Category: Venky’s

Due to lack of accommodation in the Blackburn area, Rovers’ Indian owners, the Venky’s, want to install Japanese-style sleeping pods inside Ewood Park.

Venky’s wanted somewhere near Ewood Park to build a hotel.  Unfortunately there seemed to be nowhere available.  A member of staff suggested they use Ewood Park itself.  Parts of the football ground have space available and some bright spark came up with an idea to install Japanese-style sleeping pods.

We know them as pods in this country, but they are not as widely used as they are in Asia where they are known as sleeping capsules.  Based on Japan’s famous capsule hotels from the 1970s, they were originally created as accommodation for well-oiled businessmen looking for a few hours to spend the night after they missed their last train home.  Capsule hotels have steadily become a global trend.  This idea came to a member of staff while they were visiting their local launderette.

One of many annoying problems with today’s football is the frequency with which match kick-off times keep changing.  This can be particularly difficult for fans who travel from out of town.  It is even worse when games are postponed at the last minute.  Some fans can also be caught out due to a lack of availability of public transport during midweek matches.  This is especially the case if a match goes to extra time or penalties.  It has led to some fans being marooned in Blackburn when matches finish.  So having cheap accommodation available in the vicinity of Ewood Park would be very helpful.

Installing sleeping pods would be a fraction of the cost of buying a suitable premises or building a new hotel.  A spin off would mean greater use of Blues Bar and extra sales for our club’s in-house catering facilities.  Not only Rovers fans would enjoy this benefit, but so could a lot of away fans too.  Many of them comment on how cheap beer and food costs in Blackburn and they often vote away days at Rovers as their favourite game of the season.  With so many clubs facing financial problems, one of our main objects must be to not only attract football fans to Ewood Park, but to keep them here for as long as possible and part them with their money.  Perhaps an offer of a sleeping pod might just be that little bit of an inducement to persuade them to spend even more of their cash at Ewood Park.

Blackburn Rovers owners, the Venky’s, have decided to use their club as a way of promoting peace between India and Pakistan.

These two South Asian nations have been at loggerheads for various reasons over many years since they were formed in the mid-20^th century.  Tensions between them still remain to this day.  To make matters worse, both countries possess nuclear weapons.  So any means of improving relations in the subcontinent is very welcome.

Some of the greatest inventions and discoveries have occurred thanks to accidents.  And this is what may have happened in an office in Venky’s Personnel Department in Pune.  A member of staff, with long fingernails, made a typing error whilst writing a memo about some routine issue relating to Blackburn Rovers.  On a computer keyboard, the letter ‘h’ is just above the letter ‘b’.  So while typing Blackburn Rovers’ motto:  Arte Et Labore, our typist inadvertently typed Arte Et Lahore.

This error was pointed out to one of the Venky siblings, but far from being angry about this spelling mistake, they saw it as divine inspiration.  They also saw a good business opportunity for their chicken meals.  Due to religious reasons, India has recently restricted sales of beef products, whereas Pakistan does not encourage consumption of pork.  But both countries encourage the eating of poultry products.  Venky’s is already reaping benefits of this in India and their chicken sales have increased rapidly.  Now they want to target their neighbours across the border in Pakistan.

Lahore is one of Pakistan’s largest cities, capital of Punjab province and located 15 miles from the Indian border.  Over 11 million people live there, making it larger than London.  Football already has a foothold and is very popular, so Rovers playing a match in the city would probably generate a lot of interest.  It would also be a good way of advertising a certain brand of chicken product.

This thought went through the Venky’s minds and plans are now afoot to bring Rovers over to the subcontinent again.  They already have a promo video showing players eating their chicken drumsticks.  Now it can be shown to a wider audience, hopefully receiving less ridicule than when it was released in Britain.

As for their office typist, a certain Colonel Oliver North’s former secretary, Miss Fawn Hall, may want to hire them to help locate those alleged millions of dollars which went into the wrong Swiss bank account due to Miss Hall’s long fingernails hitting some wrong keys.  Hopefully this typist can hit a few extra zeros for Blackburn Rovers.

Blackburn Rovers Indian owners, the Venky’s, are planning lavish celebrations in 2020 for the 10 year anniversary of their acquisition of our football club.

Negotiations are taking place between Venky’s and Blackburn with Darwen Council over plans to relocate Corporation Park’s famous Sliding Stone to Ewood Park.  Once installed, it will be known as the ‘Pearl of Pune’.

This stone originated in Scotland, taking 10,000 years to arrive in Lancashire by glacier.  It was taken from the River Ribble at Samlesbury and has resided in Corporation Park since 1882 – the year Rovers reached their first FA Cup Final.

This idea of using the Sliding Stone came on a rare Venky’s visit to Blackburn.  Rumour has it Mrs. Desai was jogging in Corporation Park.  She was said to be running along the Broad Walk, when one of her bodyguards was waiting for her to catch up and parked himself on the Sliding Stone.  Much to his embarrassment, he promptly slid off and landed on his backside.  In between peals of laughter, Mrs. Desai said she must have this stone.

