Blackburn Rovers struck gold with Newcastle United deal that handed them serious profit: View | OneFootball

Signing Adam Armstrong was a masterstroke by Rovers

Highlights

The summer of 2018 was a key one for Blackburn Rovers as they aimed to build a squad capable of being competitive in the Championship following promotion from League One, and one signing from that transfer window will be well remembered by Rovers fans for the success he had at Ewood Park.

Adam Armstrong signed for Tony Mowbray's side just days after the season had started on a four-year contract from Newcastle United for a fee believed to be in the region of £1.75m, following his impressive loan spell at the club in the previous campaign.

Armstrong had netted nine goals and laid on two assists in 21 League One games to help Rovers to promotion, and so left his boyhood club for good after finding opportunities in the Premier League hard to come by, in a move that turned out to hugely benefit both him and Blackburn in the long-term.

Armstrong was with Rovers for three years after signing permanently, as he quickly matured into one of the second-tier's top marksmen as they battled around mid-table under Mowbray and even came close to the play-off finish in the 2019/20 season.

He netted the club a sizable amount of profit when he was eventually sold on to Premier League outfit Southampton in 2021 in a deal understood to be worth £15m, and left East Lancashire as a much better player and a cult hero among Rovers supporters for his performances.

Armstrong was vital to Blackburn

Armstrong had previously failed to hit the heights in the Championship with Newcastle or on loan at Barnsley in seasons prior, so it came as little surprise that he endured a slow start to life as a permanent player with Rovers in his first season with the club in the second-tier.

He scored just twice in the first 25 games of the season, but then did enjoy a purple patch around the turn of the year as he registered two goals and five assists in five games to fire his side to eighth in the table at the end of January, but he, and Rovers, could not maintain that form and they eventually finished 15th.

The then-22-year-old enjoyed a much more fruitful campaign in 2019/20, after he again began the season slowly, but soon hit his stride for the first time in the Championship as he netted 17 goals and notched seven assists in all competitions to eventually pick up the Rovers' Player of the Season and Goal of the Season award for an audacious lobbed winner away to Cardiff in July.

Armstrong was a fully-fledged second-tier striker by the time his fourth season as a Rovers' player came around, and he shone week-in week-out in the 2020/21 campaign as he bagged 29 goals and five assists in 43 outings in all competitions in one of the best individual seasons by a player in recent Championship history, including three hat-tricks against Wycombe, Huddersfield and Birmingham.

He picked up the PFA Player of the Year award and was included in the PFA Team of the Year for his impressive exploits, but was pipped to the Championship Golden Boot by Brentford's Ivan Toney, and could not fire Rovers any further up the table as they finished 15th for the second time in three years.

He soon seized the chance to move to the Premier League and join the Saints in August 2021 in a £15m move, representing a successful investment by Blackburn following his standout year at Ewood Park.

Rovers struck gold by taking a chance on permanently signing a then-22-year-old Armstrong in 2019, despite his previous poor record in the second-tier, and the fee they signed him for was an absolute steal in hindsight, given the profit they made after just three years.

Rovers have a history of making profit on attackers

As is the nature of not being one of English football's powerhouse clubs, buying low and selling high has been a theme of Blackburn's recent history, with the aim of returning to the glory days of winning the Premier League and playing Champions League football.

Armstrong is just one example of a brilliant profit made by Rovers, and the most notable from years gone by is undoubtedly Alan Shearer, who played for the same clubs as Armstrong, but in reverse order, after he joined Blackburn from Southampton in 1992 for a then-domestic transfer record of £3.6m, and then became the most expensive footballer in history when Newcastle signed him for £16.2m four years later.

Another similar story was that of Roque Santa Cruz, who moved to Ewood Park from Bayern Munich in 2007 for a fee believed to be around £3.5m, then departed for Manchester City after just two impressive seasons for an initial £15m.

They have continued the trend post-Armstrong too, with last season's Championship top-scorer Sammie Szmodics moving to Ipswich Town this month for around £9m, plus add-ons, after Rovers bought him from Peterborough for an initial £1.8m just two years ago.

It is clear to see that Blackburn have a knack of finding attackers that have something to prove and developing their game to become better players, then selling on for a much higher price, and while Szmodics is the latest example of that, they will hope that recent additions such as Yuki Ohashi and Makhtar Gueye can follow in similar footsteps after helping them achieve success on the pitch.