RETIRING defender Stig Bjornebye today predicted a bright future for Blackburn Rovers as he prepared to sever his ties with the Ewood club.

Sadly, Bjornebye won't be part of the exciting vision he has forecast for his former team-mates after announcing his decision to quit the game on medical grounds yesterday.

But the ex-Norwegian international believes he is leaving the club in the safest possible hands and he has told Graeme Souness's young stars: "You can go as far as you want to in the game." "This is a club which is about to go places because everyone knows this team has got even greater potential than it is showing at the moment," said Bjornebye.

"If you go back a few years to when Sir Alex Ferguson first took over at Manchester United he got in some great young players and brought in some other players of his own and the mix of it was promising for many, many years before it then took off.

"And there's something similar happening here.

"I think people like David Dunn, Damien Duff, Lucas Neill and David Thompson are even better, potentially, than the young players Manchester United had at that time.

"There's a good mix here because you've got such supreme professionals like Henning Berg and Craig Short to help them along, as well as Flitty who's a great inspiration in midfield, and then the goalscorers up front.

"So potentially the sky is the limit but there's more work to be done and everyone needs to continue with the work-rate there is at the moment.

"They've got to realise that finishing sixth, fifth or fourth in the Premiership has not made them in life, because there's more to achieve, and if they can adopt that kind of attitude then the future looks very promising indeed."

When Bjornebye was first brought in from Liverpool by Graeme Souness three years ago his mandate was to help the club gain promotion from the First Division -- a feat they achieved in his debut season.

Since then, Rovers have continued to go from strength-to-strength by establishing themselves as a top 10 force in the Premiership, as well as landing their first major knockout trophy since 1928.

But Bjornebye believes there is even more to come from the squad he is leaving behind and he points to the emergence of exciting young players like Jay McEveley as the reason for his optimism.

"Things are moving in the right direction, definitely," said Bjornebye, who's been forced to retire due to an eye injury.

"There's a lot of good young players here but they are not just promising young players, they are promising young players who want to listen to the older, more experienced lads.

"They come up with questions and they are really interested in knowing things and that's been one of the most interesting challenges for me and the experienced players over the last few years because we really felt as though we had a function towards the young players who were so keen to learn."