Chelsea transfer miss will still have Blackburn Rovers supporters wondering: View | OneFootball

Blackburn Rovers have certainly not helped themselves in the January transfer window in the past couple of years.

In 2023, an administrative error saw the club miss out on the loan signing of midfielder Lewis O'Brien from Nottingham Forest in the final hours of the window.

Then, this year saw the club miss out on another loan signing, this time of centre forward Duncan McGuire from Orlando City in similar circumstances.

There was also similar frustration for Blackburn Rovers when it came to the late collapse of a move deep in the 2020 January transfer window that will have left the club disappointed.

On that occasion though, there was at least very little those at Ewood Park could have done to alter the way that things ultimately played out.

Blackburn missed out on Tariq Lamptey signing in 2020

On the final day of the January 2020 transfer Brighton completed the permanent signing of Tariq Lamptey from Chelsea.

The right-back joined the Seagulls from their Premier League rivals for a fee reported to be worth £4.5million.

However, things could also have been rather different at that point, had things played out as had seemingly originally been intended.

It was reported at the time, that Blackburn had agreed a deal with Chelsea to sign Lamptey on loan for the remainder of the 2019/20 campaign, before it was hijacked by Brighton.

Given how things played out after that, supporters of the Lancashire club still ought to be wondering now about what might've been, had they been able to get a loan move for Lamptey over the line.

Lamptey would have provided a big boost for Blackburn Rovers

At the time that Brighton completed their deadline day hijack of Blackburn's move for Lamptey, Rovers sat tenth in the Championship table, just four points adrift of the play-off places.

They had at that point picked up 43 points from 29 league matches, an average of 1.48 points per game.

Following the close of the January window though, Blackburn would find themselves enduring a drop in form that ultimately cost them a play-off spot.

The Ewood Park club, who were at the time managed by Tony Mowbray, won just five of their remaining 17 league games.

Indeed, they took just 20 points during that run, as their points per game average slipped to to just 1.18. In the end, they finished the season 11th in the table, seven points behind sixth place Swansea City.

However, there may be an argument that things could have been different, had they been able to pull off that deal for Lamptey.

Since he made his move to Brighton - which gave him his first real chance to play regular first-team football - the right-back has been a consistently solid presence when fit and available.

Indeed, there have been times when his form has even seen him linked with some of the Premier League's top clubs, such as Arsenal and Tottenham.

It also earned him the chance to play at the World Cup with Ghana back in 2022, further highlighting the quality that was unlocked quickly after he started to get those consistent opportunities at the top level.

With that in mind, had Blackburn had that extra sprinkling of talent that Lamptey would have offered them in the second half of the 2019/20 season - as they will feel they should have done - it may have made a big difference, in helping them earn the extra few positive results they needed to make the top six.

From there, they would of course then have been given a shot at promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs, where anything can of course happen.

If that played out in Blackburn's favour, then the major boost a stint in the top-flight would have given the club in terms of football and finance would have had moving forward would surely have been significant.

Even if they had missed out on promotion, just qualifying for the play-offs, and the extra status that brings with it, could well have also helped the club moving forward in terms of attracting other potential signings to move the club forward.

As a result, it is hard not to feel as though Brighton's signing of Tariq Lamptey from Chelsea back in January 2020, has to go down as something of a "what if" moment in the recent history of Blackburn Rovers.