The new owners of Blackburn Rovers, Indian poultry firm Venky’s have sacked manager Sam Allardyce although the club is in no real danger of relegation from the Barclays Premier League. The 2-1 defeat at Bolton yesterday was hardly a major setback.
Blackburn fans rightly castigated us yesterday for locating the game at Ewood Park. That’s one of the perils of running a site on an amateur basis around the day job and supporting one’s own club. Nevetheless, we think we were on to something in identifying tensions between Allardyce and the new owners.
The new owners of Blackburn Rovers, Indian poultry firm Venky’s have sacked manager Sam Allardyce although the club is in no real danger of relegation from the Barclays Premier League. The 2-1 defeat at Bolton yesterday was hardly a major setback.
Blackburn fans rightly castigated us yesterday for locating the game at Ewood Park. That’s one of the perils of running a site on an amateur basis around the day job and supporting one’s own club. Nevetheless, we think we were on to something in identifying tensions between Allardyce and the new owners.
Venky’s seemed to have cut Allardyce out of the loop in discussions on budgets and transfer policy. These were held in India in Allardyce’s absence with sports right agencies Kentaro. A fortnight ago Anuradha Desai, the Denky’s chairwoman, said she would be ringing the manager to tell him to play ‘entertaining football’ and that ‘winning isn’t everything’. Perhaps Big Sam’s personal style and his ‘no nonsense’ approach to playing the game did not suit the new owners.
The managerial merry go round thus takes another turn. Allardyce has already been mooted as a possible replacement for Avram Grant at West Ham, whilst the possible replacements at Blackburn being discussed by the media are the usual suspects: out-of-work Premiership managers. But having sprung one surprise, perhaps Venky’s will come up with another.
On Radio 5 on Tuesday evening a member of the owning family said that it could be two months before a successor to Allardyce was appointed. He implied that they might prefer someone younger. He also emphasised that there had been no personal tensions with the former manager.