KING KENNY, BLACKBURN ... AND PREM REVOLUTION
THE Premier League was announced 30 years ago, changing football forever.
The thinking was the then-not so beautiful game needed a fresh start, after a dark decade of tragedies and violence. With satellite television pumping in millions of pounds, there was the promise of huge stars playing big games in shiny all-seater stadia.
Jack Walker was determined Blackburn would be there.
The lifelong Rovers fan had sold his steel business for £330m and would invest as much as it took to bring top-flight football back to Ewood Park after a break of 26 years.
Walker decided Don Mackay wasn’t the man to take them there after Blackburn took only a single point from their opening three games of the last Second Division campaign and he turned to Kenny Dalglish.
Eight months earlier, Dalglish had walked away from the Liverpool job with his team three points clear at the top of the First Division, but Walker’s cheque book enticed him back into management
The Scot spent £5 million in five months – including £1.1 million on Everton striker Mike Newell – to help take Blackburn to the top of the table.
But there was a run of six straight defeats that opened the door for
John Lyall’s Ipswich.
They went on to win the league, with Middlesbrough second, while Blackburn only scraped into the play offs by winning at Plymouth on the final day.
Blackburn ended up meeting Leicester in the play-off final at Wembley in a match described as the richest in football.
The two sides had taken very different routes to the final. Dalglish spent millions on big names, while Leicester boss Brian Little put together a team of honest workhorses.
In the dying moments of the first half, George Courtney, refereeing his last league match, pointed to the penalty spot after Blackburn striker David Speedie and Steve Walsh tangled.
Newell sent Foxes keeper Carl Muggleton the wrong way.
Muggleton guessed correctly after Blackburn were awarded another penalty later in the game, but despite late pressure, Leicester couldn’t find an equaliser and Blackburn were a Premier League team.