OWEN Coyle says that signing experienced strike duo Anthony Stokes and Danny Graham has sent a message to fans that they can get excited about watching Blackburn Rovers again.

Ireland forward Stokes was snapped up on a three-year-deal from Celtic, while Graham was persuaded to make his move from Sunderland permanent after enjoying a successful loan spell last season.

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The manager believes the captures have proved the doubters, who gave Rovers no chance of bringing in top talent after last season’s disappointing campaign, wrong. And he can’t wait to unleash his high-profile pair on Championship defences next month.

He said: “Any signing is important, but in terms of the striker department that was important.

“From what I’m led to believe, very few people gave us a chance of securing players of that quality to the club.

“I took that as a personal challenge that I was capable of doing that.

“With Anthony Stokes having been in the Champions League, the level he’s played at and the clubs that were after him, that showed we can go and get that type of player.

“To add Danny, who was very successful last year at the club and a fans’ favourite, that was very important.

“I wanted to send a message to the fans that we’re trying to get players that you can associate with, players that you can identify with and players that you can come and enjoy watching and think, ‘I’m going along to Ewood this week, I’m excited about the game’.

“We’ve got players that the fans can talk about. That’s what we’re trying to do.

“It won’t happen overnight, but we’ll leave no stone unturned in our capacity and our hard work to try and fulfill that obligation.”

Coyle also believes the pair will complement each other with their different styles - Graham a more physical target man, while Stokes is a livewire, on-the-shoulder attacker.

He added: “I think you’ve got two individually outstanding players and I think you’ve also got two players that have football intelligence who will be able to understand each other., “They’re also different, which is great. They’re not the same profile in the respect they have different traits and different qualities.

“But the one big thing they do have in common, they both know where the back of the net is and that’s huge at any football club.

“What we have done is find strikers of an extremely high calibre and I think that sends out a really positive messaged that we’re going to try to improve the goals tally.

“Last season Blackburn Rovers had a tremendous defensive record, so we have to give credit where credit is due.

“What’s happened before is finished, we can’t affect that. What we can affect is moving forward and bringing in players of the standard of Danny Graham and Anthony Stokes certainly help fulfil the vision you have for the team and the club.

“For me it’s not about having enough centre-forwards, it’s about never having enough goalscorers at your club.

“We can all have centre-forwards who don’t score goals, so I think the important thing is we have goalscorers.

“I remember Bruce Rioch saying that when I played at Bolton. We had myself, John McGinlay, Andy Walker, Fabien de Freitas, Mixu Paatelainen, we were all there at one time.

“Somebody said to him, ‘You’ve got an abundance of goalscorers’, and he said, ‘You can never have enough goalscorers’. And that’s true.

“Not just from strikers. From wide areas with players who can score goals and the boys at the back who can chip in as well.

“You can never have enough goalscorers because goals win you games.”