John Eustace triggered a clause in his contract enabling him to leave the club despite not completing a full season.
He joined our Championship rivals, Derby County, who are fighting for survival, whereas Rovers remain in a play-off position. This seems a very strange situation, but not dissimilar to when Paul Lambert left in 2016 or when Eustace’s predecessor, Jon Dahl Tomasson, left by ‘mutual consent’. After nearly a decade later, Rovers don’t appear to have learned a great deal.
Eustace indicated he wanted to go to a club with better prospects. He also said he wanted to be nearer his family in the Midlands. Rumours are rife of him having wanted to leave Rovers for a while now. This is in contrast to him always going on about togetherness and Rovers being one big happy family.
It would be interesting to know if rumours are true about him putting in for the vacant Preston North End manager’s job, subsequently filled by Paul Heckingbottom. If this was the case, travelling to another club only nine miles away from Blackburn and just as far away from the Midlands, didn’t seem to be a problem for him then.
To his credit, Eustace pulled off a miracle by keeping Rovers in the Championship, thanks to an improbable win on the last day of the season at Champions Leicester City. Momentum from this last gasp victory has carried on into this present campaign. So really we should be grateful to our previous manager for turning Rovers into a better club than when he joined us. Sadly his departure leaves a sour taste in the mouth over the way it panned out.
Unfortunately for Rovers, our absentee Indian owners probably neither know nor care about Eustace’s departure. They have no interest in football and so Rovers are probably just an expensive distraction with a bunch of annoying, ungrateful fans who don’t show them enough respect for keeping the lights and the life support machine on.
Now Rovers have a new head coach, a French/German called Valérien Alexandre Ismaël, who hails from Strasbourg and likes to be called Val. His mother is an Alsatian, not the four-legged kind, but from Alsace in France. His grandad is a German, not sure whether he’s a shepherd, but still a decent pedigree.
As expected, Rovers’ PR people looked to be straight on the job with Ismaël’s introductory rhetoric. All about Rovers’ Premier League title win 30 years ago. This was probably dismissed by most long suffering Rovers fans. They are a lot more cynical these days and take what is fed to them from the club with a pinch of salt.
But it’s a new man and a new start. He deserves a clean slate and his charges are in a much better position than the club his predecessor has defected to. Let’s hope he can keep Rovers in the position he found them.
