Watch Blackburn vs Middlesbrough on Sunday, live on Sky Sports Football from 12.30pm.
Friday 15 February 2019 23:02, UK
Adam Armstrong's return to the Championship is going nearly as well as his club Blackburn's - and their form has taken even the division's player of the month by surprise.
Blackburn travel to Middlesbrough live on Sky Sports Football and Sky Sports Main Event this Sunday from 12.30pm knowing a win will keep their slim chances of a play-off spot alive, continuing their upward surge after years of misery at Ewood Park.
The heady days of Premier League glory and Jack Walker watching from the John Lewis Complex, which would later be renamed in his honour, may feel centuries past but more recent unrest and protests against the club's still unpopular owners, the Venky's, finally seems like history too, for now at least.
A decline fuelled by under-investment and mismanagement saw them drop from seventh in the Premier League to relegation from the Championship inside nine years has been arrested more by some astute signings from Tony Mowbray - whose decision to sign Bradley Dack for £750,000 18 months ago seems a bargain now - and finally reaching a level, League One, where their budget was not likely to be dwarfed.
One of those signings, initially on loan, was Newcastle striker Adam Armstrong. The attraction of the forward to any third-tier club was obvious, after notching 20 goals as an 18-year-old for Coventry in 2015/16.
Nine in 21 for Blackburn in their promotion charge was another steady return, and was enough for Mowbray to convince the club's owners to part with £1.75m to bring him to the club permanently. Pocket change for the Championship, but at the time their most expensive purchase in six years.
Fast forward two-thirds of a season, and Blackburn's return to the top flight, while an outside shot, is light years closer than it seemed even 18 months ago, when they dropped into the third tier for the first time in 44 years. Armstrong, meanwhile, has found his goalscoring touch and has been named as January's player of the month for the division.
He told Sky Sports: "I think the whole of Blackburn would've taken where we are now. Especially with getting promoted last season, I don't know what the fans and players were expecting but now we're in this position, we've got a chance of getting in the play-offs.
"Winning this award is massive. I've had a few in League One before and to get my first Championship award is an amazing feeling. Hopefully I can kick on and get more of them in the future."
Sunday will signal a return to the North East where Armstrong called home until this summer. A boyhood Newcastle fan, his dreams came true when he became the club's second-youngest Premier League player at the tender age of 17 years and one month against Fulham in 2014.
Rarely will you find a club with more affinity to a home-grown striker, as the statues of Alan Shearer and Jackie Milburn at St James' Park will attest, and hopes were raised of another Geordie hero in Armstrong's superb season for Coventry, his first real taste of competitive football.
Challenges have never fazed the 22-year-old, but having been recalled from a loan spell at Championship Bolton midway through last season to return to League One with Blackburn, it was becoming clear the Newcastle hierarchy did not feel he was ready for the top flight.
On the back of a successful spell at Ewood Park, and a suggestion from Rafa Benitez he had little chance of forcing his way into the Newcastle line-up, it was time for the biggest decision of Armstrong's life. He had found the Championship a difficult nut to crack, netting seven times in 54 games for Barnsley and Bolton across two loan spells, so was there any guarantee the grass would be greener if he did leave St James' Park?
"I just thought it was the right time to move on," he said. "I sat down with my family, and my agent, and we went over it. The opportunity I've had here is amazing, I don't take that for granted. I work hard to get better every day and want to get Blackburn back in the Premier League.
"I'd played a lot of games for someone so young and didn't want to be sitting around making the squad now and then. I wanted to be playing week-in, week-out and that's what I'm doing now.
"The pace of the game is different in the Championship to League One. People are a lot stronger and quicker, and tactically advanced. But my run this month is just one of those things. I've been creating chances since we got promoted, but I've not been as clinical as I have been recently."
That's certainly an opinion shared by Mowbray. Two goals and four assists in the league in January - coupled with an FA Cup strike against his boyhood club even Armstrong admits was a little sweet - have seen him "come to the party", according to his manager.
He can show the North East what its missing when he features at the Riverside on Sunday, but Armstrong is too focused to let it bother him.
"I don't really look for any of the fixtures close to home when they come out," he admitted. "But it'll be nice to be back, to get home and see some family."
