Special report, by Peter White

MENTION money and football and, invariably, the names of Blackburn Rovers and Jack Walker will enter the conversation too.

For Mr Walker's bankrolling of Rovers as they set out on the road to fame and fortune, culminating in the Premiership title triumph back in May 1995, made all the difference.

Without the former steel tycoon's millions, there's every chance the club would still be in the Football League, up to their ears in debt having had to pay for the rebuilding of Ewood Park from their own resources.

But our exclusive table, supplied by lifelong Rovers fan and member of the Association of Football Statisticians Derek Jones, puts a lot of things into perspective.

Beginning with the transfer of Bobby Mimms from Spurs to Ewood for a then Rovers record fee of £250,000 in December 1990 - money provided by Mr Walker just a couple of weeks before he officially took control - we can catalogue every transfer fee the club has paid.

At the same time, Mr Jones' research lists every player who has brought a fee into the club during Mr Walker's time at the helm.

And, when you consider that the difference between outgoing and incoming fees leaves a deficit of only around £7.5 million, it shows that talk of Rovers having laid out £50-60 million for their squad is nonsense.

For they have recouped most of it. Intriguingly, Roy Hodgson arrived at Ewood in July with the promise that he could have whatever money to spend he felt was necessary to put Rovers back among the top clubs.

Yet, the way things have turned out, so far his transfer dealings are running at a remarkable profit.

It's debateable whether to include Shay Given in the total but, as he didn't sign for Newcastle until July, when Hodgson started, I've left him in.

Even without Given, however, Hodgson's buying and selling would still be showing a staggering credit.

Since he arrived at Ewood, Hodgson has sold players (including Given) worth £16.9 million and brought in new blood at a cost of just £6.4 million. That's right, a current profit of £10.5 million for the present manager!

There are also a number of startling examples of a shrewd transfer policy which has seen players bought for relatively modest sums and sold on at massive profits.

Henning Berg came from Lillestrom for £400,000 and moved to Manchester United for £5 million. Similarly Graeme Le Saux cost only £650,000 and, when he returned to Chelsea, it was for another £5 million fee.

And Alan Shearer, of course, went from the one-time most expensive footballer in Britain at £3.3 million to the world record transfer at £15 million.

There have also been "mistakes". Though, by and large, they haven't proved too expensive. Injury-plagued Steve Agnew cost Rovers a nett loss of £500,000, Paul Warhurst's value dropped by more than half to £1.25 million and there were several smaller signings, Matt Dickins, Simon Ireland and Niklas Gudmundsson to name three, which cost the club money.

Overall, however, the club has done extremely well out of the transfer market.

And the figures dispel another myth.

"Blackburn have bought their way into the big time," claim critics jealous, for some reason, of Rovers' present status.

With a nett loss of only £7.5 million on transfers, that would not seem to be the case. Newcastle spent twice that on one deal!

And even the likes of Coventry will probably be a lot worse off over a similar period.

Besides, it's not how much money you spend, it's HOW you spend it that counts.

So far, Ewood managers haven't done too badly at all - with hopefully some real spending still to come!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.