Blackburn Rovers Anel Ahmedhodžić snub ‘eats away’ at Gregg Broughton

The Bosnia international was one of the first targets of Rovers’ new regime having played under head coach Jon Dahl Tomasson at Malmo.

The 23-year-old has since impressed in his 25 appearances for the Blades who look well on course for promotion to the Premier League.

However, the Bramall Lane club are subject of a transfer embargo, with the EFL stating they are in breach of rule 52.2.3.

That concerns a club being ‘in default of payments due to another club under a transfer or compensation agreement’ and it is understood that relates, in part, to a payment due to Malmo for the defender.

Broughton stated that Rovers wouldn’t put the club in jeopardy with any of their transfer dealings, having ‘strongly refuted’ the reported finances involved in a prospective move for Lewis O’Brien.

He told RoversTV: “January is a tough month to do permanent deals.

“A few names are out there publicly of players we tried to do on a permanent basis.

“What I won’t ever apologise for is not risking the financial future of the club.

“We can’t go toe-to-toe with the clubs that have the parachute money, as much our supporters would like us to.

“If this was about Jon’s ego or my ego and we said this was all about getting into the play-offs and persuading the owners to gamble, we could do that, but I’d be doing a disservice to the fantastic history this club has got if I was to do that.

“It baulks with me, eats away at me, that in the summer window we missed out for a central defender from Jon’s old club. It is on public record that we went in for him and we lost out on him because the other club could pay more than we did.

“It annoys me that other club is now under a transfer embargo. That’s what we’re up against right now.

“The January window is a tough window to do business in.

“That’s not passing responsibility, we should have done better than we did.”