Off the field Blackburn are living out every football fan’s nightmare while the authorities stand idly by and do nothing. On it, somehow, they’re in with half a chance of surviving in the Premiership at QPR’s expense.
I remember, vividly, the last time I felt sorry for anybody in football. In the summer of 2000, during the European Championships, I settled down with the rest of the nation to watch England play Portugal in the opening game. With Kevin Keegan in charge our boys surged into a two goal lead thanks to Paul Scholes and Steve McManaman who both converted David Beckham crosses within the first 20 minutes of the game.
And then I felt myself feeling sorry for the Portuguese goalkeeper Vitor Baia. It was a strange thing to feel at a moment of national triumph, and at a time when I actually gave a toss about the England national team, but I couldn’t help but feel for somebody playing in such an individual position as goalkeeper slumped there on the turf believing that many months of planning had just gone up in smoke in front of the expectant public from his country of birth. Of course England contrived to lose 3-2 and have lost remorselessly to Portugal ever since, much to Vitor Baia’s clear delight, leading to my personal vow to never feel sorry for anybody in football, or in life, again because nobody ever feels sorry for you.
If you don’t feel sorry for Blackburn Rovers supporters you have less heart than the tin man from the Wizard of Oz.
As one of the five or six clubs, including ourselves, facing relegation this year I find myself looking for Blackburn results and praying for them to lose each week. But it all feels rather like taking a puppy to the river to drown, and then repeatedly kicking it back into the water when it spiritedly hauls itself up onto the bank. The poor regulars at Ewood Park are watching the implosion of their football club week on week before their very eyes and, worse still, no amount of vociferous protesting about it all seems to be making a blind bit of difference. In fact, the worse the protests get the more the people causing the problems are seeking to shift blame onto them for creating a “negative atmosphere.”
Let’s recap. When the Premiership was formed Blackburn Rovers were the Manchester City/Chelsea team in it all. Mediocre-club-made-good by millions of pounds, suddenly challenging for the Premiership trophy – and eventually winning it in 1995. Thereafter things crumbled slightly as the successful manager Kenny Dalglish moved on, the man who’d funded it all Jack Walker sadly passed away, several further managers made a bit of a dog’s dinner of the whole thing and various other well worn hard luck stories besides. For a brief period they were actually relegated down to the second tier but returned in 2001 and have since set themselves up as a competitive midtable team.
Our current manager Mark Hughes had them achieving consecutive top ten finishes during his spell in charge and they became known as a Premiership club that was an ideal proving ground for players and managers. Benni McCarthy, Roque Santa Cruz, David Bentley, Damien Duff, David Dunn, Ryan Nelson and more recently Chris Samba and Junior Hoilett have all built their English reputations at Ewood Park while Hughes and later Sam Allardyce impressed on the touchline.
But it should always be remembered that Blackburn is a small northern steel town – similar in demographic, population, average wage, unemployment and many other thing besides to Scunthorpe which struggles to support a Championship club with a 9,000 capacity stadium. This is a club that requires careful stewardship at boardroom level and excellent managerial ability in the dugout to maintain the status quo.
I can recall sitting in this chair to write a preview of an FA Cup trip to Blackburn back in the Ian Holloway days and actually having to look up who the Rovers chairman was at the time. Without wishing to get into a dick swinging competition (bit cold tonight) I can count the number of times I actually have to look up a player, manager or chairman in the top three divisions of English football while writing for LFW each season on the fingers of one hand. It spoke, for me, volumes about the quiet, competent, safe job the previous boardroom set up at Ewood Park was doing. Blackburn were losing money but not much, they had debt but it wasn’t outlandish compared to others, they lacked potential to move further forwards than the middle of the Premiership but that applies to all but six teams in the country at the moment. They could do with some new investment, but they weren’t gagging for it.
