Blackburn Rovers arrive in town on Saturday with a manager clinging to his job, supporter protests growing, and the team sitting second bottom in the Premier League. It’s a big game for QPR, but it’s a massive one for Steve Kean and his side.

Overview

Thanks to the bizarre recent history of our club most QPR fans know a farce when they see one, and they’ll recognise lots of familiar signs when the Blackburn Rovers circus rolls into town this Saturday. Rovers are destined for the Championship at the end of this season unless something changes at Ewood Park, but far from taking action the club’s Indian owners seem to grow more stubborn with each passing week.

Blackburn were the Man City of the day when QPR were last at this level, spending big on players like Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton to become the first (and as yet only) club to beat Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea to a Premiership league title. That money came from Jack Walker, the local steel baron who amassed a £600m person fortune and wanted to see success for his boyhood club so went out and made it happen. Such arrangements have proved problematic in the past at clubs like Rushden and Diamonds and Gretna when the sugar daddy either loses interest or turns his toes up. Luckily Walker planned for such an eventuality and after his death in 2000 the club passed into the care of the Walker Trust.

The days of winning Premiership titles were over before that point and are highly unlikely to ever return, in fact Blackburn have spent time in the second tier since their 1995 triumph, but the Trust kept Rovers ticking over and, mostly, competing at the highest level. With Graeme Souness, Mark Hughes and Sam Allardyce in charge over the course of the last ten years Rovers have been a Premiership mainstay and brought the very best out of players like Benni McCarthy, Roque Santa Cruz and David Bentley. Ewood Park has become a regular shopping destination for the bigger clubs but they have always found a way of maintaining the status quo. It has rarely been particularly exciting – although Souness won them the League Cup in 2002 and Hughes took them to two FA Cup semi finals and Europe through a sixth placed finish – and it wasn’t even that good to watch when Allardyce was in charge but they have been steady, settled and secure for many years.

And then the mad chicken farmers turned up.

Almost a year ago to the day the £23m takeover of the club was completed by Venky’s – a subsidiary of the VH Group which processes chicken meat in India with a sideline in pharmaceutical products. It is no exaggeration to say that they have turned this steady, middle of the road Premiership side into a laughing stock in their 11 months in charge. The Walker Trust had been trying to sell the club for three years, and failed, so there is a feeling it just offloaded it onto the first nutters that came along. And boy are they nuts.

Firstly manager Sam Allardyce was booted out. Now I’m certainly no fan of Allardyce – the supreme arrogance of the man about his own ability in the face of all facts and the way his teams play grates on me as much as the next person. Only Allardyce could be so full of it to believe the only reason he hasn’t been given the biggest jobs in the game is because he doesn’t have an Italian name. And let’s not forget that “Big Sam” was shown by the BBC to be engaging in some monumentally dodgy transfer practices while at Bolton – allegations he promised to sue the corporation for but never quite got round to for some reason.

But like him or not he always does a sound job for clubs like Blackburn – he established Bolton in the Premiership, he rescued Rovers from Paul Ince’s reign and re-established them, and he’ll do the same with West Ham within the next two years as well. Whatever happened, you always got the feeling Allardyce would find a way to keep Blackburn in the Premiership and with football the way it is at the moment what more can they hope for?

The story goes that the Venky’s arranged a big night out in India with free chicken for thousands of guests and Man Utd v Blackburn on the big screen. When Rovers lost 7-1 the embarrassment for the new owners was enormous and the sight of Allardyce laughing and joking with his big mate Alex Ferguson at full time was too much for him to stand. But for a more plausible reason for the sacking of Allardyce two weeks later after a defeat at his former club Bolton we must look to football agent Jerome Anderson.

Now Anderson first came to attention in this country when Thaksin Shinawatra bought Manchester City and appointed Sven Goran Eriksson as manager – a dodgier trio of people to have involved in your football club you’d struggle to find. It was Anderson who advised the appointment of Eriksson in place of Stuart Pearce and then set about engineering the transfer of eight players from all four corners of Europe into the City of Manchester Stadium at massive prices – Rolando Bianchi for £8.8m for example, Valeri Bojinov for £6m another. Who? Exactly.

