Florent Sinama Pongolle says his loan spell at Rovers worked out as a scouting mission for Liverpool in their bid to sign Craig Bellamy in the summer of 2006.

Pongolle was on the fringes of first-team action at Anfield when, aged 22, he signed for Rovers in the second half of the 2005/06 season, which saw him play 10 times and score once, in a defeat at Tottenham.

But the Frenchman says he was able to relay to then Reds boss Rafa Benitez the quality of strike-partner Bellamy whose one season at Rovers, following a £5m move from Newcastle United, saw him score 17 times in 34 appearances.

The Welshman did move to Liverpool that summer and in doing so pushed Sinama Pongolle down the pecking order to the point where he moved on to Spanish side Huelva.

But that wasn’t before a chat with Benitez about Bellamy who would go on to spend just 12 months in the red of Liverpool before signing for West Ham.

“Rafa actually asked me about Craig and what he was like to play with,” Sinama Pongolle said.

“I said that he was great and a guy who worked hard. I understood that it was going to get even more difficult for me to play so I accepted the chance to sign for Huelva. At the time, there were also things going on in my personal life which made it a good time to get away.”

Lancashire Telegraph:

Rovers finished the 2005/06 in an impressive sixth position, and despite the quality of players, it was the characters that most struck Sinama Pongolle.

Mark Hughes had built a group of strong personalities, not short of experience, and Sinama Pongolle found it hard to fit in with that mentality.

But he felt he did his job of partnering Bellamy well, as they scored five goals between them in a run of March fixtures.

“They had Tugay, Lucas Neill, Craig Bellamy, Robbie Savage, we’re talking about big characters. I was 21 and I wasn’t really ready to be part of that mentality in the dressing room,” he said in an interview with The Athletic.

“They would get so fired up. The way they spoke to each other, I was like, ‘Wow, what the hell!’

“I didn’t try to be in the spotlight. I just kept my head down and tried to serve chances to Bellamy, who was the No 1 striker. He was on fire that season.”