Owen Coyle recently said he had no doubts over the Blackburn ability to avoid relegation this season. Following the weekend win at Newcastle he’s forced home those views again.
The win at St James’ Park not only saw Blackburn beat the league leaders, Newcastle had been on a nine game winning run, it also meant we climbed out of the bottom three up to 20th.
Coyle, speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire after the victory is in little doubt Newcastle will still win the league but is also more convinced than ever Blackburn aren’t going down.
‘I’ve said consistently that we will not be in that area of the league over the course of the season. Newcastle will go on and win the league, I have no doubt. But we showed that we can play a bit ourselves.’
Charlie Mulgrew sealed the 1-0 win with the Scottish international’s goal making it back-to-back wins for Blackburn too, after the 3-2 victory against Brentford.
This helped take the point’s tally, collected since mid-October, to 11 from 21 points on offer. Put into context that’s already three points more than Blackburn managed in the opening 11 games Coyle had been in charge.
Consistency, as we look to build up some momentum, is what Coyle is now seeking.
‘People look at the league table and don’t see the big picture. I know exactly the building blocks that have been put in place to take this club forward. The important thing now is to build momentum. That is what I said after beating Brentford, there is no point having a great performance then come to Newcastle and not perform to our maximum.’
Finally, looking back to the St James’ Park win once more, Coyle, as mentioned at the beginning of this piece, pointed out how confident he had been of getting a result against Newcastle.
‘People will think I’m a little bit crazy, but we certainly believed that we could come here and win.’
Crazy? Well, he was right about Newcastle wasn’t he?