Of course as we now know Shinawatra had one or two too many human rights and corruption issues hanging over his head in his homeland (which didn’t stop him passing the fit and proper owner test incidentally) and Man City was quickly sold on to Sheikh Mansour who is currently going about the business of building the club in a low key, thoughtful and considered manner. Even before then another lovely chap you wouldn’t want within 600 miles of your football club Kia Joorabchian had muscled in on the territory.

That left Anderson hunting for a new project and unfortunately for Blackburn, they’re it. Anderson advised Venky’s on the takeover – the family had previously expressed no interest in football and admit they know little about it but quickly promised Champions League football and Ronaldinho (among other outlandish nonsense). Allardyce was replaced with Steve Kean, one of Anderson’s clients would you believe, who had never previously managed a club at any senior level anywhere. Allardyce was said to be unhappy that having put a list of potential January transfer targets to his new board he was then handed a different list made up largely of Anderson’s clients. Blackburn deny this, and say things never got that far with Allardyce, but the perfect model for an agent was well and truly in place – he was advising the board, representing the club’s manager, and recommending his own players to the club.

This ridiculous situation that the FA should have been paying very, very close attention to while they were busy hauling us over the coals for the Alejandro Faurlin deal came to a head in the summer when Rovers handed a two year contract to Myles Anderson, a 20-year-old who had previously managed just one solitary substitute appearance for Aberdeen in the Scottish Premier League, which we all know is a hotbed of quality footballers and extremely hard to break into. Just for reference, players who made more appearances for a dreadful Aberdeen side than Myles Anderson last season include Yoann Folly (previously released by Plymouth), Jerel Ifil (signed from Swindon and now on the transfer list at Kettering Town), and Zander Diamond (now with Oldham).

Kean described Anderson as a “late bloomer” blaming his lack of any first team experience anywhere on his extended time in full time education. He was only forced to comment on the transfer at all because Myles is in fact Jerome Anderson’s son. Anderson (junior) is yet to make an appearance, or even make the bench, this season. Late bloomer indeed.

Predictably things aren’t going very well for Rovers. Kean puts such a brave and upbeat face on everything that it’s actually infuriating and growing numbers of Blackburn fans have taken to marching on Ewood Park before home games demanding his departure. A summer transfer spree notably yielded Birmingham centre back Scott Dann, but Rovers looked dreadful when I saw them at Fulham recently and were extremely fortunate not to be heavily beaten in that match.

Venky’s have responded by backing Kean repeatedly, going so far as to describe him as “unsackable”. The manager flies to India once a month for meetings with the club’s owners and made the most of the international break by flying his team there as well for an exhibition match against Pune which was no doubt exactly what they needed as they head into the winter one spot off the bottom of the Premiership.

Interview

Thanks to Mikey Delap, editor of Vital Blackburn and The Wild Blackburn Rover Blog, took time out to go through the current situation at his club with LoftforWords.

Blackburn doesn't seem like a particularly happy camp at the moment. Let's take Steve Kean first - what do you make of him? Would you like to see him sacked? Do you think he will be?

I think the clock is ticking. Kean has always handled himself well when in front of the cameras and at times it is difficult not to admire his thick skin but sadly that is where the praise ends. He has been the Rovers manager for about ten months now and his record speaks for itself. His win percentage is a borderline disgraceful 23% and he presided over a winless run of ten games last season that was the worst Rovers run since the last ice age. Would I like to see him sacked? I don't think at this stage there is an awful lot of alternative, he has had the time despite what Alan Shearer says and the team remains disorganised, unfit and short of defensive steel. So yes, I would like to see a change of manager which for me to say is quite a big thing as I am normally notorious for being lenient with people.

Will he be sacked? Now that is a different story altogether - Venky's seem to back him and even rate him. Only last week one of the Rao brothers from Venky's claimed that Kean was a brilliant manager and that the tide will turn. It's incomprehensible but it's their opinion. Eventually if this bad feeling and protest era continues then the owners will have no choice so I live in hope for my club's well being... Yes he will eventually be relieved of his duties will Kean.

And if Kean goes who do you want to replace him? Who do you think will replace him?

