Samba: Unsettled

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Kean to hold Samba talks

Blackburn manager Steve Kean will sit down with Christopher Samba on Thursday in a bid to refocus the defender’s ambitions towards helping the club avoid relegation.

The highly rated centre-back was refused a transfer request at the beginning of the January transfer period, and he missed his third straight game after sitting out Rovers’ 2-0 defeat against Newcastle on Wednesday.

However, under-fire manager Kean insists it was his decision to hold back Samba from those games, claiming the player was not in the right place mentally to play, given his failed exit from Ewood Park.

“I didn’t feel as though (Samba) was in the right frame of mind. He was fit and available but that was my decision. It wasn’t that Chris refused or anything, far from it,” he said.

“I felt the defence against Everton and Fulham did well enough that I wouldn’t have changed it anyway.”

Rovers had turned down two bids from QPR for the defender last month, but with the transfer window now closed Kean is hoping Samba can redirect his efforts back to helping the Lancashire outfit stave off the drop.

“Obviously Chris had handed in a transfer request, wanted to leave the club, that was refused. We didn’t have any (more) bids, which was good really because we were only going to turn them down,” Kean added.

“I’ll sit down with Chris and I’ll say, ‘Let’s move on. You’re at the club, let’s get back to what normally happens when the window closes’, where his performance level is very high and I don’t foresee any other problems.”