Everyone has chucked their tuppence into this conversation…so now it’s my turn. Where to begin?
League One Legacy
Lewis Travis’ 10-year stint at Blackburn Rovers has come to an end as he joins Derby County in a deal understood to be worth up to £3m. This now means that the only player left from the 2017/18 League One promotion season is Scott Wharton, who, in that season, made 2 cup appearances (in one of which he was sent off after 28 minutes), and then he went out on loan for the second half of the season.
Welcome to Derby County, Lewis Travis! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/pq4tLqdklb
— Derby County (@dcfcofficial) August 27, 2025
It can therefore be argued that he played no role whatsoever in the promotion success, and we now have no League One Promotion Winners left. Actually, that’s a good thing-bear with me on this, I’ve thought it through.
Fast forward a bit, and only 5 players from Tony Mowbray’s final season in charge of the club (2021/22) remain at Ewood. Those being Aynsley Pears (4 apps), Scott Wharton (30 apps), Hayden Carter (10 apps), Harry Pickering (33 apps), and Ryan Hedges (11 apps).
When considering loan spells and injuries, only Pears, Wharton and Pickering were around Mowbray’s first team every week. Furthermore, Aynsley Pears has been heavily tipped for a move away from Ewood. Whilst no deal materialised during the summer, he is going to have one hell of a task on his hands to take that place in the team from Balázs Tóth.
Now looking back to the near-disaster season of 2023/24, which saw the end of the Danish Messiah Jon Dahl Tomasson and the Gregg Broughton project, you’d expect there to still be many players at the club. You thought wrong.
After the deadline day departure of Dom Hyam, only Sondre Tronstad on top of the list above remains. It has to be considered that at this point, Travis was on loan at Ipswich. And maybe there is something in that.
JDT's Impact
Jon Dahl Tomasson was a successful manager. He was the man who led Malmö to the top of the Swedish Allsvenskan and is now Head Coach of the Swedish men’s national team. He’s a proven winner, used to working with top players, and he knows what he is talking about.
Putting his awful man-management skills to a side, he quickly found out that Lewis Travis wasn’t good enough for his team. A player he didn’t want around and someone he certainly didn’t want to wear the armband. Why Ipswich picked him up if he was such a bad player is still beyond me.
We shouldn’t be surprised that so many of those players from that JDT team that almost got relegated have now left. We should be even less surprised that all the players from the League One season have now left.
It was 7 years ago, something we often forget with everything that’s gone on in between. It would of course be expected that a team who are pushing for the Championship playoffs would be rid of their League One players, especially after so many years. Just look at Sunderland, that’s how they did it. Except Sunderland have managed to get from League One to the Premier League in just 4 seasons.
Player Turnover
The big change that is notable is the turnover of players over the past couple of seasons. And that is maybe something that should be expected with the turnover of managers over the last 2 years. John Eustace shifted many of the younger players from JDT’s team in favour of vastly experienced championship veterans who came in on big wages and short contracts.
Now Valerien Ismael is in the process of reversing that, moving on the older players and bringing in foreign cheap options. Another way for the club to get around having to spend big money on transfers.
Just this summer, Taylor Gardner-Hickman, Ryoya Morishita, Andri Gudjohnsen, Sean McLoughlin, Lewis Miller, Ryan Alebiosu, Moussa Baradji, Axel Henriksson, Sidnei Tavares and Dion De Neve have all been brought to the club. Owen Beck, Dion Sanderson, Amario Cozier-Duberry, Emmanuel Dennis and Cauley Woodrow all returned to parent clubs at the end of their loan spells, whilst Danny Baath, Andi Weimann, Tyrhys Dolan, Callum Brittain and Lewis Travis have all left the club or been sold.
That’s a “big rebuild” just 12 months after the last “big rebuild”. It shows Valerien Ismael has the backing of the board with a significant amount of money (for Blackburn Rovers, this is) being spent.
Lewis Travis
The problem with such a turnover of players is that there weren’t many players who were here long enough to truly love Blackburn Rovers Football Club. Not like Lewis Travis does…or did.
That’s what is going to be missed from Lewis Travis. He is a leader, a character and a bloody nuisance as far as any opposition was ever concerned. He may not be a top Championship footballer, but he is a top Championship player.
He has the experience, and in a team that is looking more and more European by the week, it would be handy to have a Lewis Travis around. The concerns over a lack of Championship experience are very much valid, and this new-look side will need time to settle.
Travis’s departure can be blamed on many things. The club certainly has a part to blame; the mess behind the scenes may well have led to Travis to “wanting out.” Looking at it from Travis’ point of view, he has had to sit and watch his close friends Callum Brittain and Tyhrys Dolan leave the club this summer. And they aren’t the only ones; we all know how close that group last season was.
New management and coaches, a new CEO incoming, along with the departure of popular first team coach David Lowe, and he’s running out of friends at the club. He’s been given the chance to go work for one of his mates, with some of his mates, for (probably) double the pay. Who wouldn’t take that opportunity up?
Lewis Travis wasn’t the ‘Be all and end all’, but he is going to be missed. He can be replaced; everyone can. It’s the way football works. Valerien Ismael has already seemingly picked out Todd Cantwell to be the next leader in the dressing room, and it may well improve his game, now that he feels he is being loved and trusted.
Things are changing at Blackburn Rovers, but they could be change for the better. This is a season of change; nothing happens overnight. It could be an arduous season, but let’s hope that in the long run it pays off.
Although we said that 12 months ago.