The standard answer is Martin O'Neill. Not necessarily the most inspiring of answers but a clever, wise and experienced head to stabilise things and provide a back bone to the management side of the club that has been noticeably lacking in the last few months. O'Neill is the standard answer because he is the best answer in my book. Other suggestions of McClaren, Holloway and Benitez aren't as appealing in my book.

Now let's talk about your owners. What have you made of the Venky's since they arrived? What is the general feeling about them around the club? Would it be fair to say they don't seem to have the financial clout to back up their grand promises?

Very mixed. Venky's when they first arrived seemed like a well meaning bunch, a little naive sure, but they bought with them a new era of hope after the stale Walker Trust era that provided little to no funds. Since then I wouldn't say the problem hasn't been their lack of financial clout (they aren't rich but they run a healthy ship in their other business interests) but more a case of over promising and under delivering. It's perfectly fine to have ambitions of Champions League qualification and signing big name players but have those plans in private. Bringing out these comments in the deeply cynical world of football is just asking for trouble and has bought on the resentment amongst Rovers fans.

The sale of Phil Jones didn't help but we had no choice, the constant use of the aforementioned Kean as a mouthpiece and a yes man causes a rift and the links to Kentaro and football agent Jerome Anderson will always invite suspicion. Have they done some good things? Sure they have. The players bought into the club like Scott Dann, Yakubu and Simon Vukcevic are really good value for money signings and their gifting of the shirt sponsorship to the charity Princes Trust was a lovely move. But the fact we barely broke even in our summer transfer window incomings and outgoings still leaves a bad taste in the mouth as the Rao family promised healthy spending and they fell a little short.

Are Blackburn fans concerned about the amount of influence agent Jerome Anderson seems to yield over the club, to the point where Rovers are giving a big contract to his own son who couldn't even get in the Aberdeen team?

We were at first but it has become clear over the last few months that the owners have distanced themselves from the advice and the input of Anderson. Before that his presence was worrying and if the Premier League had investigated I would strongly doubt it was above board. Anderson cost very little but his signature is a very strange one as he isn't exactly a world beater and Rovers fans groan whenever his name is mentioned... which thankfully isn't that often. His signing was seen as a dark moment for the club.

What have you made of the season so far?

Disappointing (I am being a doom merchant sorry). Some of the performances have been better than reported with us being unlucky not to get something against the likes of Everton and we were robbed of all our centre backs bar Grant Hanley on the opening day fixture against Wolves but on the whole we have been fairly abject. The inspiring if slightly fortunate win against Arsenal aside we lacked any sort of passion against the Manchester City's, the Newcastle's and the Aston Villa's and we lie in 19th place which is about right on the whole as we have been leakier than a punctured rubber dingy at the back so far. We do have the players to dig us out but it's not been a good start, not by a long shot.

All things considered, what are the hopes, aspirations and ambitions for this season and the medium term?

Stability and safety. The first hope is that we find a manager who the believes will believe in and who will get the best out of a talented bunch of youngsters. Secondly that we achieve some sort of respectability amongst the football back room as we badly need position such as a chairman and a chief executive based at the club on a full time basis and not just shacked up half way across the world. All I ask is that we stay up, that's it. Any more at this stage is just a bonus. For the medium I just want to see the club grow and to stay healthy. I love my football club and how we stand at present is just devastating to me.

Who is the star man, the weak link and the unsung hero? Tell us about an up and coming youngster we may not have heard about.

The star man is Junior Hoilett. He's quick, he'll skin about three players given the right run of the ball and he is the great white hope. I suppose he does also fall into your up and coming youngster category as well so I am going to cheat and use him for two bits of this. The Canadian has had a regular run in the side since January and he has never looked back. He operates on either wing or up front and if he was a little less greedy he has the potential to be a big star.

At the moment the weak link in the side is Michel Salgado. The Real Madrid legend is a cracking influence to have about and he is as tough as an old pair of boots but he is getting on a bit now and I strongly believe I could turn around quicker than him if I had my legs tied together. Seeing him being run ragged sometimes is a tough watch for those who enjoyed his glory days.

The unsung hero is Gael Givet. He is a bit hit and miss when at left back but at centre back he is a lot more colossal than give credit for and than his size would suggest. I call him the power of the beard as his facial hair when in full flow is simply magnificent and he doesn't shirk a tackle and is 100% committed to the cause. Not everyone's cup of tea after his tax scandal thing last year but I'm sold on him.

