The Danish head coach, who left Ewood Park in February 2024, gave Wharton his debut at the start of the 2022/23 season. Wharton was developed through the Academy but it was in Tomasson's first pre-season where his opportunity came.
It was not a straight road for Wharton in the 18 months between debut and departure. Tomasson continually stressed the teenager had 'Champions League quality' on the ball but wanted more on the defensive side.
Wharton had a spell out of the side in his first season before becoming a regular in his second year. Six months later, he was sold for a club-record free to Crystal Palace.
**READ MORE: [Valerien Ismael on Blackburn Rovers' 'deep problem' and play-off belief](https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/25013136.ismael-blackburn-rovers-deep-problem-belief/?rel=cl_mra)**
Tomasson revealed his investment in Wharton, sitting down with the family to reiterate exactly what the generational talent needed to do to fulfil his potential.
"When I was head coach of Blackburn Rovers, I saw a kid in the youth team who had a lot of ambition and dreams," [Tomasson told Coaches' Voice in his first interview referencing Rovers since departing.](https://learning.coachesvoice.com/cv/jon-dahl-tomasson/)
"Adam Wharton wasn’t the finished article, but he had a lot of talent. So I made some extra efforts to help him take the next step.
"I went to talk with him and his parents at their family home about how he could develop into a senior player. It was about how we could help him not only then, but to become a Premier League player and to play for England.
"It gives me a lot of joy to be able to help someone like that, but for a football club, there is also a business case for developing young players.
"When Blackburn sold Adam to Crystal Palace they received the highest transfer fee in the club’s history. But for me, it was great to see a young man develop into a senior player, taking responsibility for his own development and go on to play for England."
Tomasson arrived at Rovers from Malmo and was incredibly successful in his first campaign. The second nosedived around Christmas and led to his departure last year.
"In some ways, the task I faced at Malmö was a bit similar to when I went to Blackburn – to create an attacking, modern way of playing football, developing youngsters, and winning games," he said.
"We came very close in my first year to reaching the Championship playoffs with a very young team. We played without a senior striker for the last, important games of the season and, in the end, we missed out on goal difference, but it was the club’s best finish in a decade - and also the best cup run for a long time.
"Football is a game of 90 minutes, but on average the ball is not even in play for an hour. You can only score if the ball is in play, yet I see games where, in the first minute, players take ages to take a throw-in, or a goal-kick, or they are on the ground for ages.
"My aim is to win football games, and the idea is to have the ball in play, to play forward and create something – not to play the ball around and around and around, and create a boring game. The goal is in the middle, so we play towards the goal."