In some ways, the 2020/21 season proved to be a rather strange one for Blackburn Rovers.

Despite scoring 11 more goals (64) than they conceded (55) across the course of the campaign, Rovers still fell well short of their aims for the season, finishing 15th in the final Championship standings.

Indeed, despite their threat going forward, Rovers also lost four more league games (19), than they won (15), with costly defensive errors that Tony Mowbray's side were often unable to recover from regularly proving to be decisive.

That however, has not always been the case, and there have been plenty of times over the years where Rovers have simply found themselves unable to keep out strikes who just seem to know how to find the back of the net against the Ewood Park club.

So here, we've headed onto the Transfermarkt and onto Blackburn's "Most Feared" page, to find out exactly which players have scored most goals when coming up against Rovers.

We start this list with Michael Owen, who enjoyed plenty of success against Rovers while playing for Liverpool during the early part of this century.

The striker netted seven times against Rovers while playing for the Merseyside club, including two braces in two Premier League games for Liverpool as they did the double over Blackburn in the 2003/04 season.

Owen was less prolific when facing Blackburn with Newcastle and Manchester United, netting twice while playing against Rovers for the Magpies, and never while playing for United, meaning Owen holds a record of nine goals in 15 games when facing the Lancashire club.

One other player who has done plenty of damage to Rovers on occasions, is Cameron Jerome.

While his first goal against Blackburn came in a 2-1 Rovers win over Birmingham during the 2007/08 season, Jerome got his revenge when he came off the bench to net a brace in a 4-1 thrashing of Blackburn by the Blues on the final day of that particular campaign.

Jerome also netted three times in two league games against Rovers for Norwich in 2016/17, as the Ewood Park club suffered relegation to League One that season. In total, Jerome has nine goals in 11 games against Rovers, and will be looking to add to that next season with Luton, who he has joined this summer after an impressive last season with MK Dons.

While Dimitar Berbatov is another to have scored nine goals against Blackburn, much of his impact against the club came in the space of a single 90 minute spell, from which the damage has certainly been lasting at Ewood Park.

Back in November 2010, Berbatov netted five goals as Manchester United battered Rovers 7-1 at Old Trafford - no player has ever scored more in a single Premier League game - and Sam Allardyce was sacked as Blackburn manager not long after.

Few Rovers fans will need - or want -reminding about was has happened since then, and while what has gone on since is not solely down to that one performance from Berbatov, it certainly won't have helped.

Another player who has done some significant damage to Rovers in just a couple of the nine games he has played against them, is Carlos Tevez.

The of the nine goals that Tevez has scored against Blackburn, three came in a hat-trick he netted for Manchester City at The Etihad during November 2010, although Rovers should already have been aware of his threat by that point.

That warning ought to have courtesy of a 2009 League Cup quarter final, when Tevez scored four of Manchester United's five goals as they beat Rovers 5-3 at Old Trafford, one their way to lifting that particular trophy that season.

Another former Manchester United man, and an iconic one at Old Trafford at that, to claim a place on this list, is Paul Scholes.

Throughout his career, Scholes was of course a regular feature for United, and given Rovers were also a Premier League side for the vast majority of that time, it was perhaps always going to be inevitable to Blackburn were going to feel the impact of the midfielder's ability at some point.

In total, Scholes found the net ten times in 22 games when going up against Rovers, and only Newcastle (11) conceded more goals to the former England international across the course of his long and prestigious career.

Even from midfield, a player with Frank Lampard’s attacking ability was always going to make an impact in any run of 28 games, so given he played that many times against Rovers, it is no surprise to see him in these standings.
In that time, Chelsea’s record goalscorer netted on ten occasions against Blackburn – with all of his strikes coming for the Stamford Bridge side, having failed to score against Rovers while playing for West Ham, while he never faced the Ewood Park club during his brief spell as a Manchester City player. As well as his ruthlessness in front of goal, Rovers also felt the brunt of Lampard's creativity at times, with the legendary midfielder also providing five assists for his teammates when up against Blackburn. Ironically, the next person to take a place in these standings, is a player who holds a place in the Blackburn Rovers Hall of Fame, and is undoubtedly a club legend. But while Rovers could reap the benefits of having Alan Shearer on their books between 1992 and 1996, during which time he scored 130 goals in 171 games in the Blue and White halves, the Ewood Park club also bore the brunt of his talents on a number of occasions. In 15 games that Shearer played against Rovers, the Premier League's record goalscorer found the net ten times against his old club, including in his final game at Ewood Park with Newcastle in the 2005/06 season.
Across the course of his career, Nicolas Anelka changed both the club he was playing for, and the country he was playing in, on a number of occasions. But despite the sheer amount of change the striker experienced, one thing that did stay the same, was his ability to find the net against Rovers, with the striker scoring 12 times in 16 games for the club. That meant that Anelka got his name on a scoresheet for five different clubs - Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Bolton and Chelsea - while playing against Blackburn, who he managed to score more goals against than any other club he faced off with during his playing career.
Admittedly, Emile Heskey was never the most prolific of strikers – and his goals ratio here does reflect that – but the number of games he played against Rovers has helped him to a place on this list. In total, Heskey came up against on 35 occasions across the course of his career, facing the club while playing for Leicester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Wigan, Aston Villa and Bolton, scoring against Rovers at least once for each of those sides. Those efforts meant that Heskey ended his career having scored 13 times against Blackburn, which is at least six more goals than he got against any other team he ever came up against. Like Heskey, Van Persie has also scored 13 goals in the games he played against Blackburn, which just happens to be more than he scored against any other club. However, the Dutchman didn’t need anywhere near as many games to reach that tally, coming up against Blackburn on 13 occasions during his career - meaning he averaged a goal a game against the Ewood Park club  - meaning he claims top spot here. All of his goals, and indeed games against Rovers, came while he was playing for Arsenal, with the standout performance for the iconic Dutchman was a hat-trick in Arsenal’s 7-1 thrashing of Rovers in 2012, as the Lancashire club plummeted to relegation from the Premier League.