Sunday’s 1:30 kick off was a cakewalk for Chelsea. Daniel Sturridge scored within 60 seconds to give Chelsea the lead against QPR, and they were 4-0 up after just 25 minutes. They added two more goals in the second half, before Djibril Cisse scored a late consolation. While it was a great end to the week for Chelsea, keeping their hopes of a top 4 finish alive, it was a bad one for QPR. As they fight to stay in the Premier League, every point is vital, and the impact a 6-1 defeat has on their goal difference can also make a difference.
With two games remaining, QPR have 34 points, and sit in 17th place, ahead of Bolton on goal difference. But Bolton have a game in hand, and a win in that game would drop QPR back into the relegation zone. While it was a bad day for QPR, Blackburn Rovers had an even worse day across London. At White Hart Lane, they lost 2-0 to Tottenham, a result that leaves them in 19th place with 31 points. With 31 points, they are three behind QPR and Bolton, and six behind Wigan and Aston Villa.
That leaves Blackburn in a desperate position and almost certainly having to win their final two league games to have any chance of staying in the Premier League. Their next game is at home to Wigan next Monday, and anything other than a win could see them relegated to the Championship. Even winning that game would still leave them with a mountain to climb, as they end their season with a trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea. While losing away to Spurs is hardly a disgrace, the manner of their performance certainly was.
Blackburn somehow managed to go the whole 90 minutes without having a single effort on goal. They didn’t just fail to hit the target, they failed to even try. Manager Steve Kean has taken plenty of stick this season, some of it unfair, but his tactics at White Hart Lane were baffling, and must surely have been infuriating for Blackburn fans. Blackburn started the game with a 5-3-1-1 formation, with Yakubu the lone striker up front, but he barely had a touch. After Blackburn went 1-0 down, nothing changed, even into the second half, and Kean’s first substitution was to replace Yakubu with Anthony Modeste, keeping his formation the same. There was no reaction at all from Kean to the changing circumstances of the game, and Blackburn went down timidly.
Kean’s post-match reaction will hardly have done anything to improve the temper of Blackburn fans. He claimed the game plan had been to frustrate Spurs, and to play with a front two that could get up the sides of Spurs centrebacks. That’s fine, and playing for a draw in Blackburn’s position is not a surprise, but that game plan was clearly not working from the first minute, and he made no attempt to change things.
Kean continued by saying that the club could save themselves with two massive performances against Wigan at Ewood Park and then away to Chelsea, but it’s nothing more than fantasy on his part if he believes Blackburn can pick up six points while two teams from Bolton, QPR, Wigan and Aston Villa fail to finish the season with more than 37 points, the maximum Blackburn can achieve.
While no-one expected Blackburn to go to White Hart Lane and play attacking, fluid football, their failure to test Brad Friedel at any point was a pitiful and unforgiveable performance, and one that will almost certainly end their 11 year run in the Premier League. It’s a performance that should also mark the end of Kean’s wretched spell as Blackburn manager, as his dreadful record (17 wins in 64 league games) hardly suggests he is capable of getting Blackburn promoted next season.
Any points at White Hart Lane would have kept Blackburn in with a chance of survival, but a tepid, unambitious display has almost certainly doomed them. It should doom Steve Kean too.
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Finally, non-rovers fans realising how absolutely tactically-backward Kean is.
Difference is, you saw this one game, we’ve seen them all, HE DOES THIS ON A REGULAR BASIS, we’ve had a total of about 5 substitutes in the last 10 games because of utter cluelessness. When players have the ball in defence, they get scared and have no idea what to do with it because Kean isn’t teaching them on the training field.
Kean has had us playing with 1 man upfront all season long even when were 2-0 down at home, still no second striker, the best he ever does is replace Yak at 80 mins.
It’s obviously hard to know how good/bad Kean is tactically when you don’t see many of Blackburn’s games live. Goes without saying that he’s not a tactical genius given the league position, but the way Blackburn played on Sunday is unforgiveable. The difference a point in that game would have made to your chances of staying up is massive, for Brad Friedel to have literally nothing to do for 90 minutes should mean that Kean is done at the end of the season.
Bet anyone any amount of money, Kean will still be in charge this time next year!!!
The thing I’ve never forgotten, even though it seems the world of football punditry has, is the manner in which Kean was appointed.
I’m sure every Blackburn fan knows that the only reason he’s even there is because the Venky’s did business with him, and the position was a sort of backhander? I don’t know the ins and outs but when you sack a manager like Sam Allardyce and put that pug faced Scottish tw@t in charge, you know for a fact there’s something not right. I mean the guy hasn’t even managed before has he?
Perhaps Blackburn fans can tell me, but has he even played at any appreciable level?
I feel for the supporters of Blackburn Rovers, especially as we (QPR) have also had the old promise of lots of money and success, only for our previous owners to show themselves up for what they truly are. We’re lucky now to have a man like Fernandes take over, but for Blackburn…those Venky’s are just a damnation..and Steve Kean along with them.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he included his Football Manager 2009 statistics as proof of his football knowledge, if he was ever actually interviewed.