When I think of modern-day footballers I can't help thinking of 'roasting', the Anfield Rap, gambling debts and obnoxious team 'away days'. Forrest it is.

When Jimmy Forrest won his fourth and fifth FA Cup medals in 1890 and 1891 there was only one other player left from the teams that won the cup in the 1880's. To remain in the side for that long despite the overhaul that happened in almost every other position in the team gives us as clear an indication as possible that he was a great player and indispensible to the team. Sherwood was a good player. I rated him highly but for Tim to be comparable he would have still been playing for us when we lifted the League Cup in 2002. Instead Mark Hughes made him look soft.

My vote goes to Jimmy Forrest. He was very famous in his day. As a student I spent some time researching the history of sport in Blackburn. Reading through match reports from nineteenth century editions of the Blackburn Times it is very difficult to put forward a case for why he was such a great player. Journalists tended to write brief reports on the courage, tenacity, skill, cleverness of players but that doesn't really give us the detail we are looking for on Forrest when trying to put forward a case for his inclusion in the Greatest XI. Plus the game, team formations, tactics were different back then. He was famous enough to have a popular football biography written about him entitled something like, Jimmy Forrest's Football Career with his Recollections and Opinions. (I read it and it wasn't any more literary than today's offerings). He was a working-class 'tape-sizer' in a cotton mill when he was discovered by Rovers and I believe he was the first professional to play for England. He was forced to wear a different style kit to distinguish him from his amateur team-mates. Apart from his outstanding FA Cup achievements and the fact that he scored in some of those finals he went on to serve Blackburn Rovers as a director once his playing career finished. Is there a case to be made for Forrest influencing the club all the way up to the championship winning team of 1912?

I'm picking my top two based on their influence and contribution rather than whether or not they would be able to cut it with the best or most talented of the modern era. It's more of a Hall of Fame than a Best XI for me. That's why my votes are going towards two players I've never seen but who's fame is such that even at a young age I knew about them - Jimmy Forest and Ronnie Clayton. Forest - He is probably our greatest 19thC player. Can you think of another? If he doesn't get in then I really cannot see this brilliant era in our history being represented in the team. That would be a great shame. Clayton because of the influence he had on one of the most fondly remembered periods of Rovers history in the 50's and 60's which even now is more favourably compared with the Rovers team of the 1990's.