Manager

When you look at the situation from Steve Kean’s point of view it’s actually remarkably simple. He retired from playing in the mid 1990s and has spent the following 16 years coaching academies and first teams at Reading, Fulham, Real Sociedad, and Coventry City – mostly following Chris Coleman around as you can probably glean from that list of clubs. He’s never once threatened to land a number one position anywhere, so having been offered one at a stable Premiership club with apparently ambitious new owners he was hardly going to say no was he? I mean, he can’t go and assist Chris Coleman in the commentary box for a living can he?

Having got the job, and made something of a pig’s ear of it (six wins from 28 games played so far), he probably knows now that once he’s out of Ewood Park he’s probably out of management for good. Sure somebody somewhere will give him a coaching role, and by all accounts he’s a very good coach indeed, but it would be a brave chairman to give Kean another number one role after the debacle he’s currently overseeing in Lancashire. This may go some way to explaining the frequent trips to India to meet/brown nose the club’s owners who continue to give him their unwavering, and at times unfathomable, backing. It may also explain why, in the midst of the fans’ protest against him, he spent 40 minutes prior to the Arsenal game recording an interview for a podcast on a supporters’ website.

Kean is a student of the game in the David Moyes mould – they are both from Glasgow, they both started at Celtic, they both had fairly limited playing careers and in Kean’s case he actually played the majority of his football in Portugal with Academica Coimbra before retiring early after a nasty leg break. But while Moyes cut his managerial teeth in lower divisions Kean spent his time assisting and coaching and has now been handed a job that is patently beyond his means.

For more than ten years now Kean has gone home every evening and recorded the precise details of his day in football in a journal. He has kept records of every training session, every match, every day in his coaching career meticulously. To be honest this only adds further weight to the idea that Kean actually might be a bit mad.

His record at Blackburn is appalling – six wins in 28 games, three wins in the league this calendar year, a win percentage of barely 20% and an average of less than a point a game is approaching Phil Brown territory. Fans have started marching on Ewood Park before games demanding his removal – around 250 did so before the miraculous win against Arsenal and more are expected next week when they return to home action against Spurs. This is Rovers’ worst start to a season since 1951.

But in the face of all of this Kean continues to stand with a vacant smile across his face and produce some numbers of his own. The 250 fans that marched prior to the Arsenal match represented 1% of the attendance, he pointed out afterwards, and therefore by default 99% of the Blackburn fans are backing him. Hmmmmm. After a home defeat by Everton in August, a game where Rovers missed two penalties before conceding a crucial one of their own in injury time, he said that Rovers had managed 21 attempts on goal and 60 “penalty box entries”. After a 4-0 home defeat by Man City he focussed his post match press conference on the 55 minutes Rovers had gone without conceding a goal. Hmmmmmm.

Oh and just to keep up with the LFW technique of throwing a bit of shit at the wall every so often – he’s currently serving an 18 months drink driving ban after failing to convince Macclesfield Magistrates Court that his drink was spiked.

Scout report

On paper Blackburn’s main strength should be their defence. Paul Robinson was an England regular prior to Joe Hart’s emergence, Scott Dann was much sought after and very expensive, Chris Samba is regularly being linked with Arsenal and others and Michel Salgado played for Real Madrid for ten years and looked so much better than anything else on the pitch (Junior Hoilett apart) when we played a Ewood Park in January it was embarrassing.

And yet despite all of that Rovers leak like a rusty bucket. They have shipped 17 goals already this season (more than two a match) when by this point last term they had only conceded eight. Even in victory against an Arsenal side in turmoil they conceded three and they have let in 12 goals in their last four games (including two to League One strugglers Orient who they did eventually beat). In the match before that they drew 1-1 at Fulham, a creditable result when you look at it in the context of our collapse there last week, but I sat through that game and it was certainly more by luck than judgement that they kept Fulham to one goal.

Their goal that afternoon came from Ruben Rochina, a summer signing from Barcelona of all places where he’d been playing for the B team. As you’d expect he’s technically excellent and possesses a sweet left foot that he punished Fulham with from long range with minimal back lift. QPR will pay heavily for giving him any space around the penalty area to shoot, but his work rate without the ball is questionable.

