After thirteen years of playing in friendlies and cup competitions, Rovers finally found themselves with a definite set of fixtures for the season to come. Despite the guarantee of twenty two league games, the Rovers board were unwilling to give up their many friendlies as they were still unsure whether or not the new competition would prove attractive to their fans. As they also had another thrilling FA Cup run this year, it seemed to be the first case of playing too many fixtures for the Rovers. Although they continued to enter the Lancashire Cup they started to field weakened teams in the competition, which shows that with league football most of what we know from modern football was in existence by then, albeit in a possibly more primitive form. The only real innovations that were not in place could be taken to be netting in the goals and the penalty kick, both of which arrived for good in 1891, although both had been extensively experimented with before then.

The Football League had been the brainchild of Aston Villa’s William McGregor. McGregor was a Scot who moved south from his home town of Perth to open a linen draper’s shop close to where Villa Park would be built in the Aston area of Birmingham. It was then that his love of football led to him becoming involved with Aston Villa and saw the disorganised shambles football was at the time. Arranged friendlies were often called off because one of the clubs had received a more lucrative offer elsewhere; sometimes games had been called off on the actual day. McGregor believed that football should find itself some semblance of order and so invited the best and most successful professional teams to Anderton’s Hotel in Fleet Street on the 23rd March 1888, the day before the cup final. The clubs invited were Aston Villa (represented by McGregor himself), Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion. It was agreed to set up a league involving these five teams and seven others from the Midlands and the North. A month later another meeting, this time at the Royal Hotel in Manchester on 17th April, the Football League was born. The twelve clubs were to be Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston, Stoke, West Brom and Wolverhampton. The kick off was to be September 5th 1888.

During this time there was no such thing as an actual team manager, instead the closest thing Rovers had was its secretary Thomas Mitchell. Mitchell would be in that position for twelve years, from 1884 until he resigned in late 1896 before going on to become the first ever professional manager of Woolwich Arsenal the year later. Mitchell travelled extensively looking for talented new players although he had most success in Scotland and lured players like Dewar, Campbell and Forbes south of the border. Mitchell had been a fan of the club since its formation and followed them to every game he could. It could be said that Mitchell was the first Blackburn Rovers fanatic.