After you’ve read that rather ambiguous headline, let me explain. I don’t mean a state-of-the-art stadium, packed to the rafters every week. I don’t mean a passion and identity that is unique to a region. I don’t even mean you’re likely to see a few goals due to some hapless defending.
What I do mean, and I say this with a heavy heart as a Blackburn fan for 20 years, is that Rovers have become the Premier League’s laughing stock. The club everyone looks at before sighing in relief that your club isn’t run by such an incompetent trio of half-wits. Stick to chicken farming, boys. Mingling with Billionaire Club clearly ain’t your cup of tea (or bucket of chicken).
Let’s outline a brief history of Blackburn Rovers Football Club since the Rao family took over. When the descent from respected Premier League club, with four top half finishes in the last five years, turned into a soap opera barely more believable than the number of gay trannies who have recently turned up on Corrie’s doorstep.
Having bought the club for an alleged 46m, they watched their first home game against Aston Villa, a comfortable 2-0 win for Rovers. So far so good for Big Sam, who had felt the sting in the tail new owners can bring, ironically at St. James’ Park. But what probably started the slide for Allardyce was the side’s spineless showing at Old Trafford at the end of November. Blackburn were thrashed 7-1 in a game they never tried to win.
It might seem reasonable to cite this when you are replacing a manager, but take a look at Blackburn the year before under Allardyce. Sam knows his stuff and the likelihood of Blackburn getting anything from the Big Four is next to zilch. He concentrated on the clubs around Rovers in the league with exceptional results; in the 2009/10 season, Blackburn did not lose a match against a side in the bottom half of the league.
But with Sam out the door just a few weeks after the Old Trafford surrender, big talk came from the owners about a big name coach. Just like talk came in January about big name players. Ronaldinho, Beckham and van Nistelrooy were all mentioned. Instead, a crocked Santa Cruz returned and Jermaine Jones, who admittedly improved rapidly in the final quarter of the season.
Unsurprisingly, the big name coach did not arrive either. Names like Martin O’Neill and Marin Jol were bandied about, but in the end the club hired on the cheap, promoting Steve Kean from within. The Scot could not believe his luck while the fans could not believe the club’s cheek.
Kean lacks experience, but then so does every manager starting out; you take a gamble. Rovers previously took a gamble on Hughes which paid rich dividends. They took a gamble on Ince which wasn’t so successful. But at least the self-styled Guv’nor knew the language of football and how to talk to players.
Kean is as clueless and naive as they come, highlighted by a plethora of errors in his short reign, none more criminal than the shipping out of El Hadji Diouf. Ther Senegalese international will never be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but his experience, never-say-die attitude and unwillingness to throw in the towel was what Blackburn desperately missed in the four months they went from a mid-table side to scraping survival on the final day of the season.
Now we are in the summer transfer window, with the most promising player at the club, Phil Jones, gone and Samba seemingly on his way to Spurs. Any sign on replacements? Course not. Again, names are spilled to the press in Kean’s clumsy attempt to appease baying supporters who want the whole sorry mess swept under the carpet.
I’ve reluctantly accepted that’s not going to be the case;. these jokers are here to stay. It’s going to be nine months of misery.