In attack I’d suggest we’re highly likely to be facing Yakubu who was denied a fine goal at Loftus Road last season during his Leicester loan spell by a fabulous flying save from Paddy Kenny. Yakubu is unbelievably fat these days, but has maintained an admirable knack for scoring frequently in this country since arriving at Portsmouth. Scottish international; David Goodwillie, fresh from his own Tommy Williams-like ‘square it’ moment in Spain during the week, is the other main option up there.

For me, Canadian Junior Hoilett will carry the main threat just as he did when we played them ten months ago.

Kean may have made a Gary-Waddock-like promise to change the style of play after taking over from the notoriously direct Sam Allardyce, but one element of Sam’s tactics does remain very much in place. Whenever Blackburn get a free kick anywhere in their half it is almost like a corner to them – centre backs Chris Samba and Scott Dann go forward into the opposition penalty area and Paul Robinson uses his prodigious place kicking to send one long ball after another arching into the danger zone. Samba isn’t afraid of throwing his weight around in the opposing penalty area either. So QPR will have to be strong in the air in their own box and bright and alert whenever they concede a free kick anywhere on the field – those tactical fouls players use sometimes to disrupt a counter attack and allow their team mates to funnel back at the expense of a free kick miles from their own goal may not be such a great idea in this particular match.

Links >>> Official Website >>> Blackburn Supporters Message Board >>> Blackburn Mad Forum >>> Vital Blackburn >>> Wild Rover Blog

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Photo: Action Images

JB007007 added 20:32 - Oct 13 Great read Clive. Liked the "Sheikh Mansour who is currently going about the business of building the club in a low key, thoughtful and considered manner." Steve Kean is a tosser, plain and simple as well as a drink driver. The only good thing he's done at Blackburn is bomb out that little scum bag Diouf.
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TGRRRSSS added 23:32 - Oct 13 A great read Clive as ever, but can't help thinking with Blackburn in need of a Fairy Godmother, who is it suddenly arriving to save the day???.... Oh that'll be us then.....................
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aussiehoop added 01:52 - Oct 14 didn't read the article. just wanted to comment on how inbred their fans look in that photo. priceless.
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qprmick added 02:22 - Oct 14 Jeez they must be seriously lacking if they would contemplate McClaren as a replacement. He may even be worse than Keen. Good article and interview with Blackburn. I am nervous about this one. Shit happens and we could fall on our collective arses, nah, it couldn't happen surely.
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thisismyengland added 08:26 - Oct 14 My own little preview - and a look back at losing to Blackburn in 1995 - start of the long slide into oblivion... http://thisismyengland.blogspot.com/2011/10/kean-to-win.html
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SomersetHoops added 09:38 - Oct 14 This could be another game where we miss Gorks. It was a very stupid decision to let him go for peanuts before we had sufficient solid cover at the back which was made very obvious in our last game. To do that and rely on Dyer and Gabbidon to be available when it was common knowledge that they would both be injured affter minor touches that players like Gorks run off in 5 minutes was a grave managerial error compounded by sending our other solid proven defender Clint Hill out of the club, again for relatively little financial gain. I need to say this so I can be wrong about it after this game which we need to win. For all our expensive signings, as far as defence goes, our team of last season was far more solid at the back than what we have available now for games against teams like Blackburn.

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bishom added 10:58 - Oct 14 Junior Hoilett is stand out quality. Thought we should have gone for him in the summer, but if Taarabt goes in January this guy would definitely fill his boots.
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windsorloop added 14:59 - Oct 14 The last time I remember watching QPR vs Blackburn was away was the first away game in 1995/1996 season. I think Blackburn had won the league the [previous season. Tim Flowers was in goal, he came out of his penalty area & brought down Trevor Sinclair. Trevor got up & Flowers stayed down for about 5 minutes hoping that the free would have forgotten the challenge. He was sent off. Down to ten men Blackburn struggled until Alan Shearer, the true professional dived & got a penalty, which was converted. That was the start of our disastrous season, culminating in us being regulated to Division 1. Shearer on Match of the Day justified the penaltygiven to Aston Villa, when supports of Aston Villa I spoke to after game, who had seen the incident on the televised game, thought it a joke.

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