80s. I’m a valid defender at the start and was good enough to play nearly four hundred times, mostly for Blackburn, during a thirteen year career. (5,4)
90s. Dull version of one of the UK’s great novelists by the sound of it.
00s. I’d rate him as one of Blackburn’s best ever players and he could count Alex Ferguson among his many admirers. He was also good enough to race competitively at Formula 3 level as a youngster. Who is he?
10s. He’s played the Claret and Cobalt and the Magpies among others and, but for injury, may well have made Wales’ squad for the 2016 Euros, can you name him?
20s. Caused by the Tawe or the Loughor probably!
Blackburn answers below:
60s. George Jones played first for Bury before moving on to Blackburn and then back to Bury again. Jones then played in the Second Division for a while with Oldham before a move to Halifax for a season and then there was a couple of years with Southport.
70s. Bobby Hoy started his career with Huddersfield and was with them during their couple of seasons in the old Division One in the early seventies. Huddersfield had been relegated at least twice by the time Hoy left for Blackburn and he next played in Yorkshire for Halifax and York before he had three years at Rochdale. Hoy also played a few games for Macclesfield whose phoenix club is managed by Robbie Savage.
80s. David Mail.
90s. Matt Dickins.
00s. Tugay.
10s. Besides playing for Blackburn just under a hundred times, David Hanley won two caps for Wales in the middle of this decade and went on to play for Real Salt Lake (Claret and Cobalt), Real Monarchs, Bradford City and Chorley (the Magpies).
20s. Jack Vale.