WHY spend £300m on a half decent football team, when you can get one for a tenth of that money?

So might read an advert flogging Premier League football teams if Saturday’s clash between Manchester City and Rovers is anything to go by.

I’m not going to suggest that Rovers were the better side and I certainly won’t be rushing out to the bookies and backing us to finish higher than City, but the difference in class that those millions should have exposed was certainly not obvious.

Last week I was suggesting that money couldn’t buy love but it’s doubtful if in City’s case it will buy success either, for this season at least.

That was a theme espoused by our own ex-Galactico Michel Salgado last week.

He explained how Real Madrid’s success was based upon building a team more gradually and then buying some real class but adding only one or maybe two ‘superstars’ each season.

I have to agree with him that while Saturday’s opponents may have bought great promise they still lack genuine class with the possible exception of Carlos Tevez.

Rovers may not have the big expensive names but Saturday’s battling and tactically intelligent performance is further evidence that Big Sam has built a real team ethic and adopts tactics that play to those individuals’ strengths.

It was still slightly embarrassing that in Morten Gamst Pedersen’s case one of those strengths was deftly finding touch deep into City’s half from a free kick in injury time, rather than pumping it into City’s penalty box. What was that Arsene Wenger said about rugby tactics?

Our hard earned point at City wasn’t enough to lift us out of the bottom half of the table but it’s still early days.

The home game on Saturday against a so far unbeaten Fulham is one we really need to win and expectations will be high that we can continue last year’s home form and make it an unhappy return to Ewood for Mark Hughes.

It’s ironic that Sparky, having left us for that ‘big club’, should now be managing a club that despite doing pretty well in recent seasons could never be regarded as a bigger club than Rovers.

Will he admit to any regrets when he returns? I doubt it but that won’t mean he doesn’t have any.

Let’s hope we can show him what he’s missing.