By Chris Wright
Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce says an awful lot of things over the course of a season, some are brain-bendingly pointless whilst others are just brain-bendingly pointless.
Hailing the return of David Dunn against Sunderland tonight after another injury lay-off, Allardyce trumpeted the midfielder saying that, if he could remain fit for longer than 75 minutes at a time, his presence alone would transform Rovers into a top 10 side;
“We know how important he is to the team. He was our best creator, our best goalscorer and perhaps with a fit David Dunn we’d be in the top half of the table.”
Now that’s a very big ‘perhaps’, if you’ll pardon the expression, and a very salient ‘was’, in that Allardyce’s comment sounds more like a eulogy than a testament.
Sure, he’s an above-average midfielder with a decent line in magical, defense-splitting rabonas, but would a prolonged run in the first-teams really elevate the El-Hadji Diouf‘s of this world into the top half of the top flight?