English Premier League Preview (Suck it, Barclays!) – Blackburn Rovers

Sam's Necktie-to-Belly Ratio Is Out of Whack

In order to prepare properly for the next ten glorious months of hot club-on-club action, we’re previewing various leagues from around the globe.

Next up, our bread and butter, the best league in the world… the English Premier League (Suck it, Barclays!)

Let’s get our learn on.

Work, procrastination, family commitments, sickness, plague, frogs, death of first-born son. These are the things that have prevented me from writing this here Blackburn preview. Okay, not really the death of the first-born son. But, to force a bad transition upon you the luckless reader, this is the same fire and brimstone with which Blackburn Rovers FC play football.

Blackburn are in many ways a throwback to the old(e) English style of football: scrappy, knotty-kneed fights for that precious 1-0 victory. So, it is no surprise that Blackburn also flirted with relegation last season. With all due respect to our good friend and Rovers supporter jjf3, Blackburn are the quintessential Northwestern defensive-minded football club that seem to  unfortunately be so in vogue in the Premiership of late. Oh, and their manager is Sam Allardyce.

Say what you want about Mark Hughes temporary (yes temporary) dalliance at Citeh, but when he was with Blackburn they had a certain air of resilient charm. The Paul Ince experiment, by comparison, was a disaster, which probably means we’ll have to wait twenty years for another black manager in the Prem. Now, with thee Fat Walrus in charge, it’s just a matter of playing down-and-dirty and staying out of the bottom three, which is exactly what happened in the second half of last season. Fair enough.

The big summer news for Blackburn was surely Roque Santa Cruz’s decision to trade in Blackburn’s physio table for a spot on the Man City bench. If ever there was someone who will come to regret a move, well, here he is. To Blackburn’s credit, they gladly pocketed £17.5 million paid by Sheiks City for a player who had only a season-and-a-half of goalscoring prowess and has also displayed a recent penchant for injuries.  I believe the kids call that a “nice piece of business.”

On the other hand, Blackburn’s signings this summer include Frenchmen Steven N’Zonzi and Gael Givet, and forward Nikola Kalinic. The most interesting new player could wind up being Argentine starlet Franco Di Santo, who is on a season-long loan from Chelski (note that Sky Sports thinks that he’s Italian… Oops). Di Santo could see a decent amount of playing time up front, along with Kalinic and ageless wonder Benni McCarthy. Let’s just say that anything would be an improvement over a woeful 40 goals scored by Rovers in the Premier League last season.

Elsewhere, Blackburn continue to be helmed by Stephen Warnock and David Dunn. It doesn’t really matter whether they’re playing defender or midfield, because God knows they’ll end up being behind the ball. And then there’s El Hadji Diouf and Paul Robinson, although the less said about them the better.

The bookies have Blackburn as 1000/1 to win the Premiership, and 7/1 to get relegated. It seems like somewhere between 13th and 17th is about right. At least the Rovers have a derby against Burnley to look forward to, along with plenty of Fat Sam press conferences and quotes. Ah, the Premiership…..