Blackburn begin the new season with a new manager, but with a solid core of players from last season. Photograph: Denis Doyle/Getty Images

guardian.co.uk writers’ prediction: 14th Odds: 1,000-1

This summer Blackburn became not just the first top-level club to appoint a black British manager, but also the first in the short history of the Premier League to sign a manager from the fourth tier. No pressure, then, Paul Ince.

Fortunately, Ince isn’t the type to be cowed by a challenge. He also seems to have an antenna for organising a team, having saved Macclesfield from slipping out of the Football League and then won League Two with MK Dons in his only season there. In the Premier League it’s Ince’s big-time experience and galvanising guv’nor-type qualities that Blackburn will seek to harness as they look to push on from the plateau of consistent achievement under Mark Hughes.

So far Ince has already had to do a fair bit of managing over the summer: bringing in Paul Robinson for Brad Friedel for a net spend of £1m looks like decent enough business. Persuading itchy-feet David Bentley to stay would have been even better, although Ince will surely make some immediate use of the £15m transfer fee paid by Spurs.

Under Hughes Rovers had become settled in a comfortable groove in the upper-middle reaches of the Premier League, finishing seventh, 10th and sixth in the last three seasons without ever really threatening to gatecrash the party at the top. Over the same period Hughes’ debts in the transfer market added up to a net £9.5m. It’s hard to see how Ince can really hope to improve on this without a major injection of cash - unlikely as the Jack Walker fund trustees are providing £3m, partly as a result of Hughes’s astute balancing of the books.

Instead Ince will rely on his own mercurial motivational powers; the Bentley money; and, for want of anything better, the as-yet-untapped tactical genius of his new backroom defensive guru Nigel Winterburn.

The new manager does at least inherit a well-stocked playing squad. Roque Santa Cruz, Benni McCarthy, Jason Roberts and Matt Derbyshire make up a potent-looking forward quartet. On the downside McCarthy spent last season fumbling about for his best form while Santa Cruz had a freakishly – and perhaps unrepeatably - fine time in front of goal. Inviting Robbie Fowler along is a bold, if doomed, move to add a little left-field goal threat.

The midfield has been settled for a couple of seasons, but with the 37-year-old Tugay enjoying what looks like his final languid hurrah and Morten Gamst Pedersen less effective than the previous season, it may be here Ince looks to inject some pep. Talk of a £2m bid for the MK Dons captain Keith Andrews has failed to progress, while the likes of Steven Davis, Aaron Lennon, James Milner, James McFadden and Mark Bresciano have all been fingered as targets at one point or another. So far, the loan acquisition of Chilean player of the year Carlos Villanueva and Brett Emerton’s new four-year deal have been the most heartening bits of business on the outfield front.

The defence also looks fairly solid: Andre Ooijer was one of the stars of the group stages of Euro 2008 and will be looking to push Christopher Samba and Ryan Nelsen for a starting place in the centre. The only real imponderable at the back is the form of Robinson, for whom this could be a career-defining move. With no experienced keeping cover in the squad, Ince needs his man to get over his two-year spell of the yips.

If room for improvement looks capped by a lack of spending power, things could still quite easily go the other way. Blackburn have taken a huge gamble with an innovative managerial appointment. At the same time they’ve failed to provide the kind of team-building funds a more experienced manager would have demanded. Ince will be desperate to earn himself some breathing space by getting off to a good start. Anything else could see the accumulated confidence of the Hughes era draining away very quickly. Either way, it should be fascinating to watch.

In: Paul Robinson (Tottenham - £3m), Carlos Villanueva (Audax Italiano - season-long loan), Danny Simpson (Manchester United - season-long loan)

Out: Brad Friedel (Aston Villa £2m), David Bentley (Tottenham - initial £15m), Peter Enckelman (released), Stephane Henchoz (released), Bruno Berner (released), Raffaele de Vita (Livingston - free)

About this articleClosePremier League preview No3: Blackburn Rovers This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Monday August 04 2008. It was last updated at 08:56 on August 05 2008.

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