[Archived] Savage - The Bad Apple

[OscarRaven]

Good link - look at the darts one where they're taunting him, he's got something on the placard for Dave Fevre our physio. He doesn't half get some stick, but he brings a lot of it on himself; clearly he thrives on it!

Dave Fevere is C.V Beserk !!!!180 Mobes!!!! - must be code?

Shame it ended like it did (is) for him. Glad he is not here at the moment though - he would be stirring it, given his love affair with Mark Hughes!

[Anti Euro Smiths Fan]

Robbie Savage has said today that he was wrong to leave Rovers for Derby in January 2008 and that he decided to leave on the spur of the moment because he was petulant and hot-headed.

Savage said: "In hindsight, I should have stayed at Blackburn and fought for my place."

Perhaps the withdrawal of the annual £3m funding from the Jersey trustees and Mark Hughes being apparently denied the funds to sign the replacement he'd like for Savage in midfield, with Lassana Diarra reported as his ideal target but too expensive for Rovers - the Frenchman joining Portsmouth from Arsenal instead for around £5.5m - contributed to Hughes eventually leaving the club.

Shortly after Hughes was apparently denied the funds to sign Diarra, he started to cut a unhappy figure on the touchline - in Thenodrog's words looking like a bulldog who had chewed a wasp.

Hughes gave the impression of being peeved off with the situation at Rovers and he started to become particularly flirtatious with other clubs - first flashing his eyelids in the direction of the portly Mike Ashley at Newcastle and giving an embarrassing interview with the BBC in which he was unable to deny his interest in going to St James' Park following the sacking of Mr Allardyce.

After Kevin Keegan was instead appointed the manager at Newcastle, Mark Hughes's restlessness continued and he seemed desperate to jump into the arms of either Peter Kenyon at Chelsea or the odious tyrant Thaksin Shinawatra at Eastlands in the summer of 2008. Chelsea chose Mr Scolari and Hughes flung himself into the arms of the murderous Thai instead.

It's possible to look back on the sale of Robbie Savage and the failure to invest in a proper midfield replacement for him as being perhaps a key moment in the recent history of Blackburn Rovers.

Robbie now says that he regrets leaving.

Link Below:

Savage: "I now regret leaving Rovers".

[LeChuck]

Couldn't agree more about that moment being a pivotal one in our recent history. After all the brilliant work Hughes had done with transfer funds over the years it must have been a massive kick in the teeth to have to settle for Vogel on a free transfer.

If they board had given him £10 million to spend the players he bought probably would have been worth several times that in a few years. In fact, it's only because of his brilliance in the transfer market that we're not making huge losses every year. Bentley stopped it last year, Roque and Warnock this. Samba next season? There really isn't much left after that.

Still really angers me that they wouldn't invest money into Hughes at that time.

[tcj_jones]

Bring him back - he's probably still better than anything we have at the moment.

[doctorryan]

Perhaps the withdrawal of the annual £3m funding from the Jersey trustees and Mark Hughes being apparently denied the funds to sign the replacement he'd like for Savage in midfield, with Lassana Diarra reported as his ideal target but too expensive for Rovers - the Frenchman joining Portsmouth from Arsenal instead for around £5.5m - contributed to Hughes eventually leaving the club.

That is absolutely what happened. Remember, after the win at the Reebok (one of Donkey Dong's few shining moments in a Rovers kit) we were just 3 points out of 4th (the Reds did have a game in hand) after what had been a disastrous November and December and Sparky wanted to take his shot at the CL. Diarra was who he wanted and I've never bought that "we wouldn't have been able to outbid Portsmouth" BS that some on here pontificate. When the Trust failed to back the move Sparky said the hell with this place and I don't blame him one bit. He could have chosen a less unsavory place than ManC but I digress.

What could have been.........

[philipl]

It is easy to beat up on the Trustees but Diarra was never going to come to Ewood unless Sparky somehow managed to be a cash-beating better attraction for him than Redknapp which I think was always going to be unlikely.

