Hignett urges Blackburn owners to forget marquee names

Former Blackburn Rovers star Craig Hignett has urged his old club not to become obsessed with big name signings.

Hignett admits he greeted news of Rovers’ January interest in Ronaldinho with disbelief and warns Venky’s could only realistically expect to bring what he describes as similar ‘over-the-hill’ greats to East Lancashire for the moment.

Hignett told the Lancashire Telegraph: “It does not necessarily work. Your team improves in that you get better players but it doesn’t mean you work as a team. We certainly didn’t at Middlesbrough and Ravanelli in particular caused a lot of friction.

“He just didn’t gel with the rest of us. Ravanelli did not mix with the English culture and didn’t seem interested in doing so. He made it known he wasn’t impressed with the facilities and didn’t understand why we didn’t train twice a day.

“Rav had come from Juventus, the European champions, and he couldn’t come to terms with the nature of the Premier League. When he played for us in one off cup games you saw how good he was but he couldn’t be bothered doing that every week.

“What the likes of him, Juninho and Emerson did do for the club was raise the profile. The fans loved it because we were being talked about all the time.

“It wasn’t all a disaster because we got to two cup finals but we also got relegated. We could beat anyone on our day but we had to depend on Ravanelli being up for it.

“When we played away from home in the league, there were times when he was just not at the races.”

 
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