DECLINE AND FALL
May 1995 Three years after they were promoted into the top division, Kenny Dalglish led them to a Premier League title, fuelled by the fortune of local steel magnate Jack Walker and the goals of ‘SAS’ strikeforce Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton (above, with the Premier League trophy at Anfield). May 1996: The champions could only finish seventh under new boss Ray Harford after Dalglish moved upstairs. Two months after the season ended Shearer was sold to Newcastle for a worldrecord £15million. May 1999: Blackburn were relegated back to the second tier. Future England boss Roy Hodgson left the club when they were bottom in November and successor Brian Kidd could not save them. May 2001: At the end of a season which began with Walker’s death, a top-flight return was sealed. February 2002: Blackburn won their first major competition since the Premier League title, lifting the League Cup in Cardiff under Graeme Souness by beating Tottenham 2-1. May 2006: In Mark Hughes’ first full season at the helm Blackburn came sixth for the second time in four seasons and secured European football for the third time in five years. Hughes, who quit as Wales boss to replace Souness in September 2004, also took the club to cup semi-finals in three straight years but left for Manchester City in 2008 after Blackburn finished seventh. November 2010: Venky’s, an Indian poultry company, bought the club from the Walker Family Trust and Sam Allardyce was sacked as manager within a month, and replaced by Steve Kean. Rovers finished 15th, four points above the relegation zone. May 2012: A 1-0 home loss to Wigan confirmed Blackburn’s relegation to the Championship after 11 seasons at English football’s top table. The game at Ewood Park came against a backdrop of fans’ protests, both against Kean and Venky’s, with a live chicken released onto the pitch during the contest. September 2012: Kean stayed on but lasted just seven games before resigning, having deemed his position “untenable” with the club third. Eric Black was made caretaker until Rovers hired ex-player Henning Berg in October. December 2012: Berg was axed just 57 days in, with Rovers having won only one of his 10 games in charge slipping to 17th. Reserve team boss Gary Bowyer was put in charge until Blackpool’s Michael Appleton became the fifth manager that season. March 2013: Two months after arriving Appleton was shown the door with Rovers 18th in the table, only four points above the drop zone. Appleton won just two league games, though the side did win at Arsenal in the FA Cup. Bowyer came back to steer the club from trouble after they slipped into the bottom three. November 2015: Bowyer brought stability after the stomy 2012-13 campaign and guided Blackburn to two top-10 finishes while trimming the wage bill, yet in the autumn of 2015 he was sacked with Paul Lambert hired. Lambert left at the end of the season with the side 15th, citing worry over club ambitions. February 2017: Owen Coyle, formerly in charge of Rovers’ rivals Burnley, Bolton and Wigan, was next to go with the club 23rd in the table, three points adrift of safety. Coyle won just seven league games and was quickly replaced by former Celtic and West Brom boss Tony Mowbray. May 2017: A 3-1 win at Brentford was not enough to prevent Rovers from being the first champions of England in the Premier League era to fall as far as the third tier.