Graeme Souness today faced up to Blackburn's drop into the bottom three of the Premiership and admitted it is the grimmest period of his 35 years as a player and manager.
Souness could not bring himself to speak to the media following Blackburn's 2-0 defeat at Leicester but today broke his silence to express his feelings and call for unity in the Rovers squad.
Speaking to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, Souness said: "I've never experienced anything like this in 35 years. This is a new experience for me, and I'm finding a lot out about myself as we go through this bad patch.
"Everyone was hurting after yesterday's game, and I was no different. But the thing that encourages me is the dressing room is still together.
"It's very easy to become fragmented in situations like this and start pointing the finger at each other, but that's not the case."
But the plain-speaking Scot said this was not the time for him to wield the big stick. He added: "I can understand the fans' disappointment and I'd like to reassure them that no one is more frustrated by the current situation than the players themselves.
"But this is not the time for me to start criticising people. We've all got to pull together and work at turning things around together, and the spirit in the dressing room is the big thing that encourages me to believe we can do that.
"We've got players who are playing without confidence at the moment, but a couple of good results could change that."
Blackburn have now lost five consecutive Premiership games and have won just two of their last 13 matches.
Only Leeds are beneath them in the table, but this is still not Blackburn's worst start to a Premiership season.
In 1996-7, under Ray Harford, Rovers had 10 league games without a win - and then two years later Roy Hodgson was sacked following a run of nine points from the opening 14 games. Blackburn went on to be relegated.