Owen Coyle - the highs and lows of his time at Blackburn Rovers

The Highs 

The Newcastle Double: Two of the most unexpected results of the Championship season saw Owen Coyle’s struggling Rovers side stun promotion chasing Newcastle United.

The 1-0 win at Newcastle in November saw Rovers briefly move out of the bottom three, at a time when Newcastle were chasing a club record 10th consecutive win.

Charlie Mulgrew scored the winner at St James’ Park, as Rovers chalked up only a second clean sheet of the campaign, a trick they repeated at Ewood Park on January 2 when the same player scored the only goal of the game in another Rovers win.

Manchester United (H): It proved to be Coyle’s last game in charge of Rovers, but Sunday’s FA Cup tie with Manchester United was a great occasion for the club.

It saw a bumper crowd inside Ewood Park, with Rovers putting reputations and price-tags to one side in a morale-boosting performance despite coming up short as Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic came off the bench to turn the game in United’s favour.

Rovers won plenty of credit for their display, a feel good factor they had been hoping to take in to their remaining 15 Championship games.

The Lows

Norwich (H): Given the scepticism with which many Rovers fans viewed Coyle’s appointment, the Scot would have needed a fast start to win over the Ewood faithful. Going 3-0 down inside half an hour at home to Norwich on the opening day didn’t really cut it.

Rovers would eventually lose the game 4-1, leaving Coyle with yet more work to do to convince many Rovers fans he was the man for the job.

That set the tone for a poor start to the season, as Rovers failed to win any of their opening seven league games.

Barnsley (A): Rovers had lost three consecutive games 3-2 during December when they headed for Oakwell on Boxing Day.

There was little Christmas cheer however, as the manager was subjected to large-scale criticism from the away end which was situated next to the players’ tunnel at half-time, and then at full-time, as Rovers limped to a fourth consecutive defeat.

His post-match comments, in which he accused some fans of ‘having an agenda’ didn’t help the situation, and only lit the blue touch paper with his relationship with some fans.

Rotherham (A): The trip to the New York Stadium on February 11, a week after last-gasp win over QPR, had been heralded as a must-win game for Rovers. And after a first-half, and missed chances, came and went, unrest among the fans started when Rotherham took an unlikely lead early in the first-half.

Coyle was the subject of chants, and criticism, from a large section of the travelling fans, and even a late equaliser failed to really quash any of the ill-feeling.