And then the mad chicken farmers turned up. What has happened over the past 14 months at Ewood Park should serve as a warning to every club in the land, and should shame the authorities that let it happen. A fit and proper person test based entirely on how much money somebody has in their bank account when checked is not fit for purpose in this multi-billion pound industry that football has become. The Venky’s should not have been allowed within 100 miles of Blackburn Rovers, and they have almost revelled in proving why since taking over.
First there is the influence of football agent Jerome Anderson to consider. Anderson was recruited by the Blackburn board to help them find a potential buyer for the club and then advised the Venky’s group during the process. Once it was completed the mad Indian chicken farmers quickly fired manager Sam Allardyce amid stories that he was unhappy at being presented with a list of Anderson’s clients to sign that January, rather than players of his own choosing. Anderson says he was requested by Venky’s to “assist” during that transfer window. Allardyce was replaced by Anderson’s client Steve Kean, his first every managerial position at any level of football whatsoever.
Despite Anderson’s client Kean being the manager, several Anderson clients playing for Rovers, and in fact Anderson’s own son Miles signing for the club from Aberdeen despite failing to make the grade in the notoriously awful SPL, or previously at the mighty Leyton Orient, Anderson denies he has any involvement or receives any money from the club. Anderson will also, if pushed, dispute the Pope’s commitment to the Catholic faith.
Financier Ian Battersby took the trouble, as Kean does once a month, to take the 14 hour air and road trip to Pune in India to meet Venky’s chief Anuradha Desai and discuss the club’s state with her for an article in the Independent. Since the takeover was completed Blackburn have lost their managing director, finance director, chairman and several other board members besides and is run as one of Venky’s’ many satellite companies from Pune with Kean reporting into them there.
Battersby says that the company had been advised (presumably by Anderson) that once the £23m down payment for the club and it debt had been made it would take, at most, £5m a season to keep the venture ticking over. In the meantime it would be a tremendous marketing tool for their brand in Europe. Quite where the mentalists’ claims of David Beckham and Ronaldinho turning up fitted into this one can only guess at but the reality has been stark for them. The club’s bank, Premiership sponsor Barclays, agreed that certain payments should be made at certain times post takeover and none of these have been forthcoming. As a consequence the club has seen its overdraft reduced and repayments demanded. They signed our own Bradley Orr to replace Michel Salgado because further appearances would have triggered a contract renewal and the team is being slowly robbed of its best players. Bizarrely they chose to keep Chris Samba in January despite high demand for his services elsewhere, he has since responded by refusing to train or play.
It’s a disaster zone. A team being asset stripped, managed by a trumped up coach with little idea of what he’s doing reporting into a clueless board advised by an agent who scandalously has his finger in every single pie at the club. It’s your absolute worst nightmare, and it’s all taking place in the full glare of the league and media who are choosing instead to vilify Blackburn fans for protesting about it because “it’s not fair to Steve Kean” and is “creating a negative atmosphere.”
British football, 2012.
Thanks to Mikey Delap, editor of Vital Blackburn and The Wild Blackburn Rover Blog, took time out to go through the current situation at his club with LoftforWords.
The last 12 months at Blackburn seems like every football fan's worst nightmare. Tell us about things off the pitch and the current situation to begin with.
Nightmare is certainly an accurate word to be using for the last year or so. It's been a circus at Rovers and everyone seems to have been having fun except the fans. The club is financially being run into the ground by owners Venky’s who have bought the club, made a few assurances over financial well being and "wanting the best for the club" before proceeding to do basically the total opposite of what was promised. They've hired a manager who is a great coach but a poor leader of men, ran up the club's credit facilities to a point where recovery is going to be slow and arduous and ignored pleas from all corners to explain their actions. Think of them as one of those distant relatives that you don't like who are impossible to get in touch with and do things just to annoy you.
And on the pitch? How is the team going? How is Steve Kean going (or not going as the case seems to be)? Despite it all you seem to be in with a chance of staying up.