The problem we had was the money no object Pompey board (who have of course just taken the club to the very brink of insolvency) were determined to get Diarra, money no object. They paid £5.5m and £60k a week for him- if we'd matched that, they would simply have gone higher. It was a fight we were never going to win. They already had the likes of David James and Sol Campbell on wages reputed to be in the £90k to £100k a week bracket (£5m a year for all intents and purposes).

However, it is interesting to read that Savage says he insisted on going rather than fighting for his place back. I had always thought the club had at the very least eased his way out as he looked to be completely finished as a top player. As it is, he has come back strongly- but it has taken him at least a year to get back to the level he is now as he looked a complete donkey still when Derby started off in the second division after relegation.

The way Sav is playing now would keep both Grella and Andrews out of the current Rovers side.

[thenodrog]

It is easy to beat up on the Trustees but Diarra was never going to come to Ewood unless Sparky somehow managed to be a cash-beating better attraction for him than Redknapp which I think was always going to be unlikely.

In the case of p1ssing Hughes off it's dead easy![edit]

From Wiki.......

Arsenal

............. Due to the emergence of defensive midfielder Mathieu Flamini in the Arsenal side, however, Diarra saw limited action in the early months of Arsenal's season. Diarra began to get increasingly impatient at Arsenal and expressed concerns that he wanted a transfer in the January window because he has not seen enough first team football.[7] After only five months at Arsenal, Diarra signed for Portsmouth in January 2008 for an undisclosed fee believed to be around £5.5 million.[8]

[edit] Portsmouth

...........Portsmouth agreed a fee with Real Madrid subject to medical that he would join them, on the 1 January 2009 for a fee of around €20 million (£18.88 million).[19]

[edit] Real Madrid

Portsmouth announced on 17 December 2008 that they had accepted a "substantial" offer from Real Madrid for Diarra's services[19] and £20 million transfer was agreed five days later.[20]

Given Hughes record of filling our coffers on a regular basis the board not supporting him at that time was lamentable. Wiki and history now shows that Diarra's value inflated 4x in lesss than 12 months! Basically JW and the board blew 15m even before placement money and missing out on Europe! Then by replacing him with numpty Ince we blew a shed load more in place money and redundancies. Now we are still staring up at lost placement money and have sold all but one of Hughes's crown jewels.

I warned this would happen and suggested that Hughes should have been on a profit related package and got roundly critisised by you Philip and other assorted dullards, but the old saying 'if you want something different to happen you have got to do something different' applies. JW gets a lot of support on here and has done good work in his time but this is the other side of the coin and if thats good leadership then I'm a bloody dutchman. The people at the top table at BRFC have put us in a tail spin.

btw See lines 1 and 3 of my sig and forward it to JW & Co.

[philipl]

This reply from 'drog doesn't answer the problem posed and is naive beyond belief.

Pompey were throwing money around so lets say we matched with an offer of £5.5m and £60k per week? They would have upped their's.

At what point 'drog would you have walked away from the mad auction? At £12m and £120k a week bearing in mind Pompey had paid that amount in the very recent past (albeit on two different players)?

When you are running a business, you have a responsibility to everyone in it; employees, stakeholders and shareholders. Chasing after a single player who could get injured (and insurance covers some of the wages in some circumstances but only the transfer fee in exceptional circumstances for frightening premiums) and totally busting the wage structure on the off chance Real Madrid could get interested (leaving a p'ed off Sparky wanting yet another replacement when he went) is simply bonkers.

[Eddie]

It's unlikely the transfer fee would have gone higher, that was his price. The wages would have been an issue. Personally, I would have offered him 40-50k and see if he was interested in joining a club in a better spot. I was advocating the move on the time on the basis that we would be guaranteed to make a profit on him...that certainly wasn't wrong.

[philipl]

And Pompey paid "his price" and didn't over pay on all their other signings?

