AS soon as Kenny Dalglish and Ray Harford arrived at the club, you knew they meant business.

They worked so well together.

Ray was the main man on the training field but Kenny was the man manager, the man who made all the big decisions.

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I never forget when Kenny first came to the club.

His first game in charge was at home to Plymouth but he didn’t actually pick the team that day.

Anyway I managed to score two goals and I thought to myself, ‘I’ll be all right for next week’.

Then Kenny dropped me.

He knew what he wanted and he wasn’t scared of changing teams around.

By the end of that season we’d won promotion to the Premier League but I wasn’t playing and Kenny had brought Alan Shearer in.

Kenny was honest with me and told me it would be very unlikely I’d play much the following season.

I appreciated that so when West Brom came in for me I told him I wanted to leave.

Nowadays a lot of players can just sit around and pick up their wages but I wasn’t like that.

I’d turned 30 and I wanted to continue playing.

And I knew if I wasn’t going to do that at Blackburn, it would be harder for me to find a club 12 months down the line.

So I went to West Brom and I had great start there.

Ossie Ardiles was there, I’d played with him at Blackburn, so I knew all about him, and he was a smoker too, so I loved him!

But then he went to Tottenham and it all went downhill from there.

But I have no regrets about leaving Blackburn.

I was proud of what I did for the club and hopefully people enjoyed what I did.

And, let’s face it, they got a good replacement in Shearer.

I think I must have been the only person to be happy when he got injured and then when he got his move to Newcastle United!

Because, if not, there is no doubt he would gone above me as Blackburn’s all-time leading goalscorer.

He was such a good player, certainly the best Englishman ever to play in the Premier League and one of the best full stop.

Yes he came for a lot of money but it annoys me when people say that Blackburn Rovers bought the Premiership title. The club had to spend – and quite a bit, too, for those days – but Kenny’s buys were shrewd.

And if you look at the squad he put together you wouldn’t particularly say it was the best in the league.

But they had the best team spirit and they worked extremely hard for each other.

Thanks to Kenny and Ray they knew exactly what they were doing.

Then they went out there and did it.