As Manchester United prepare for a Champions League qualifier against Belgian side Club Brugge, it's fair to say the last 20 years have been generally positive for Premier League sides in Europe.
The last couple of seasons aside, United, Chelsea and Liverpool have all tasted glory in the Champions League era, while Arsenal have reached a final and Tottenham and Newcastle sides also enjoyed forays, frolics and famous nights in continental competition.
And of course, there is Manchester City. While they have at least started to reach the knockout stages these days, the Abu Dhabi-backed outfit have underachieved in Europe given their recently acquired wealth.
In that way, their Champions League experience is not too dissimilar to the Premier League sides who felt their way into Europe in the years following the lifting of the ban on English clubs.
One of those was Blackburn Rovers who suffered in 1995-96. We've already had a look at the legacy of Middlesbrough side of that season, as well as the initial reaction to Dennis Bergkamp's arrival at Arsenal in the summer of '95.
Off The Ball looked back on Blackburn's most famous campaign:
So when we join Blackburn in that period, they had just pipped Man United to the Premier League title with a team backed by the millions of Jack Walker and featuring the likes of Alan Shearer, his strike partner Chris Sutton, goalkeeper Tim Flowers, current Aston Villa boss Tim Sherwood left-back Graeme Le Saux and future World Cup penalty misser David Batty.
Ahead of their European campaign, league-winning manager and Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish had already moved into an upstairs role as Director of Football, with his assistant, the late Ray Harford, stepping into the vacant head coaching position.
Team 33's Joe Coffey told the story of Blackburn's rise under Walker in our 1990s special:
By September, the club had discovered their grouping for what was then a 16-team Champions League group stage. On paper, being landed in Group B alongside Norway's Rosenborg, Russian champions Spartak Moscow and Polish side Legia Warsaw does not seem too daunting in hindsight.
Except hindsight, shows that Blackburn, who slipped well down the pecking order domestically that campaign, ended up bottom of that Champions League group, which just one win on the final matchday against Rosenborg, and one draw.
It was a campaign that never got going at all with defeats against each of their group rivals in the first three games.
But the nadir was certainly this clash from the 3-0 humiliation at Spartak Moscow on matchday 5 in November 1995:
Fortunately, captain Sherwood stepped in to separate them, as Le Saux and Batty came to blows following an accidental collision, before fisticuffs broke out with Le Saux striking the first blow, breaking his hand in the process.
The future Chelsea full-back did have a reason to strike first as he once explained in his autobiography:
"It was still the first half when I set off after a loose ball. I was running up the touchline, the ball in front of me. I was going to intercept it. David was coming across the pitch to try to get there as well. We arrived at the same time and ran into each other.
"I hit the deck and, as I got up, he came at me very aggressively. He was being threatening and screaming things. His face was contorted with anger, as if he was going to rip my head off. Hitting him was more of a pre-emptive strike than anything. If I had not hit him, I felt he was going to hit me.
"It is a myth that he was hurling a stream of homophobic abuse. It wasn't the words that got to me, but a combination of four or five things. I was upset at what he said and that he was accusing me of being selfish again. I was upset that we were not doing well as a team and I reacted because of the way he behaved."
Either way a night at the Luzhniki Stadium, which also saw Scottish centre-back Colin Hendry red carded, summed up a disastrous campaign, even if it did end on the positive of a 4-1 win against Rosenborg two weeks later when Alan Shearer scored a penalty and Mike Newell netted a hat-trick.
Blackburn haven't been back in the Champions League since and probably never will be with the way football is now. But I'll be back with more 1995-96 nostalgia next week.
Ex-Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit spoke to Off The Ball about signing Le Saux from Blackburn and how he made the player adapt to a new style of football:
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
