Paul Waine wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:19 am
Article in today Times re the 10 year anniversary:
Two relegations, seven managers but a flicker of hope.
I'll post later, when I've got time.
It's worth thinking about in terms of situation with the Clarets prospective new investors.
UTC
Two relegations, seven managers but a flicker of hope: ten years of Venky’s at Blackburn Rovers
Gregor Robertson finds renewed hope at Ewood Park after a crazy decade and one bizarre chicken protest
Wednesday November 18 2020, 5.00pm, The Times
This week marks ten years since Venkateshwara Hatcheries, known as Venky’s, the £2 billion Indian poultry-processing conglomerate, took ownership of Blackburn Rovers in what has become one of English football’s most painful and perplexing tales. Two relegations, one promotion, seven permanent managers, debts approaching £150 million, and a fractured relationship with fans followed — and yet, at no point have Venky’s shown the slightest inclination to sell up or cut their losses. The Rao family’s continued support, almost eight years since their last visit to Ewood Park, is an enduring mystery. But, as shafts of light break through the storm, it is worth asking: could this ever be a tale of redemption?
Summing up the past decade is no mean feat but Ian Herbert, a fan of 50 years, makes a pretty good fist of it. “It’s like they’ve taken over a stately home,” he says of Venky’s, “sacked all the staff that maintained it, burnt it down to the ground, then looked at the smoking ruins, and thought: ‘That was a bit foolish, maybe we better rebuild this.’ Slowly but surely they’ve started to rebuild. But those of us with long memories still say: ‘You’re the idiots who burnt it down in the first place.’”
The tumult began almost from the moment Venky’s completed the purchase from the Jack Walker Trust for £23 million. A once judiciously-run club and former Premier League winner — thanks to the patronage of Walker, a successful local businessman of a bygone era — swiftly became a “basket case”, as Richard Scudamore, the former Premier League chief executive, memorably labelled Rovers.
With no prior interest in sport, save for sponsorship of cricket and tennis competitions in Pune, India, both naivety and incompetence were at play. Jerome Anderson, a football agent, and Kentaro, a Swiss-based marketing and sports rights agency, had been enlisted by the Jack Walker Trust to find a buyer, then subsequently contracted to run Blackburn on Venky’s behalf. Within six months Rovers were under investigation by the FA and Venky’s called in an independent auditor.
By then, Sam Allardyce had already been sacked as manager and replaced by his assistant, Steve Kean — a client of Anderson with no managerial experience. Venky’s, meanwhile, famously tried to lure Ronaldinho, Raúl and David Beckham to the former Lancashire mill town, with designs of boosting their global image, as well-respected directors like John Williams were sidelined and ultimately driven away.
The sight of a live chicken wrapped in Blackburn’s colours released on to the pitch by fans during the 1-0 defeat by Wigan Athletic, which confirmed relegation to the Championship in 2012, was a defining image of those early years. A protest movement grew, supporters lobbied parliament, the FA, Premier League and later the EFL seeking answers, dialogue — but their efforts yielded little in the way of progress and created deep fissures among the fanbase.
The greatest sadness throughout the whole farrago, however, is the thousands of supporters who were driven away and may never return. More than 10,000 have been wiped off the gates at Ewood Park, which had averaged 25,000. Fans like Neil Thornton, a supporter since 1970 and a founding member of the supporters’ trust in 2012, say they will never return while Venky’s remain. With dialogue impossible, Thornton, 55, says: “It was clear to me that my club had been stolen from me. What was happening on the pitch was no longer the Blackburn Rovers I supported. It was the only thing I could do: withdraw my support. Thousands did the same.”
January 2013 — when Jitendra Desai, the husband of the Venky’s chairwoman, Anuradha Desai, was struck in the face by a snowball — was the last time the family made an appearance together at Ewood. Trust was broken but chaos ensued as the likes of the Malaysian TV pundit Shebby Singh, hired as “Global Advisor”, and others with little football experience, ran the club in their absence.
Five different managers took the reins during 2012-13, when the vitriol aimed towards Kean became too much. After Eric Black’s caretaker spell, Henning Berg lasted 57 days then pursuing the club through the High Court for £2.25 million in wages. Michael Appleton lasted 67 days and was sacked by letter, signed by Singh, whom the now-Lincoln City manager admits he had never even met.
Gary Bowyer brought some much-needed stability. Paul Lambert and Owen Coyle lasted only six and eight months respectively. When Tony Mowbray arrived in February 2017, despite an upturn in form, he could not avert relegation to League One. One fan, Duncan Miller, ran as an independent “Venky’s out” candidate for Blackburn in the 2017 general election and gained more votes than the Liberal Democrats.
Yet Rovers’ first season in the third tier for 37 years was restorative. Mowbray visited Pune in the summer of 2017, returned with a new contract, the money to buy Bradley Dack and then, most notably, led the club back to the Championship. “It was cathartic,” Herbert says. “It united the fans. We were visiting grounds we hadn’t visited in donkey’s years. It was an authentic football supporting experience again. And winning games, of course, makes a massive difference.”
Mowbray’s tact and honesty have been pivotal. When asked, he describes the Rao family as “honest” and “humble” which, coming from the highly-respected 56-year-old, perhaps soothes old wounds a little further. “We’re in a position now where there is a degree of stability,” says Scott Sumner, editor of 4,000 Holes, a fanzine running since 1989. “There’s a belief that a play-off challenge is a reasonable ambition. It’s almost at a point where the owners aren’t really thought about. It feels as though they’re letting the people at the club get on with running it.”
So, against that backdrop — a flicker of hope in Mowbray’s free-scoring team, Venky’s continued financial support, even more so after the economic impact of Covid-19, and the recent plight of northwest neighbours Wigan Athletic, Bury and Bolton Wanderers — attitudes have undoubtedly shifted.
Herbert, host of the BRFCS podcast, poses a “thought experiment”: “If you said that new owners came in after we’d been relegated [to League One], and you judged the record of Venky’s from that season forward, I would suggest that they’d been, if not model owners, pretty close,” he explains.
“They could point at their record since then and say: ‘We’ve won promotion first time; we’ve stabilised the management of the club, on and off the field; we’ve continued to invest in the academy, kept it at Category One, the fruits of which are now making their way into the first team; we’ve spent money on Ben Brereton, Adam Armstrong, Sam Gallagher, exciting young prospects whose value should accumulate . . . We’ve done a decent job, haven’t we?’ If it was a different owner, I think you’d have to agree with that.”
But, without communication, or contrition, forgetting the past is too much to expect. If Rovers were to return to the top flight, though, could Venky’s ever be welcomed back to Ewood? “That’s the big question,” Sumner, 36, says. “It seems like they’re in it for the long haul. I suspect that they appreciate they made mistakes in the early days, that there will always be some lingering hostility from some of the fanbase. It would have to be a case of small measures, building bridges.
“But that still feels a long way off yet.”