Blackburn Rovers Football Club News

• Nickname:Rovers
• Founded:1875
• Manager:Steve Kean

• Ground:Ewood Park
• Capacity:31,367

Big Sam leaves out Warnock

23 Aug 2009 - 11:04:15

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Blackburn Rovers boss Sam Allardyce confirmed that Stephen Warnock was left out of the side for the 2-1 defeat at Sunderland due to uncertainty surrounding his future at the club.

The 27-year-old England international is a target for Aston Villa and Allardyce was concerned that such speculation had begun to affect Warnock.

He said: "He is at home because he struggled to focus on this game and didn't feel that mentally he was capable enough of giving his best, so we both took the decision to leave him back at Ewood.

"There have been no developments on the transfer front, but he didn't feel and I didn't feel that it was the right thing to do to play him.

"We will wait and see what next week brings, but we haven't had anything near a bid we could consider to be enough, so he is still our player and I envisage that he still will be our player.

"If anything, from my point of view, we need him to be our player even more because of Ryan Nelsen's injury."