Blackburn Rovers Show Resilience in Draw Against Wolves
Blackburn Rovers walked off to applause, not silence, yet the feeling in the pit of the stomach was unmistakable. This felt like two points lost.
On paper, it was supposed to be a mismatch. When the Championship fixtures dropped in June, a trip to Wolves looked like a measuring stick nobody at Ewood Park particularly wanted after last season’s struggles. A TV graphic hammered the point home: Wolves’ starting XI cost £98.3m to assemble; Blackburn’s, a fraction of that at £6.9m.
Money, though, never made a tackle. It certainly didn’t win this contest.
The stadium crackled from the first whistle. Both sets of supporters fed off each other, noise rolling down from the stands. Wolves fans had turned up expecting a routine night. Tony Mowbray’s side refused to play along.
They went behind, yes, and the goal will irritate Mowbray when he replays it. Munetsi drove forward, drifting into the gap between Ryan Alebiosu and Tom Atcheson, allowed far too much room to run and pick his moment. One burst, one lapse, and Blackburn were chasing.
They didn’t shrink. They snapped back.
The response came through Sean McLoughlin, scoring his first goal since 2019. He timed his run perfectly, attacked the ball and buried his header, the sort of centre-half’s finish that instantly had his manager demanding more of the same. Mowbray has made no secret of it: he wants his defenders chipping in with something close to the half-dozen-a-season tally he once managed himself.
Second Half
Level at the break, and Blackburn came out after half-time as if they had decided the script needed ripping up.
Dapo Afolayan, enjoying his best performance in a Rovers shirt so far, drove at Wolves and forced Daniel Bentley into a sharp save, stinging the goalkeeper’s fingertips. The warning shot went unheeded. The second goal was worth waiting for.
Morishita slid a delicious reverse pass into the path of Afolayan, who had ghosted into space. One touch, head up, and he picked out Andri Gudjohnsen arriving in the box to tuck home from close range. Simple on the eye, ruthless in execution.
Gudjohnsen has taken on the number nine shirt this season, and his goals are starting to look like something from Blackburn’s archives – poacher’s finishes in the tradition of the club’s classic centre-forwards. Right place, right time, no fuss.
What followed said as much about Blackburn’s growth as the goals themselves. They were not hanging on. They were managing the contest. Balazs Toth, in the Rovers goal, had only one save to make all evening. At the other end, Bentley was far busier, forced into three stops as Mowbray’s team kept punching.
As the board went up for four added minutes, it became about nerve and nous. Keep the ball. Slow the tempo. See it out.
For the most part, they did. Until one moment.
Blackburn lost possession in the Wolves half. It was the sort of situation where a cynical foul, a tug of the shirt, might have been enough to break the rhythm and kill the counter. They stayed honest, tried to recover properly, and the danger grew.
The ball was worked wide, the cross came in, and it crashed against the hand of the excellent Alebiosu. Referee Farai Hallam didn’t hesitate. He pointed straight to the spot.
It was brutally tight. On replay, it still lives in the grey area, the kind of decision that splits opinion even in slow motion. Hallam had a single look and a split second to call it. Wolves, back in the world without VAR, got the benefit that might have been debated for minutes at Stockley Park.
Raul Jimenez, the returning hero, took centre stage. He shuffled, stuttered, and then passed the ball firmly beyond Toth for a stoppage-time equaliser that sucked the air out of Blackburn lungs.
Even then, Rovers weren’t done. Jake Garrett forced another fine save from Bentley before the whistle finally went, a last reminder that this was no smash-and-grab from the hosts.
Few would have predicted Blackburn emerging with a point here, let alone feeling aggrieved it wasn’t three. Mowbray called it simply: he will “put the point in the bag and move on to the next one.”
If this is the new standard, the next one can’t come quickly enough.
