SOME of the attacking football we have seen at this World Cup has been fantastic – and I hope Blackburn take note and start the new season the way we finished the last.
We have to play to our strengths and whereas at the start of last season our strength was being solid, our strength now is in our wide players, our attacking midfielders like Tom Cairney, and our strikers.
Liverpool proved in the Premier League last season that attacking football can take you a long way and the best teams in Brazil have proved that too.
Now obviously we don’t have the talent of the players in those teams.
But we showed at the back end of last season that we can outscore teams.
It reminds me of my time playing under my old Rovers team-mate, Ossie Ardiles, at West Brom, all those years ago.
His idea was ‘the opposition may score two but we’ll definitely score three’.
As a striker I loved it as I was getting eight or nine half-chances or chances a game.
And as long as you’ve got a couple of centre halves who can defend and are decent on the ball, I can’t see anything wrong with going out to win games.
It makes football more exciting and enjoyable to watch. Don’t get me wrong, it’s impossible to do it in every game all season.
There are going to be times when you think, ‘hang on, it’s not working, we’re going to have to step off it a bit and do a bit more defending’, and that’s obviously an important part of the game.
But you’ve got to play to your strengths and looking at the squad Gary Bowyer has got in place you’d have to say its strength lies in attack.
The question now is where David Dunn fits into it all. I see his contract situation is yet to be sorted and, as I’ve said before, I hope it does because I want him to stay at Blackburn for as long as he can.
Obviously he’s not going to play every game next season, much like he did not play every game last season, but he’s still such an influential figure at the football club.
He gives Gary the option of doing something different as it’s looking clear we’ll be playing 4-4-2 next season.
Hopefully that will have a real focus on taking the game to the opposition.
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