Blackburn Rovers struck gold with combined £8.5m expense on Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton | OneFootball

Blackburn will look back fondly on one of the Premier League's best-ever strike partnerships

Blackburn Rovers entered a new era of spending at the dawn of the Premier League.

They were under local, much-loved owner Jack Walker, who was prepared to spend considerable sums to send his side rocketing up England’s top tier.

Plenty of teams have been through similar, with owners coming in and freely splashing the cash, but few have hit the jackpot quite like Walker did with Rovers.

Newcastle-born Alan Shearer had moved all the way to Southampton to kick off his senior football career, and had caught attention netting 13 goals for the Saints the year before the formation of the Premier League.

Blackburn, under Walker, were sizing up how to take on some of England’s biggest sides, so splashed £3.5million — a British transfer record at the time — to bring in Shearer as their chief goalscorer.

Despite the heavy initial outlay, it would prove to be an inspired move.

He netted 16 goals in 21 appearances in his first season at Ewood Park and followed that up with three consecutive seasons of 30-plus goals.

His most memorable season, and likely a big reason for Rovers’ success, was the 1994/95 season, where Shearer netted 34 goals and 13 assists — still a joint-record in the Premier League for goal involvements — on the way to lifting the English title that year.

Shearer had proven worth his investment and then some, but it gets even better.

Not only had Blackburn managed to get a hatful of goals out of Shearer, plus the ultimate silverware, but they also sold him on for a profit.

He broke the world transfer record this time, when his boyhood club, Newcastle United, paid £15m for his services just four years after he arrived at Ewood Park.

As deals go, it’s tough to see how Blackburn could have done any better from their signing of Shearer.

But Shearer didn’t do it alone.

In 1994, the Lancashire side added Chris Sutton to their attacking ranks.

It’s no coincidence that the club went on to win the Premier League in the first season the pair linked up.

So strong was their creative bond upfront, that they even attracted their own nickname, “SAS”, with the pair arriving as a combined force even the sturdiest of defences couldn’t keep at bay.

Sutton cost the club £5m, another British transfer record, but Walker and the team around him would again not spend too much time looking at the receipt.

In his first season, he notched 15 goals and 12 assists — seemingly dwarfed by Shearer’s contributions that season, but bettering what would be the campaign of a lifetime for any but the most elite attackers.

He’d hit double figures for the next two seasons — including a personal club best of 18 goals in the 1997/98 season — but his first season, with the Premier League trophy in hand, would always be the best.

Once again, Rovers managed to turn a handsome profit on their expensive asset, after he helped them to their famous title win, they managed to sell him to Chelsea for £10m, double what they’d paid Norwich City five years earlier.