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Big Sam talks Matt Derbyshire

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Rovers manager Sam Allardyce has highlighted the ability of potential Saturday opponent Matt Derbyshire and explained the reason behind letting the ex-Blackburn man leave Ewood Park.

Derbyshire is a Blackburn fan and was thought to be a long term fixture at Ewood Park before falling out of favour with Big Sam after he took over from Paul Ince.

Matty was initially loaned to Olympiakos in Greece before making a permanent move last summer but the former England under-21 regular sealed a move back to Birmingham a few days back (are you still following?).

Birmingham face Rovers at St Andrews in two days time and Sam has now revealed that Derbs leaving Blackburn corrected a financial imbalance at the club.

Allardyce told Sky Sports – ‘He is a very good goalscorer, we all know that, and that is why we got an unbelievably good fee,’

‘We let him go there on loan and he became a hero, they paid a lot of money for him and we capitalised on that because we needed to.

‘He was part of the healing process for Blackburn’s financial difficulties. Over four million euros was one of the best deals, for him and for us, that I’ve done in my time.

‘Now he comes back, hopefully not to haunt us on Saturday, because we know that, particularly off the bench, he is good at turning a game with goals.’

The Rovers boss admitted his surprise when he heard that Derbs was back in England after initially being told that he wanted to leave the UK no longer than 12 months ago.

Allardyce added – ‘I don’t know why he is back, he told me that the place he wanted to be is Greece.

‘He said he didn’t want to stay in this country, it’s that good there he wanted to be there, so I don’t quite know what has happened along the line. Obviously it’s not quite as good as he thought it was.’

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