The stone itself looks like half an egg.  This is what may also have caught the Venky matriarch’s attention.  What more appropriate symbol could our club’s owners choose as a lasting monument to their tenure at Blackburn Rovers?  Plans are now afoot to complete the other half of the egg shape with a blue semi-cylindrical casting made from metal and glass, giving it a Fabergé style appearance.  It would then be put on display outside Ewood Park alongside the statue of Uncle Jack.

Possible opposition to the stone’s removal from Corporation Park may arise, along with arguments of further ‘Venkyfication’.  But Venky’s believe they can appease the people of Blackburn by spending money on more cultural attractions in the town, including street art and sculptures, helping turn Blackburn into a cultural Bhopal.  They have already given a donation to Blackburn Cathedral on a previous visit and may have offered to double-glaze its stained glass windows and concrete the grassy area surrounding this ecclesiastical building.

In donating a blue and white egg to Blackburn Rovers, Venky’s are making a statement which signifies a new beginning, how life is just below the surface and nourishment will be provided to their ‘baby’.  A new appropriate Latin motto, alongside our existing Arte Et Labore will also be associated with the Pearl of Pune.  This will be ‘Ad Quod Operantur Ex Ovo’ (Go to work on an egg).

Blackburn Rovers’ Indian owners are making news again for all the wrong reasons.  They have faced criticism for selling antibiotics which boost animal growth.  Now rumours are flying round about their alleged human use in trying to build up weight gain in the football club’s leaky defence.

Many Rovers fans believe their team’s back four and goalkeeper do seem rather lightweight.  They have conceded nearly a goal a game so far this season and adding a bit of bulk could be an answer to this problem.  Sadly for Rovers, Venky’s track record of mixing its chicken products with its footballers has definitely not paid off so far.  Their infamous advert showing players in the dressing room, battling for chicken drumsticks, was titled ‘Good For You’.  It received derision not only from rival fans, but from Rovers supporters too.

Unfortunately history would also judge this advert – and Venky’s inept ownership – as being anything but good for Blackburn Rovers.  We are over £100M in debt and languish in English football’s third tier.  The last thing we need is our players being accused of doping.  We already know who the dopes are at Rovers and they live in India.

Criticism of Venky’s and other pharmaceutical companies mainly relates to possible long-term damage from feeding chickens Colistin as a weight gainer.  It could make bacteria build up resistance to this antibiotic.  Therefore disease and superbugs could enter the food chain through chickens and their surroundings and become a potential threat to humans and other animals.

One of the Venky brothers may already have been voluntarily testing their weight gaining promoters over many years.  His physique would indicate great success at gaining bulk.  But when asked about any adverse effects to himself, or his food tasters, no comments were forthcoming from the company.

Although not illegal in India, many animal health and welfare organisations want this practice of adding antibiotics to chicken feed banned.  England’s Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies has called for a worldwide ban on Colistin and other antibiotics as growth promoters.

Perhaps the FA could consider not only banning doping amongst footballers, but also amongst club owners too.  Unfortunately for Blackburn Rovers fans, the FA seems to be as lightweight in its actions as our leaky defence.  Venky’s have become our club’s own resistant superbugs and they are proving extremely difficult to eradicate.

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm:  Shakespeare – Hamlet

Many Blackburn Rovers fans have commented on how bad the Ewood Park playing surface has become over the last few seasons.

The Worms That Turned

Everything seemed to be fine with Ewood’s football pitch until Indian owners, the Venky’s, took control of our club in 2010.  Unfortunately this opened up a whole new can of worms and is exactly what the problem was related to.  One of their business ideas was to supply Britain’s anglers with a super earthworm imported from India.  These creatures are said to be not only tasty to course fish, but are energetic in their reproductive activity and burrowing prowess.  Their latter aspect seemed ideal for killing two birds with one stone and was seen as an answer to drainage problems affecting Blackburn Rovers’ football pitch.  So thousands of these wriggly creatures were given a new home under Ewood’s hallowed turf.

Unfortunately for the Venky’s, nobody told them about one of Ewood Park’s more unusual customs – where deceased fans asked for their ashes to be sprinkled upon the pitch.  Apparently funeral ash not only contains residue of human remains, but also wood from the dearly departed’s coffin.  This has caused havoc to those earthworms living under the pitch due to raising alkaline levels in the soil and thereby creating a caustic environment for our little tenants.  So it seems Venky’s have made yet another grave mistake.

While wood ash can indeed be used as a soil additive and a compost ingredient – both very much in moderation – it is actually a pretty caustic alkaline (i.e. high pH) material, containing potassium hydroxide (KOH) – sometimes referred to as ‘lye’ (although this term generally refers to sodium hydroxide).  KOH is a chemical that will essentially dissolve living tissue.  Obviously, wood ash isn’t pure potassium hydroxide – but still, you certainly don’t want your worms exposed to this chemical at all.  Many of them will have tried to burrow their way to the River Darwen to escape this caustic soil.

