As rumours persist surrounding the future of Blackburn Rovers star Bradley Dack, manager Tony Mowbray has insisted that he will not be leaving Ewood Park in the January transfer window.
Blackburn Rovers finished second in League One last season, winning promotion back to the Championship behind league winners Wigan Athletic. Playmaker Bradley Dack was one of the side’s main driving forces in the 2017/18 campaign, scoring 18 goals and assisting another nine in 42 league games.
After a scintillating first campaign with Blackburn, Dack was on the radar of recently relegated West Brom, who reportedly tested Rovers’ resolve over their star man in the summer.
Dack has continued his good form this season, making the step up to the Championship seemlessly. In 15 games in all competitions, the former Gillingham man has scored 10 and assisted 5. His form has seen him linked to West Brom once again, and even Premier League giants Spurs have been linked with a big money move away.
However, despite the interest, manager Tony Mowbray insists that Bradley Dack will not be leaving the club in the January transfer window.
“I think the strength with Bradley is my relationship with him,” Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph.
“Bradley has come a long way very quickly, he’s already signed a new contract because he came at a very low number from Gillingham and instantly showed us he could do a job so we incrementally gave him a new deal.
“I’m hoping of going to Steve (Waggott) pretty soon and saying ‘let’s give Bradley another year and give him a few more quid and make him one of the top earners at the club’.
“Some people talk to me and say ‘Bradley Dack must be miles above everyone else because he’s the best player at the club’.
“At the minute he’s not the best earning footballer at the club, and I now feel he’s warranted that he should feel as if he is on par with the top earners at our club.
“Yet he’s still a young boy learning the game, this is his first season in the Championship.
“Moving forward, I’m hoping the club can move forward as quickly as Bradley because he wants to play in the Premier League.
“Having worked with the likes of James Maddison, Bradley can play in the Premier League.
“This window is going to come up quickly on us in the next five or six weeks, my hope is that Bradley doesn’t knock on my door and says ‘I want to go’.
“It will come down to mine and his personal relationship I would say. What I do know is that I think he trusts me. I’m not a bully, I wouldn’t tell him to go and tell him to sit in a corner because he has got another three years left.
“I would give him the human angle and tell him how far we’ve helped him progress, because when we brought him from Gillingham he wasn’t really performing, he’d put on a bit of weight, he wasn’t scoring goals, he’d lost his hunger for the game and my belief is that he owes us something back really in the short-term.
“In the mid-term we have to give him a team that he can keep producing in.
“He won’t go anywhere, even if we get big bids, in this next window.”
