Blackburn Rovers Struggle with Squad Depth in Championship

Blackburn Rovers are learning the Championship’s oldest lesson the hard way: performances mean nothing if you can’t finish the job – and right now, they simply don’t have the depth to do it.

The era of talking about a “best XI” has gone. Modern promotion pushes are built on squads, on options, on the luxury of changing a game from the bench. Rovers, six matches into the season, are running on fumes.

Injuries are part of the landscape, but this is something else. Three straight 2-1 defeats tell their own story: Blackburn competing, often on top, then running out of legs and ideas while Tony Mowbray scans a thin bench for answers that aren’t there. An underwhelming transfer window has only tightened the squeeze.

Current Situation

At Preston North End on Saturday, the situation bordered on farcical. One fit senior goalkeeper. One fit senior centre-back. One fit senior centre-forward. That was it.

Three days later, the picture had shifted, but not for the better. A senior keeper returned to the bench, a young centre-back stepped back into the fold and was suddenly “senior” by necessity. Up front, the only fit centre-forward became none at all, with Andri Gudjohnsen joining the casualty list.

Twenty-three players have already featured for Rovers in the Championship this season. Six games in. That’s not healthy rotation or fierce competition. That’s a squad being pulled to breaking point.

Contrast with Sheffield United

And then came Sheffield United, and with them, the contrast.

Chris Wilder turned to his bench and sent on internationals Matt Doherty and Kalvin Phillips, alongside Tyrese Campbell and Oli Arblaster – proven quality, fresh legs, genuine game-changers.

Mowbray, by comparison, was introducing Gady Beyuku for his home debut after a deadline-day move and throwing 17-year-old Harvey Higgins into the fray. Willing, talented, brave – but this is a brutal division in which to learn on the job.

“It feels like an excuse and an easy out for me,” Mowbray admitted afterwards. “I hope by the international break that we’ll have four or five back.”

What will gnaw at him is that Blackburn were good enough to take something. Again. They carved out chances, racked up 19 attempts on goal and spent long stretches on the front foot, pinning Sheffield United back and asking questions.

Then the same old answers arrived.

Soft goals. Avoidable errors. Points slipping away.

“You can’t give games away like that when you’re so dominant and deserve to win,” Mowbray said. “You deserve to score more goals. You can’t keep letting two goals in during a game because you’re not going to win very many if you do that.

“I’m not interested in how many touches in the opposition box, shots or crosses we have. It has to go in the net, and I’d rather have a terrible expected goals figure and win 2-1.”

The pattern is becoming familiar. Sloppy concessions at Preston. The same here. Whatever the injury list looks like, that defensive fragility has to be addressed.

Mowbray’s message to Hayden Carter underlined the point – and the desperation for someone to step up.

“I’ve just said to Hayden Carter, if you’re going to be the guy who wins every header and blocks every shot, maybe your time is coming,” he revealed of the centre-back, who is still waiting for his first league start of the campaign.

There is a positive thread running through this, and Mowbray knows it. Rovers look more ambitious than the side that spent much of last season glancing nervously over its shoulder and prioritising survival. They’re braver in possession, more assertive in their pressing, more willing to take the initiative.

But the table is a cold companion. The performances suggest progress; the numbers do not. Blackburn sit with two fewer points than at this stage last season.

Upcoming Fixtures

Now comes a key stretch. Millwall and Portsmouth before the international break. Two fixtures that suddenly feel heavy with meaning.

Not because the season is on the brink – it isn’t – but because this team needs something tangible to cling to. A win, maybe two. Proof that the new approach brings more than warm words and hard-luck stories, before belief starts to erode and frustration takes its place.

Look at the sides setting the pace at the top of the division. They have options. They have internal competition. They have players who can swing a game from the bench.

Until Blackburn can say the same, they will keep walking this tightrope between encouragement and exasperation, knowing that in the Championship, style without substance rarely ends well.