Blackburn Rovers stopped funeral ash being sprinkled on their football pitch some years ago, but any fan wishing to have their ashes interred at our club can contact the chaplain and arrange for them to be sprinkled upon Rovers’ remembrance garden.  But too much damage has already been done to Venky’s angling scheme and their earthworms.  It rendered them unable to provide their original function.  So it seems another of their business plans has gone up in smoke.  Rovers fans always knew Venky’s would lose the plot.  Let’s hope this is the final nail in their coffin and one day their involvement in our club will also die a death.

What could be better on a September Saturday night than going to watch a rock concert and drinking real ale?  Even better, it was free entry and in Blackburn’s Charles Napier pub.  But most of all, it was cocking a snook at those hated Venky’s.

Leonard Venkhater

I had a walk down nice and early around 6.00pm.  The usual Saturday afternoon punters were still in, but one or two Rovers fans were starting to appear on the scene.  To my surprise, my mate Parky turned up with Tonia, his girlfriend.  And my other half, Sylvia, turned up later in the evening.

We went upstairs to the Napier’s concert room and watched the first group kick off this evening’s entertainment.  They were a young group called Static and they were very good.  Unfortunately for me, the Napier’s upstairs bar didn’t have real ale piped up.  So it meant me having to go back downstairs each time I fancied a Trooper or their Cumbrian Ale on sale this evening.

A poet from Chorley followed the first rock group.  Unfortunately tonight’s organisers thought it was me who was their next act and asked me when I was ready for getting up on stage.  I showed them this poor bard, who was quietly waiting, and he got on with his performance.  A punk group from Blackpool – called Litterbug – was next.  They knew all about what Rovers fans were going through and wore Anti-Oyston teeshirts highlighting their own struggle against bad owners.

And then we had Leonard Venkhater.  He put in one of his legendary performances.  During an intermission, I had the pleasure of sitting down and having a pint and a good chat with Leonard.  I also bumped into MG Pensioner.  Both were unstinting in their passion to continue our fight to rid Rovers of this Venky’s scourge.

Sadly I didn’t get to see all the acts at tonight’s concert due to time pressing on.  But those I did see were very good.  Those who criticised this initiative would have been better off leaving their keyboards alone for the night and joining Rovers fans who want to do something and not just moan about it.  Like me, the organizers were very pleased with how things went.  Another event is certainly on the cards in this venue.  It was also nice to see boycotting Rovers fans mingling with those still going – all united together in their hatred of the Venky’s.

There are also similarities between happenings in this venue and our own battle.  Appropriately, the Napier is celebrating winning its own battle exactly a year ago.  Its regulars put up a great fight and managed to get their pub re-opened and back from the dead.  If this Blackburn institution can do it – so can we!

Venky’s have not been seen at Blackburn Rovers games for ages.  Rumours in India say the family is suffering from some kind of bizarre disease, possibly a side-effect following DNA research into poultry production.

The Incredible Feathered Venky

As one of the world’s leading avian research institutions, based in India, Venky’s have always boasted of having technology to even create new species of life.  One unusual challenge they recently received was to bring the extinct Dodo back to life.  They say it could be possible using 3D bio-printing.

Venky’s claim this kind of technology was right up their street.  They believe they could also solve the age old riddle of which came first: the chicken or the egg?  They say they could manage to create an egg before a Dodo in this case.  After all, they are a hatchery and their matriarch – Mrs Desai – is known as ‘Madam’, which means Mother Hen in some Indian dialects.  Her brother Balaji is even more fearsome and is known to rule their company with a rod of iron.  No doubt they can see opportunities for feathering their nests, should these experiments succeed.

Unfortunately for the Venky’s, theory and practice do not always go like a bird in the hand and their chickens may have come home to roost on this occasion.  The Rao family have spent all their life amongst chickens and this may have made them more susceptible than most people to airborne avian infections.  Reports of the Venky’s having facial disfigurements resembling a coating of feathers have been mentioned by sources in India.

There is also a theory Venky’s’ buying Blackburn Rovers may have triggered some kind of ironic scourge upon the Rao family.  In 1965 Blackburn was hit by a polio epidemic.  This led to other football clubs refusing to play Rovers and they started their season later than everybody else.  Their backlog of matches didn’t help and led to them being relegated at the end of the 1965-66 Season.  Perhaps some kind of throwback to those troubled times has come back to haunt Venky’s.  It may become known as the Rovers’ Revenge.

While Venky’s own us, there is more chance of them bringing the Dodo back to life than Blackburn Rovers.  At least we can look forward to a day when Venky’s ownership of our club, like the life of the Dodo, will also become extinct and consigned to the history books.  Nobody will ever want to see their disastrous stewardship of Blackburn Rovers occur again.  They have taken us to the brink of extinction.  But 3D bio-printing won’t be necessary and like the fabled phoenix, Rovers will one day rise again.

What happened to Ronaldinho? by Mick Pickup

Answer by Mick Pickup:

Venky's tried to bring Ronaldhino to Blackburn Rovers.  But no Rovers fan took it seriously.  It was seen as 'Marquee Signing', when we needed players who wanted to put a proper shift in.  The player was well past his best and seen as yet another football mercenary, only wanting to come to the club for one last big payday. 

Venky's even hired the Flash to be his bodyguard.  Sadly he was nowhere near as fast as the Flash and the deal fell through.

What happened to Ronaldinho?