WHEN Manchester City make the move into their new £200m training complex next week you cannot imagine Manuel Pellegrini and the array of world class players he has it his disposal having to check the pitches for dog muck or having to halt their sessions to pay respect to the dead.

Unlike the first team to knock Manchester United off their Premier League perch 20 years ago this season.

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That team, of course, was Blackburn Rovers, and a key member of it, Jason Wilcox, is now an important figure at City.

As the coach of the defending Premier League champions’ U18s side, it is his job to help push through players into Pellegrini’s expensively assembled first-team squad.

But while the state-of-the-art Etihad Campus, which will also house City’s academy sides, will be a long way from Pleasington Playing Fields, the morals and values Wilcox developed at Rovers’ old training ground are ones that he instils into the starlets now under his wing.

“We trained on a park,” remembers Wilcox, now 43.

“The pitches were full of dog muck, we had to shift it off before we started, and we had to stop training every 15 minutes because there was a funeral procession.

“It was strange, surreal, but, you know what, so what?

“I’m fortunate enough at the moment to be a coach at Manchester City and we’re building this training ground, which is absolutely phenomenal and which will undoubtedly be beneficial in our players’ development.

“But when I look back, what is important for me now is the morals that we carry, we must make sure we carry them through to our new training ground.

“It’s about being humble in success and being a nice person, whether it is speaking to the laundry lady or the chairman.

“We’ve got to be good people.

“And that’s what we had at Blackburn, we had really good people from top to bottom.

“My only disappointment was that our success never carried on after that season.

“Yes, we had moderate success, getting into Europe under Roy Hodgson, but never the same sort of success.

“I fully expected us to go on and win the Premiership again and again and again.”

Wilcox believes the loss of manager Kenny Dalglish, as the dust settled on the club’s last and most famous title triumph, and talisman Alan Shearer, the following summer, were the main reasons why Rovers were unable to do what City did last season and reclaim the Premier League crown.

But the former England international admits that makes what Dalglish and his players achieved in the 1994/95 campaign all the more special.

Not that Wilcox, initially at least, felt like celebrating much after Rovers secured the club’s third top-flight title, and its first in 81 years, on that never to be forgotten afternoon at Anfield on Sunday, May 14, 1995.

“It really was an emotional day,” said Wilcox, who was forced to watch the 2-1 defeat to Liverpool from the stands after his season was ended in March by a cruciate knee ligament injury.

“Leading up to it I’d missed the last eight or nine games of the season, which were the biggest games, and it was a game I really wanted to play in.

“I’d done my cruciate and I was worried about my career, we’d won the title, and I must admit now I didn’t want to pick up my medal.

“I was full of emotions, I was feeling sorry for myself and looking back, I behaved immaturely.

“I looked across and Richard Witschge, who had only played one game, was picking up a medal and I felt I didn’t need a medal on that day. I felt really out of it and I didn’t feel part of it.

“But I remember Kenny Dalglish and Tim Sherwood grabbing me and saying, ‘go get your medal’, because I was firmly part of it.”

How right Dalglish and his captain were.

Wilcox scored five goals in 27 games before his campaign was cruelly cut short and created countless others for Shearer and his strike-partner Chris Sutton.

Wilcox would remain at Rovers, the club he joined as a 14-year-old boy after a period on City’s books, for four more years before leaving for Leeds United.

He also went on to play for Leicester City and Blackpool but his Premiership title winners' medal would remain the crowning achievement of his career.

Surely, then, it must be pride of place in the family home?

“Believe it or not the medal is in a Tesco carrier bag in the loft somewhere – it’s not something that I look at all the time,” said Farnworth-born Wilcox, who made his debut for Rovers in April 1990, as an 18-year-old, and went on to make 313 appearances for the club, scoring 34 times.

“The kids are not that bothered about it and I don’t need to look at it every day to remind me because it’s something that’s etched in my memory.

“It was an unbelievable time and I was really proud to be part of a group of people – not just the players – who really, really worked their socks off, from the kitchen ladies to the stewards, to make Blackburn Rovers a really special football club.

“And it remains a special football club to this day.”

But whereas Rovers are his past, City are now very much his future, and it is his mission for at least one of his players to follow in his footsteps and make the breakthrough into a team battling it out for English’s football biggest prize.

“When I look back I am really proud of what I’ve done but you always think you could have done more,” said Wilcox, who, until the emergence of Damien Duff, expected to end his playing career at Rovers.

“I always think I should have had more England caps, I always think I should have played in an FA Cup final, I always think I should have played more league games, but along the route you have injuries and other obstacles in your way, and if anybody would have said to me, aged 14, when I joined Blackburn, that I would win the Premiership with the club and play in the Champions League with the club, I would never have believed them.

“But what I’m looking forward to now is becoming successful in coaching or managing.

“I am in a very privileged position to be Manchester City’s U18s coach. It’s a full-on job and a difficult job because we’ve got to get players through to our first team.

“It’s an enormous task but one we should relish and one we should not hide behind.

“But it’s also about bringing through good people as well as good players – just like we had at Blackburn.”