With the news that Paul Lambert is quitting Blackburn Rovers at the end of the season, where does this leave the club and its owners, the Venky’s?
Draining the lifeblood from Rovers
Our Indian owners’ tenure at the club has created one disaster after another. Their first action was to sack Sam Allardyce and replace him with the hated Steve Kean. Further managerial appointments led to even more failures. Now their latest one has created the unusual situation where a manager has sacked the football club.
Losses at Rovers have put the club in over £100M of debt. Venky’s have absorbed these debts, but for how long will they keep bailing out the club? Their shares in India have taken a pounding and the last thing they need is to keep pumping money into a loss-making football club halfway across the world.
Yet Venky’s have shown they have no interest in football. So what is the point of them owning Blackburn Rovers? Very few people in India care whether Rovers win the Premier League or go to the wall. Sadly the way things are going at the club, the latter option is becoming more than just a possibility.
Nobody is really sure why Paul Lambert decided to quit Rovers, apart from the man himself and Venky’s. Our owners’ indecision is thought to be one of the main reasons. This may be coupled with what Lambert experienced during his tenure at Aston Villa and the probability of a similar outcome waiting round the corner at Blackburn Rovers.
There also remains the question as to what Venky’s hope to achieve from destroying Blackburn Rovers. Fortunately for them, our club is just a small component of their business empire. But the way we are haemorrhaging money to the tune of several millions a year, even Venky’s, with their billions, have to realise this situation can’t go on forever. Rovers are not a bottomless pit and sooner or later the tap has got to be turned off.
Unfortunately for Rovers, we seem to be dealing with a bunch of spoilt rich kids who haven’t invested their inherited wealth very wisely in our football club. This is confounded by a culture where being seen not to lose face means everything – regardless of what stupid decisions have been made in the past. Sadly for the Venky’s, they don’t appear to have heard of the old British saying: ‘When you’re in a hole – stop digging’.