Well up until last weekend (I've already erased Arsenal away from my mind for my own sanity) the team's form seemed to be improving with a good set of results and spirited showings. The Rovers starting X1 are a young bunch who have taken time to gel, but they are talented players who just seem to lack direction - direction which the manager seems to be unable to give them. We're 19th and based on the season as a whole that position in the table doesn't lie. If you are going to split odds I'd say it is 60/40 that we'll go down. If we are going to stay up it will be close but we can do it.
There seems to be an agenda to shift some blame onto the supporters for protesting. The atmosphere at recent home games certainly doesn't seem to be good. What's the mood like among the supporters?
Very volatile. The shift of blame onto the supporters for the performances is pretty underhanded and an easy scapegoat for the club hierarchy to use. The supporters weren't protesting between January - August and we were just as bad then? Coincidence? The atmosphere at recent games such as Stoke and Newcastle at home has been good but prior to that it has been pretty toxic with the pinnacle so far being Bolton before Christmas where it all came to a head. I am sure in an indirect way it hasn't helped the players but the focus has to be on how badly the club is being run and the selling of good players with mediocre replacements being bought in instead. The supporters are upset and in my eyes rightly so.
Where do you see Blackburn going? How is this all going to end? Best and worst case scenarios.
Worst Case - Venky’s continue their current path by racking up club debt/losses, we get relegated, we have to restructure, Venky's then sell up leaving a big hole in the club's financial infrastructure and the future of the club as a whole is put at risk.
Best Case - Venky’s start actually investing (as you know, they promised they would do), the club gets a proper chairperson based in England and the manager is replaced with someone of the correct standard, we survive, go onto maintain a middling standard in the Premier League and Rovers becomes a well run yet self sufficient operation. Either that or Venky's sell up and give the club to someone who gives a damn... That would be even better.
This season, is relegation inevitable? Do you think you can get out of it?
No relegation is not inevitable. It's looking more likely as each week passes but until the fat lady sings nothing's certain, as football fans we've seen stranger things happen. Yes I do believe we can get out of it. There are basically six team that can bite the bullet this season and we're one of them.
What do you make of the Bradley Orr signing? It seemed an odd one to us, despite his decent service at QPR.
His signing is a bit baffling in that he doesn't seemed to have thrived anywhere in particular and the mere fact he wasn't exactly holding his own at QPR, a club with a similar standing to ourselves, hardly fills the fans with excitement. He was cheap though and we did need cover at right back so it did at least make sense on one level.
Who are the star men and weak links in the Rovers team?
Chris Samba does seem like a "star man" most of the time but at the moment I couldn't say with any great certainty when he'll next play so I'd have to miss him off. Elsewhere look for the likes of Junior Hoilett, who is super quick and able to beat his man as the springboard of the side. Martin Olsson is a cracking player on his day and Steve N'Zonzi although not everyone's cup of tea keeps things ticking over nicely in the midfield. Oh and Yakubu who for a struggling side has bagged 12 goals so far this season. Which in every single sense of the word is impressive.
When you look at the situation from Steve Kean’s point of view it’s actually remarkably simple. He retired from playing in the mid 1990s and has spent the following 16 years coaching academies and first teams at Reading, Fulham, Real Sociedad, and Coventry City – mostly following Chris Coleman around as you can probably glean from that list of clubs. He’s never once threatened to land a number one position anywhere, so having been offered one at a stable Premiership club with apparently ambitious new owners he was hardly going to say no was he?
Having got the job, and made something of a pig’s ear of it (nine wins from 45 games played so far), he probably knows now that once he’s out of Ewood Park he’s probably out of management for good. Sure somebody somewhere will give him a coaching role, and by all accounts he’s a very good coach indeed, but it would be a brave chairman to give Kean another number one role after the debacle he’s currently overseeing in Lancashire. This may go some way to explaining the frequent trips to India to meet/brown nose the club’s owners who continue to give him their unwavering, and at times unfathomable, backing.