Come on, pull the other one.

PS we don't know what wages offer Rovers made- they did bid twice for Diarra during that January.

[T4E]

PS we don't know what wages offer Rovers made

You don't? That makes a pleasant change.

[OscarRaven]

On Diarra;

He went to an up and coming Pompey, making all the right £££'s noises. They profitted massivley, yet.... despite a firesale they were/are on the brink, indicating wages is/was a major, major issue.

Hughes took us to 85% of turnover on wages retaining his cheaply found yet talented squad, this is dangerous and unsustainable for our club. To have spent £10m (£6m fee + 3m wages + £1m agents) on Diarra on top of already unsustainable spending would have broken our club.

Once we had Diarra, do you think Hughes' ambition would have stopped there? Champions league or bust was the mentality... where have I seen that before?

The blackhole that has taken so much money to fill this summer would have been massive.... we simply don't have the infrastructure anymore to take that level of risk. Over 130 years of history has to come first, before Champs league, before PL, before anything... the club must survive.

I agree it was a pivitol moment. It was the right choice that ensured the survival of Blackburn Rovers.

[LeChuck]

To have spent £10m (£6m fee + 3m wages + £1m agents) on Diarra on top of already unsustainable spending would have broken our club.

We have very wealthy owners, they could invest massive sums of money if they wanted without the need for loans/overdrafts. The fact is they don't and haven't for some time, and that's the problem.

Hughes was worth investing in, he had shown repeatedly that he was capable of massively increasing the values of players he bought. If they'd given Hughes £10 million to make the Diarra transfer possible, they could have had it back within 12 months and had £10 million profit.

[OscarRaven]

We have very wealthy owners, they could invest massive sums of money if they wanted without the need for loans/overdrafts. The fact is they don't and haven't for some time, and that's the problem.

Hughes was worth investing in, he had shown repeatedly that he was capable of massively increasing the values of players he bought. If they'd given Hughes £10 million to make the Diarra transfer possible, they could have had it back within 12 months and had £10 million profit.

Hindsight what a wonderful thing. What else could have happened?

• Broken leg playing Hughes' robust style of football?
  
• Didn't quite fit as well into Blackburn's stye as he did pompey... Real Madrid miss him?
  
• Real madrid come in - Hughes says. If you sell Diarra I walk... player sulks, club metlts down...
  

I could go on all day... simple fact is anything could have happened, personally I'd rather not have the club on the gaming table.

As for your investment comments, your opinion is cleary too blue and white to have reasoned debate. Blackburn Rovers is not an investment... if it was I put in my and your £2000 and buy it with all the other 20,000 season ticket holders.

[thenodrog]

So we passed up on Diarra after Hughes had added massive value to the team already and then (possibly) proceeded to do exactly the same with Huddleston and Koumas, and eventually leaving us with Vogel (who incidentally must be seen as a nett loss on the accounts). Oh very good. The salient point is that Mark Hughes was at that time self financing. He had put more money into the club than he had taken out. How many top managers can even come close to that? Arry can't, Fergie can't, Rafa certainly can't and even Moyes and Bruce can't. I guess the closest would be Wenger, (a better tactician than Hughes too imo).

JW said it was 'MH requesting to talk to NUFC earlier' that they decided not to let him buy anymore players. What it really translates to is 'MH has ambition beyond his station and might be off when the next plum job comes up so until then we will not allow him to buy any more like Warnock, Bentley, RSC, Kuqi, Samba for a million or two, even though they will likely be worth a kings ransom over the next year or two. That little welsh buggger is getting too big for his boots, I'll show him whose t'bloody boss around here! His sort are just two a penny.. there's plenty just as good as him in the 2nd and 3rd divisions'!.

As I said previously, I'm sure that Jack Walker would have fought as hard to keep Hughes as he fought to keep Shearer. The last two years have been a dogs dinner of ineptitude at BRFC and only covered financially by selling off the players that MH brought in! And that cannot be denied.

