Tony Mowbray says Rovers fans should reflect with great pride on the club’s fairytale Premier League title win, 25 years on.

Rovers were crowned champions of England on this day in 1995 and Mowbray admits the club’s proud history was a key draw to him taking over at Ewood Park in February 2017.

The Rovers boss is trying to guide the club back to the top-flight for the first time in eight years, sitting three points outside the Championship play-offs before the season was suspended.

And Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph being one of only six clubs to win the Premier League is an achievement supporters of all ages should wear as a badge of honour.

“It’s amazing to think back, and anyone who supports Blackburn Rovers should be immensely proud,” he said.

“To come from nowhere, a provincial town in an ageing stadium to become Premier League champions is quite amazing really.

“At the time it was breaking the monopoly, and you can’t see it being done again. Teams jumping out from the ‘big six’ to win the league is an unbelievable story.”

Mowbray is a football nut, a student of the game and its history, and even joining the club 22 years after their Premier League title win, the draw of joining a club steeped in tradition was too much to turn down.

“Was I interested? Of course, this is Blackburn Rovers”, said Mowbray when sitting in front of the press for the first time, 24 hours after his whirlwind appointment.

Mowbray saw beyond the troubles at the club, then facing relegation to the third tier, just as he done at his previous club, former FA Cup winners Coventry City, and took on the challenge of steering the Rovers ship in a different direction.

And with today marking 25 years since lifting the Premier League title, Mowbray, three years in to his Ewood Park project, knows the memories of the 1994/95 season will live with fans forever.

“When this opportunity for me to came along, and although football had moved on dramatically, this was Blackburn Rovers,” he explained.

“Just the draw, Coventry City I went for a couple of seasons, they won the FA Cup in 1987 and I could still picture Keith Houchen’s diving header to beat Tottenham.

“It’s a historical club and I have a love for football and it’s history, how it was played, and I read a lot about football and try and study it.

“It’s a generational thing.  People who are of a certain age, probably around 50, will remember it like yesterday.

“I was talking to a guy who works at the club and he told me last week about what he was doing on the day of the Newcastle game.

“Your life flashes before you, but they’re still clear in your minds.

“If you’re 20 now, you were never there but you can have the pride of the club you follow won the Premier League.”

Lancashire Telegraph:

Six-times FA Cup winners, three times winners of the top division, two more league titles and one league cup success, Rovers can lay claim to being the most successful town club in the country.

And Mowbray admits for a club who’d been plying in its trade in the second division before the inception of the Premier League in 1992, to scale the heights of English football and upset the dominant forces that had reined supreme was an incredible achievement.

“From a provincial town in Lancashire and when I was a young boy predominantly playing in Division Two every season, it wasn’t a ground of a Premier League winner, it wasn’t like going to Anfield or Old Trafford and my memories of playing at Blackburn weren’t of playing at a new out-of-town new stadiums,” he added.

“So to win the league and do what Dalglish did, and you have to put it in to context of what was happening at the time, Liverpool had won everything through the 1970s and 1980s just about and were an amazing team.

“Nottingham Forest and Arsenal emerged, Manchester United under Ferguson, but to win the league was an amazing feat. The way they did and the goals they scored, you watch them on Sky the goals that Shearer scored, unbelievable, he scored unbelievable goals even on his debut.

“It was like a fairytale that someone could be as dominant as Alan Shearer could be. Unless you’re a Rovers fan you wouldn’t have known every detail about the season, just have memories of Dalglish and Shearer.

“I can picture how it worked, Ripley running down the right wing like an express train and whipping it in for Shearer and him scoring, or Sutton scoring.”

Lancashire Telegraph:

The investment of Jack Walker was clearly key, but Mowbray was keen to point to the signings made, and the contribution of the players, as the reason behind the title success.

“People might say that Jack Walker was the first person to come along and ‘buy the league’ but players win leagues,” he explained.

“The foresight to buy Alan Shearer and then to have Chris Sutton and that combination with Ripley on one wing, who came from Middlesbrough, it wasn’t as if he was from a team who had been winning leagues but a young boy from Middlesbrough, and then Wilcox on the left.

“There was obviously a plan. It was an era where 4-4-2, as proven by winning the league, was a spectacular success, get it wide, get it in the box, create chances for Shearer and Sutton.

“I think every team would have been playing around that time, football has gone through a history of formations and how teams change and adapt.”