Kean is a student of the game in the David Moyes mould – they are both from Glasgow, they both started at Celtic, they both had fairly limited playing careers and in Kean’s case he actually played the majority of his football in Portugal with Academica Coimbra before retiring early after a nasty leg break. But while Moyes cut his managerial teeth in lower divisions Kean spent his time assisting and coaching and has now been handed a job that is patently beyond his means.
For more than ten years now Kean has gone home every evening and recorded the precise details of his day in football in a journal. He has kept records of every training session, every match, every day in his coaching career meticulously. To be honest this only adds further weight to the idea that Kean actually might be a bit mad.
His record at Blackburn is appalling – nine wins in 45 games and an average of less than a point a game is approaching Phil Brown territory. The protests against him reached a crescendo when fellow strugglers and local rivals Bolton turned up for a live Sky game before Christmas and won 2-1. Pundits, managers and uniosn rushed to condemn the abuse of Kean but, at the end of the day, what are supporters meant to do? This is their club they can see being destroyed – they’ll be there long after Kean and all his sympathisers have gone.
In the face of all of this Kean continues to stand with a vacant smile across his face and produce some numbers of his own. The 250 fans that marched prior to their home game with Arsenal represented 1% of the attendance, he pointed out afterwards, and therefore by default 99% of the Blackburn fans are backing him. Hmmmmm. After a home defeat by Everton in August, a game where Rovers missed two penalties before conceding a crucial one of their own in injury time, he said that Rovers had managed 21 attempts on goal and 60 “penalty box entries”. After a 4-0 home defeat by Man City he focussed his post match press conference on the 55 minutes Rovers had gone without conceding a goal. Hmmmmmm.
Oh and just to keep up with the LFW technique of throwing a bit of shit at the wall every so often – he’s currently serving an 18 months drink driving ban after failing to convince Macclesfield Magistrates Court that his drink was spiked.
And despite it all Blackburn are still in there with a puncher’s chance, as a remarkable 3-2 win at Manchester United at Christmas showed. The players do appear to be playing for Kean and while they have Yakubu (12 goals in a struggling team not to be sniffed at) lumbering around up front they always have that hope of catching teams off guard.
I saw the game with Man Utd, a defeat at Sunderland and the abomination against Bolton inbetween, as well as several games earlier in the season and they’re actually not that bad, although God knows how they’re not that bad all things considered. Their biggest problem recently has been the back four which has suffered badly through injuries and departures.
Goel Givet is injured, Michel Salgado has a contract situation, Scott Dann ruptured hi testicle (sorry), Chris Samba is refusing to play or train, Ryan Nelson has been released to join Spurs – it’s not a recipe for defensive success. When I saw them against Bolton only Samba was in his correct position, with youth team full back Grant Hanley pressed into action at centre back and winger Mortem Gamst Pedersen at left full back. No real surprise that they struggled with even the basics of the defensive side of the game that night, looking constantly vulnerable at corners and general set pieces.
Yakubu is the main reason they stand any chance of surviving. His goals have kept them in the fight. He just has a knack of finding space and staying cool when the ball arrives but during a second half rally against Bolton Gary Cahill and co played some dumb football against him. He loves to receive the ball with his back to goal in and around the area and Bolton enjoyed great success in the first half by placing a man in front of him and one behind. In the second half they seemed to abandon that somewhat and Yakubu duly turned Cahill and scored when the Bolton man was isolated and too tight to him.
Junior Hoilett has been another star in an otherwise dark Blackburn sky, several times in the Bolton game he was made to look bad when his passes across field drifted out for throw ins but in my opinion many of them were good passes and showed up the poor quality of the players he has been left to pass to who just weren’t on the same advanced wavelength.
My first instinct is to say that QPR need a fast start and early goals because against Bolton and on other occasions this season an abomination in the first half has been followed by big improvements after the break. That said when Rovers do get in front early on, as they did against Sunderland when I watched them, Kean’s sole tactic is to spend the entire second half camped on their own 18 yard line and hoping for the best. So whoever takes the lead, Blackburn give you ample opportunity to win. It’s vital QPR take that chance on Saturday.
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