Rovers sign Vogel - nice!

By: David | March 19th, 2008

31 year old Swiss international Johann Vogel has signed for Blackburn on a free transfer. Yet another good piece of oppurtunism by Sparky if you ask me. This guy was in the PSV first team for years, before moving to Milan. He failed to get into the Milan first team, though thats hardly a failure when competing with the likes of Pirlo, Gattusso, Ambrosini, Seedorf and Kaka for places. A move to Real Betis of La Liga was unsuccessful after a legal dispute.

His fitness may take a while to get up to scratch but I think Vogel could be a useful player. He’s experienced at the top level of football with Champions League and International games under his belt. We need a midfielder who is defensively solid to compliment Dunn (who really seems to be finding form) and shore up our GA (goals against). And he’s for free, so why not?

Vogel against Andriy Voronin at the World Cup

Speaking of transfers, we should look ahead to the summer. European football is looking a bit unlikely and a top half finish is almost certain, so how can we improve?

Well another top quality midfielder would be great, and maybe a right back too. However it is very hard to gauge who would be interested in joining Rovers and how much they would cost. On one hand we are a team on the up, but noone would really say we are bigger than any of our top half rivals (maybe Pompey apart). Except that Pompey have money and have been able to sign the likes of Muntari and Diarra (both of whom I would love to see at Rovers), as well as Defoe and Kranjcar.

Perhaps most important will be keeping hold of our own players, particularly Bentley and Santa Cruz. I would also like to keep Pedersen if we can keep him on his toes, plus he’s on the back of my Rovers shirt… McCarthy has scored the same amount of goals as Rooney this term (suprisingly), though I wonder how many are from penalties. And Dunn has as many assists as Aliaksander Hleb - also impressive.

We will need a keeper eventually to replace Friedel too, but I’m confident he can continue to pull out the stops for another year - he’s been a class act for so long now.

Well there is plenty of time to think about it. I’m really excited about who we may get linked with this year.