BLACKBURN have bitten the bullet with David Goodwillie – and they may have to do the same with two or three other players yet.

Settling a player’s contract costs the club a lot of money.

But sometimes you have to do it to help the club move forward.

In the long term you wipe their weekly wages off the books and in the short term it can help in the dressing room.

As there’s nothing worse when you’ve got players knowing they are not wanted.

When that happens, the milk can turn sour very, very quickly.

As soon as you’re told you’re on the transfer list your head is no longer completely with that football club – and some players will just sit back and take their pay packet.

That’s what a lot of footballers do now because they are a business.

If a player is on £30,000 a week and he gets offered £10,000 a week elsewhere, a lot will just sit on their backsides for a year as they won’t want to jump down £20,000.

Yes they may play more football but they will lose a lot of money.

In the past a footballer would want to play but nowadays it’s not a paid hobby anymore, it’s a lucrative business.

I think it is best that David Goodwillie has gone to try and revive his career elsewhere.

It’s just a shame that Blackburn fans never got the chance to see the best of him.

He came down here with a lot of promise but there were a lot of reasons why he never followed up on it.

There was a big cloud hanging over the football club when he signed, he played in a system to which he just wasn’t suited, and he was also carrying a lot of personal baggage.

It’s hard enough coming down from Scotland to England as it.

But add to that all those other factors and perhaps it’s no surprise that David never made an impact.

He lost an awful lot of confidence and he had a lot of pressure in his young head.

But three years down the line I hope he can pick himself up and start again.