Blackburn aiming to sign Chopra?

English Championship club Cardiff City FC striker Michael Chopra has been in the news back in India recently for showing interest to play for Team India ahead of the 2011 AFC Asian Cup. But due to passport issues Chopra will not be playing for India in the Asian Cup, but lets see if it happens in the future.

And this piece of news has been tracked by new Blackburn Rovers owners Venky's out of Pune and now the Rao family, owners of the VH Group, are considering to bring the striker to Lancashire from Wales and also back to the Premiership. Especially the two Rao brothers think that Chopra could be a real asset for the Rovers in developing links between their new club and their home country of India.

Interestingly earlier the Rao's are said to have offered India captain Baichung Bhutia a contract for the second half of the Premier League, but our seasoned captain had turned down the offer knowing that the Premiership would be a stage too big for him at this age. The Rao's are looking at options on how to create a connect between Blackburn Rovers and India, and they see the need of an Indian player or a British player of Indian origin coming in to make it possible.

And currently there is no one better option then the former England Under-20 captain Michael Chopra. But Chopra hasn't been having his best of seasons for Cardiff City as he has dropped down the pecking order behind Craig Bellamy and Jay Bothroyd, but he still has an impressive record for the Bluebirds scoring 26 goals in 56 appearances. When last season Cardiff signed Chopra on a permanent deal they had to pay 4 Million Pounds to Sunderland for the boy from Newcastle, so they would surely look to recoup most of that fee if they let him go for a Premiership club.

The Rao's want to rebuild Blackburn Rovers after the departure of manager Sam Allardyce, they are looking to be a top five club in the near future, but I know it is a very tough ask without the necessary multi-million pound investment in the squad which could go into the hundreds of millions and on the other side they don't want to lose their focus on India. It will be interesting to see how they achieve both.