Rovers need time to learn a new language

Football

GLENN MOORE

Blackburn Rovers discovered on Wednesday night that the speed of their achievements has outstripped their capacity to cope with them. Like a company that expands too fast, Rovers have over-reached themselves.

They were comprehensively outmanoeuvred in their opening Champions' League match, their honest endeavour no match for the flexibility and sophistication of veteran European campaigners.

After the 1-0 home defeat by Spartak Moscow, Rovers reacted with a mixture of sober realism and hopeful delusion. While Ray Harford, the manager, spoke of the Russians being a "much better outfit", the players were generally upbeat. Colin Hendry even suggested the match had "showed a few people" that Rovers can play better football than is their Premiership custom.

This assertion was met with disbelief by most commentators. Ian St John, the former Liverpool player now with ITV, said Rovers played just as they did every Saturday and noted that, in their early days in Europe, Liverpool had done the same. It was only when they changed their game, he added, that Liverpool began to progress.

Rovers, at least, will have six lessons in the foreign language of Eurofootball, thanks to their dubious qualification for the Champions' League stage. They will need them.

Wednesday's match was, Harford said, "gung-ho against connoisseurs". Since it was Harford who had asked Rovers to show the "British bulldog spirit" and go after the Russians with high-tempo football, this might, on the face of it, appear an admission of bad tactics.

But, from Harford's subsequent comments, when he suggested Rovers had "done well to make a very good team look less good than they are", it appears he almost expected to be outclassed and hoped that Rovers could force a mistake and snatch a result.

In the event it was a Rovers' error, by Tim Flowers, which gave Spartak victory. Rovers did have chances to equalise but one always felt the Russians had an extra gear if required.

There was recognition from Harford that new tactics may be needed in future. He had, he admitted, considered playing three central defenders and wing-backs.

Rovers are as well equipped as any English club to play this system. The accomplished Henning Berg could easily move across to central defence while Jeff Kenna and Graeme Le Saux are two of the best attacking full- backs in the country. In the short-term, while Kenna recovers from injury, Chris Sutton could play at the back.

Sutton - or Berg - has the ability to move forward from the back in the way Viktor Onopko and Yuri Nikiforov did for Spartak, albeit not as skilfully. Nikiforov was, Harford said, "better than Beckenbauer". Such versatility is rare among English defenders but the options it offers illustrates why Terry Venables is trying to educate the national team in such techniques.

Rovers also miss the under-rated Jason Wilcox. Without him they lack width and cover on the left. He hopes to begin his comeback from cruciate ligament surgery in the A team tomorrow. The loss is exacerbated as Stuart Ripley's game has disintegrated since he was capped by England.

In the centre David Batty, in trying to shed his reputation as a scrapper and undertake the role of playmaker, has ended up doing neither job well.

"We need a stronger squad," Harford added. "We are just a small provincial club. It has been a fairy-tale, but now we must stabilise. We need to stay at this level for three years, winning trophies and playing in Europe.

"We were naive at times. Just being in this competition is an important opportunity for players to increase their knowledge of the game."