Monday, January 23, 2012

Make Venky's History

The Venky's have been a blight on Blackburn Rovers. Their ownership has been disastrous. There are good people working against all the odds to prevent a total meltdown, some of them as employees of the club, most of them as supporters trying to broker a solution.

When you analyse why they bought a Premier League football club - you have to deduce it was for the promotional possibilities. That seems to have amounted to getting the players to take part in a humiliating chicken commercial, promotional trips to India (where the club captain came over all Iraqi Minister of Information) and a few hoardings around Ewood Park. Even they have failed.

All the protests against Steve Kean have achieved have been to get the football establishment rallying round him and our fans portrayed as oafs. The element of the protests against Venky's have either been ignored, dismissed as ungrateful or just plain racist. So far.

The thing with people who crave good PR is that they can't deal with bad PR. A few corporate fans at Wigan told Venkatesh and Balaji the facts of life and that was the last we saw of his pony tail and bling.

Jerome Anderson is distancing himself from them. They have no allies in England at all. And now their business judgement is being questioned in their home country by this terrific summary of their comedy ownership in the Economic Times of India.

Slowly the message is starting to get through.

Momentum is slowly building too for Rovers fans here to grasp the nettle and see them off. Of course, they have to want to sell, but the first thing is making them not want to own any longer.

Beyond that the options are emerging. Wayne Wild, a forthright and willing businessman and sponsor of the Darwen End, has articulated his view, here. Ian Battersby has spoken to the Independent, here, about what the Venky's need to do as a matter of some urgency. And then there's a detailed business plan here, prepared by a Swedish based Rovers fan to establish a mutual trust. All of them amount to the same thing I've been saying here for a while - leave this club. Give it back. Go away. You have wasted money, don't waste any more.

These are all positive steps forward to ridding our football clubs of these owners. Make Venky's history.

1 comment:

Daniel Louis Grabko said...

Great summary, Mike!

It is indeed time for Venkys to return this club to those who love it!

Thanks for linking to the Blackburn Football Charitable Fund Blog! daniellouisgrabko.wordpress.com