[philipl]

There was plenty publicly and I know privately that Huddleston was well on the way to being lined up for Rovers when Jol was the boss at Spurs but that move got killed by Ramos when he assessed their squad. So in that January, Huddleston was a non-option, he simply wasn't going to be sold short of us pushing a huge bid (close to £10m) in front of them.

As for Koumas, he was hardly going to be a great investment was he? I think Sparky himself was unsure about that one hence the half-hearted at best pursuit over a number of windows.

[OscarRaven]

As I said previously, I'm sure that Jack Walker would have fought as hard to keep Hughes as he fought to keep Shearer. The last two years have been a dogs dinner of ineptitude at BRFC and only covered financially by selling off the players that MH brought in! And that cannot be denied.

I don't disagree that Hughes' signings were inspired and 'self financing' he turned around a dogs dinner of a squad into a sparkling array of talent, albeit very well rewarded and some what want-away.

But we matched Hughes ambition as far as we could, we took the club to its maximum sustainable point, but Mark wanted more - Tough. I doubt Jack Walker would have backed Hughes to cross the champions league Abyss personally. A bad season later we suffered because we had stretched too far... and still are streched (£5m short on wages) to a certain extent.

I'm a supporter so I want, no demand success, but I'm also a realist, we just don't have the infrastructure and finances to compete at that level.

Even if we won the league we won't have 60,000 people paying £45 a ticket to watch us. We are what we are. Hughes' ambition was beyond our means to support, to have placated Hughes you would have had to gamble the club... not acceptable in my view.

[doctorryan]

...... we matched Hughes ambition as far as we could, we took the club to its maximum sustainable point, but Mark wanted more - Tough. I doubt Jack Walker would have backed Hughes to cross the champions league Abyss personally...........

[tony gale's mic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/d/derby_county/8453055.stm

[Majiball]

Good link.

You just have to love the lad.

[Ninjathunder]

Super Robbie Savage!!

[Darth Paul]

Superb interview with Savage. Everyone should listen to it.

He has been tagged by many in the game (not by this MB or even by fans of our club in general I know) with negative comments throughout his career, but if every Premiership footballer had his passion and honesty both on and off the pitch, then the game would be 100% better.

He may look a bit daft with his hairstyle, and likes his expensive cars, but this guy is the model professional in my book. He is also a breath of fresh air whenever he is MOTD, but you can't see him breaking the tired old cartel in place there, despite talking more sense than the rest of them put together.

Welcome back at Ewood any day (and probably wouldn't go amiss in the middle of the pitch right now).

Football is a straight forward game and Robbie Savage is a straight forward bloke. Big Sams sports science is all well and good but I would love to see Robbie try his hand at management in the lower leagues before too long (hopefully not with Rovers!)...could be a disaster but you never know...

[mellison24]

Superb interview with Savage. Everyone should listen to it.

He has been tagged by many in the game (not by this MB or even by fans of our club in general)with negative comments throughout his career, but if every Premiership footballer had his passion and honesty both on and off the pitch, then the game would be 100% better.

He may look a bit daft with his hairstyle, and likes his expensive cars, but this guy is the model professional in my book.

Welcome back at Ewood any day (and probably wouldn't go amiss in the middle of the pitch right now).

Superb interview with Savage. Everyone should listen to it.

He has been tagged by many in the game (not by this MB or even by fans of our club in general)with negative comments throughout his career, but if every Premiership footballer had his passion and honesty both on and off the pitch, then the game would be 100% better.

He may look a bit daft with his hairstyle, and likes his expensive cars, but this guy is the model professional in my book.

Welcome back at Ewood any day (and probably wouldn't go amiss in the middle of the pitch right now).

Honesty and integrity. Add a little wit and he's the hairy Ollie!

[Stuart]

He could have been talking about Rovers...

[Ozz]

Just listen to that Savage interview and it really cheers you up! Legend Robbie.