Ahead of the game at Newcastle, which is a matter of hours away now, Owen Coyle feels Blackburn are not only able, but also capable, of springing what would be considered an upset.
Blackburn’s 3-2 win against Brentford at Ewood Park last weekend moved us to within two points of Championship safety. Should Rovers, even if most would think it unlikely, get another three points at St James’ Park the chances are good we’ll climb out of the bottom three with this Coyle’s aim, telling rovers.co.uk.
‘For us it is a brilliant game to look forward to. To go there and show that Blackburn Rovers are a decent team. It is a game that if we are at our best then we are more than capable of getting a positive result, but what we have to do is make sure that we are focussed and ready to go for a great game.’
With Newcastle having invested heavily in the squad during the summer, including the signing of our (then) captain Grant Hanley, Coyle went on to admit he knows this will be the ‘toughest fixture’ this season regardless of how much money Rafael Benitez had spent, and could well do again in January as well.
Despite Newcastle being such a ‘huge club’ and being on a nine game winning run in the Championship Coyle added he’s looking for Blackburn to approach this as we would any other.
‘Our approach will be the same, we’ll go there looking to be positive, look to play on the front foot and try to bring our good players into the game but accepting that there are a lot of good players on the opposition and make sure we are ready for that.’
The Blackburn boss finished by talking about Rovers having the attacking players to cause Newcastle problems, which we’ll do if we play as a collective unit, and most importantly of all defend well at St James’ Park.
‘We’ve got to make sure that we stay true to how we want to pass and move the ball, we have goalscorers in our squad, we have players who can create chances and score goals and collectively we want to do better against the ball. We want to be more solid but we know we can cause teams problems.’
