Town boss Mick McCarthy rates former Blues frontman Jordan Rhodes as one of the top goalscorers in the Championship. Blackburn striker Rhodes, 23, faces his old club for the first time today when the Blues are in action at Ewood Park.
"He’s a goalscorer, there’s no question about that,” McCarthy said. "Somebody said to me ‘They got that right, signing him’.
"I said, ‘Well, he did cost £8 million and bundles of money a week!’. So far, so good, they have. But for that kind of money you’ve got to do it in the Premier League.
"We watched their game with Bristol City last week and it was a bit like ours, there wasn’t a lot in it. Two goals from Jordan Rhodes was the difference.
"He’s certainly a predator. The two goals he got last week were excellent, from not having that much in the game. In terms of being a goalscorer, he’s up there with the best in the Championship.
"He’s one to watch on Saturday,” the Town manager added. "Actually, he’s not one to watch, he’s one to stop!”
Whether Rhodes will make it in the Premier League may depend on which club he is with, McCarthy believes: "It remains to be seen. You get in a team that gets promoted and suddenly the goalscorer that’s been scoring all the goals ends up having to do a little bit more, a bit more defending, you don’t have as much of the ball, you don’t get as many crosses, as many passes and you don’t score as many goals by default.
"If he goes and plays for one of the top teams, who knows? But, finishers like him can generally do it anywhere.”
He says the Scotland international was on his radar when he was manager of Wolves but that he wouldn’t have spent the size of fee Blackburn paid for him: "Everybody was looking at him, but we were never going to spend £8 million on him.”
Former manager Roy Keane sold Rhodes to Huddersfield in the summer of 2009 - "It was a chance I took after receiving an offer which was good for the club” — after he had made only 10 Town sub appearances, scoring one goal, for a fee which, with a 10% sell-on from his switch to Blackburn, moved close to £1.5 million.
McCarthy admitted that he’s not fully aware of the the ins and outs of Rhodes’s controversial exit but says it’s easy to judge these situations with hindsight: "I don’t really know Jordan, I know his old man [former Town keeper-coach] Andy better, I played at Barnsley with him. He’s got a remarkable goalscoring record, certainly. "I have to know the full circumstances of it. From what I hear, it seems to me that Connor Wickham had come on to the scene as well and was Jordan Rhodes scoring all the goals here that he’s scoring now? "It would be easy for me to join in, in hindsight, somebody having scored all those goals, but from what I gather there was a move set up for him not really from the management. He wasn’t getting a game, Connor Wickham came on the scene and then there was a move set up. "I don’t know. Roy Keane was here and I don’t know how many times Roy had even seen him. I don’t know the circumstances. "But it’s always the same when somebody leaves a club and then does well, everybody wants to point the finger at the bloke who got shot of him or sold him. I’m not going to join in because there’ll be more to it than meets the eye, believe me.” Former Blues loanee DJ Campbell joined Blackburn on a similar basis for the remainder of the season yesterday but McCarthy’s not sure whether the QPR man will go straight into the Blackburn team: "He’s still our leading goalscorer but I don’t know whether he’s certain [to play]. "I’m sure Jordan Rhodes will be playing, whether [Rovers manager Michael Appleton] plays those two together or not I don’t know.” He says there are similarities between Campbell and Rhodes: "He’s another you don’t really see for a lot of the game. He’s not one of those that will be knocking people around, winning headers about the place or dictating proceedings, you might not see him. "DJ was very similar. I think in the Charlton game DJ missed a penalty, he didn’t really have a lot in the game, then scored a great goal having missed a couple of chances. "And I think Jordan Rhodes is the same, they’re a little bit ghost-like. You don’t see them, you don’t pick them up but they always have that happy knack of putting the ball in the net, which is a real threat.” Speaking as a former centre-half, McCarthy says that type of player isn’t easy to deal with: "Those kind of guys, they can be horrible to play against because you think you’re doing great, they’ve not had a kick and you’re dominating proceedings and suddenly you find you’re one down and the guy who has scored is the guy who has not had a kick, it was probably his first one. "They just have a happy knack of finding space and time and room in the box and scoring.”
Rhodes nets his only senior goal for Town in the 1-1 home draw with Cardiff on April 9th 2008What to read next:
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