Questions marks around Blackburn Rovers’ signing of 23-year-old are fair: View
Semir Telalovic is yet to hit the ground running at Ewood Park, and he may have been the wrong signing at the wrong time
Blackburn Rovers’ budget for squad improvements was significantly reduced, leaving the head coach with limited funds for transfers.
Only two of Blackburn Rovers’ signings in the 2023/24 season were made for transfer fees, with the rest being loans or free transfers.
The addition of Semir Telalovic as a striker has been questioned due to his lack of experience at a higher level and his limited goal-scoring record.
Considering Blackburn Rovers finished just outside the Championship play-off spots last season and for two years in a row they had been up in the top six for a large portion of the campaign, you would have perhaps expected head coach Jon Dahl Tomasson to have been backed over the summer transfer window in a bid to try and push the Lancashire outfit back to the Premier League.
That was anything but the case however, as a change of circumstances for the club’s owners – the Venky’s – meant that the Dane’s budget to improve his squad had been cut and not increased.
It was a hammer-blow for Tomasson and director of football Gregg Broughton, who were left with barely any money to spend and even the sales of Ash Phillips and Thomas Kaminski to Tottenham and Luton Town respectively didn’t generate much of a budget.
Despite those sales and losing big earners such as Daniel Ayala, Bradley Dack and Ben Brereton Diaz from the wage bill, Rovers only signed two players for transfer fees, with the other five being a mixture of loans and free transfers.
And one of the players that Blackburn did spend money on in Semir Telalovic looks so far to have been a bizarre addition to the ranks at Ewood Park considering the club’s desperation for somewhat of a proven goalscorer.
Semir Telalovic’s Blackburn Rovers career so far
Signed on transfer deadline day in September, Telalovic arrived from German Bundesliga outfit Borussia Monchengladbach for an undisclosed fee, but his senior football has been played mainly in the lower leagues.
The 23-year-old featured just three times for Monchengladbach’s first team, and his recent goalscoring form over the years has come at fourth tier level in Germany for both FV Illertissen and then the reserve team of his most recent club.
Telalovic scored 15 times in 30 appearances for Monchengladbach’s second team in the Regionalliga West in 2022-23, but it was always going to be a punt considering his lack of actual competitive game-time for the senior setup
And so far, Tomasson has seemed reluctant to use Telalovic, who has racked up five Championship appearances but after his debut as a 59th-minute substitute against Sunderland, his other four league cameos have all been less than 10 minutes.
It also spoke volumes that when Blackburn needed a goal against Swansea last weekend, Telalovic did not get a look-in, which meant for the fifth game in succession, the German remained an unused substitute.
He was not even in the squad for the midweek EFL Cup clash with Chelsea as he was instead given 90 minutes for the under-21’s as an overage player, but that ended in disaster as Rovers were battered 7-2 by Reading and Telalovic did not score, so it’s fair to say it’s been a tough start to life in England.
Semir Telalovic to Blackburn – was it the wrong transfer?
Rovers had already committed to one gamble of a striker signing over the summer when landing Niall Ennis on a free transfer from Plymouth Argyle, but he had at least a goalscoring record in League One, so you knew the level he was at.
What Blackburn also needed though was someone with a bit more Championship experience to battle with the likes of Ennis and Sam Gallagher, having lost all the goals of talisman Brereton Diaz to Villarreal over the summer.
Instead though, they signed a striker in Telalovic, who is soon to be 24 years of age and has only scored goals in the fourth tier of German football, and Monchengladbach seemed happy to let him go despite a few appearances for them last season.
Telalovic has good speed, having been a sprinter in his youth, but he hasn’t really showed any other signs so far that he is going to make it at Championship level, although it is early days.
What we are seeing at Ewood Park right now though is that the Venky’s should have backed Tomasson with a proper striker in the transfer window, and their failure to do so is bordering on negligence.
There is pressure on Telalovic therefore to deliver along with Ennis, but the fact that Rovers paid a fee for the German means that there is even more on his shoulders – there’s nothing to suggest right now though that he’s the man that Tomasson really needs in his side.
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