On Tuesday night, Blackburn Rovers travelled to Championship team Cardiff City for a Carling Cup quarter final. With Blackburn bottom of the Premier League, chances of an upset win for Cardiff seemed high, and Cardiff did indeed cause an upset, winning 2-0 with goals from Kenny Miller and Anthony Gerrard. After the match, under pressure manager Steve Kean claimed that he had ‘forfeited’ the match, saying “We are in a position where we have forfeited going through in this competition and having the chance to reach a cup final.” He went on to say that he’d made five changes with Saturday’s Swansea match in mind, and of course staying in the Premier League is more important to Blackburn that a possible trip to Wembley for the Carling Cup final.
But it’s unlikely that Kean’s comments will wash with Blackburn fans. Their league form has been awful, and their form since Kean replaced Sam Allardyce almost a year ago has been dreadful. Although they saved themselves from relegation with a final day victory over Wolves last season, they are stuck at the bottom of the Premier League after 13 games, with just one win all season (amazingly, it was against Arsenal). But in spite of Blackburn’s abject performance under Kean, it was announced that he’d earned a pay rise last week, although before the announcement he’d claimed he wasn’t willing to discuss a new contract with the club’s Indian owners, because he wanted to concentrate on winning games and get the team up the league (he even told journalists that talk of a new contract showed that the owners “can see what we are building here, and we hope to make others see it too”. I can only assume they had to stifle a few laughs).
Blackburn fans have protested about Steve Kean remaining as manager for almost the entire season, but perhaps they might be better served protesting about their owners, brothers Venky and Balaji Rao. If rumours are to be believed, Kean was given the job after promising the owners that he could get Blackburn into the Premier League’s top 6.
Like so many of the Premier League’s newest owners, the Rao brothers seemed to almost come out of nowhere to buy the club. The FA have supposedly installed a test to ensure that any potential new owner of a club is a ‘fit and proper person’, something that was definitely not the case when Portsmouth seemed to have a new owner every 72 hours a few years ago. It’s hard to see how the Rao brothers convinced the FA that they knew what they were doing. They sacked Allardyce with the club 13th in the league, and despite talk of them attempting to bring Ronaldinho to the club in the January transfer window, they only signed Ruben Rochina from Barcelona B, and Mauro Formica from Newell’s OB in Argentina. Neither made an impact in the final months of last season, although both have broken into the first team this season.
There was money spent in the summer, most notably £6million on Birmingham defender Scott Dann, but it is their backing of Kean that is the most difficult thing to understand. Blackburn are the first club Kean has managed, and they have won just 6 league games since his appointment. But despite the club’s position, there is still time to save themselves. They are just four points from safety and have plenty of games to play against the teams around them.
Blackburn fans are certainly not sold on the new owners and after years of stability under the late Sir Jack Walker, the future of the club is uncertain. Sacking Kean ASAP would be a positive step for the owners, and it needs to happen soon, because Kean is a manager out of his depth.
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