[Archived] Guardian article on Kean - unbelievable!

[perthblue02]

What I do find interesting is that there as been no response from our director of operations or his PR department son. Couldn't shut him up the other week about alleged behaviour of the fans. but seems to have been muzzled again. Wonder who the source of the story is?

[SamTheShrew]

Amusing take on ''that piece'' here.

http://www.football3...-ve-Chosen-You?

'So there we have it. Blackburn fans - instead of protesting against a regime that continues to employ Steve Kean, made your players take part in a ridiculous fried chicken advert, that continues to employ Steve Kean, that has taken the club into the Championship from a relatively stable position in the Premier League, that continues to employ Steve Kean, that waited until they were relegated to invest significantly in the team, and that continues to employ Steve Kean - you should be grateful.'

Particularly enjoyed this paragraph - had to check at first that I hadn't re-read 'continues to employ Steve Kean' at first!

[John]

When are the good signings arriving?

Some fans have been creaming themselves over Murphy, Gomes and the potential acquisition of Rhodes.

Also, there appears to be some strange thinking that the Rao family are putting their own money into the club.....

[onlyonejackwalker]

Some fans have been creaming themselves over Murphy, Gomes and the potential acquisition of Rhodes.

Also, there appears to be some strange thinking that the Rao family are putting their own money into the club.....

Sorry my reply sounded a bit abrubt, but I was only joking. For me, all our signings show is how the club is being downsized in all areas. I am not convinced we have bought well, nor that anyone at the has any lasting respect for Kean. We are lacking confidence, organisation and structure and it is difficult for any player to perform at their best in the conditions we are presenting for them. Meanwhile Kean is in charge to further confuse and divide.

Many fans got excited with last years signings as well and look how that turned out. The Championship is hugely demanding phsyically and we are ill equipped in my book. We have the experience and a certain amount of quality, but we need some pace and fresh legs injecting and obviously someone hugely practised and experienced to manage the turmoil created by the Venky's, whilst leading the club professionally on the field of play.

Our players better be ready mentally for the long, hard toil that a season at this level will require. I don't for one minute think they are and that we will lurch from one mis-hap to another, unless of course we unite the whole club again by removing the Keanius.

[M-K]

Much as I dislike the writer, I re-read the article and it doesn't seem quite as much of an anti-Rovers hatchet job the second time around.

This bit particularly irritated me originally:

"He said in so many words that, when you have been confronted by 50,000 chicken farmers, what are 20,000 football fans? Those fans should be flattered that Venky's embrace Blackburn in a portfolio that includes the famous old Bombay Cricket Club and Sachin Tendulkar. Verbal terrorism will get them nowhere."

But I don't think it's the writer calling us verbal terrorists - it sounds like he's still paraphrasing one of the Venky brothers in the last two sentences there.

I think there's a big element of tongue-in-cheek running through the entire article:

"Contrary to terrace chants, Venky's do know what they are doing and will go on doing it."

Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't read like a pro-Venky's statement.

And the "Churchillian gravity," when referring to our glorious leader is surely not to be taken seriously.

For a football reporter, Jeremy Alexander can be notoriously difficult and annoying to read, which is why I always try to avoid his articles. He could probably do with a more ruthless sub editor, but I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

[philipl]

Interesting that Venky's think their relationship with Rovers is the same as with Bombay Cricket Club (presumably not the restaurant in America which appears first in Google) and Sachin Tendulkar- neither of which they own as far as I can ascertain.....

[ABBEY]

I said last season that already companies in the UK were distancing themselves from Venky’s as not good (for them) to be associated with them.

Interesting that on Saturday no showing of discontent against the owners – consdiering they were present in the crowd it was a great opportuity to let them know what the true feelings are.

Maybe Agnew and Kean could be right, a few good signings to keep some fans quiet…..

General thought. , not at you but could someone answer this... If people are boycotting home games and only going away games , so has not to give V's money , then why were they not given both barrels and anti venky chants ?

Specially as it was said they were attending.

[AllRoverAsia]

Having read most of the posts still on the Guardian site its good to see fans of many other Clubs including Burnley starting to understand the situation at Rovers.

Is M-K also MG.?

[patrickvalery]

Interesting that Venky's think their relationship with Rovers is the same as with Bombay Cricket Club (presumably not the restaurant in America which appears first in Google) and Sachin Tendulkar- neither of which they own as far as I can ascertain.....

Well, if we believe the gossip then perhaps it is the same relationship - Fictional.

[GoneSouth]

Hi all

First time poster here - been a reader of the forums for a long time and always found them to be the best source for good Rovers-related discussion, so keep up the good work etc!

The reason I've ended up signing up for an account today is that I read the Guardian article this morning and was so irritated that I ended up emailing their football editor Mike Adamson. Got a reply from him too, so thought people on here might be interested to see it.

So here's what I sent:

"Dear Mike

While I am in no way naive enough to expect fair and balanced coverage of the plight of a small Lancashire club in the national press, I feel I must defend my fellow Blackburn Rovers fans from the latest attempt to discredit them in your newspaper.

In his piece dated 19 August, Jeremy Alexander states that without the club's owners, Venkys, "Rovers' fans might have been looking at another Portsmouth or Rangers. Such is gratitude." It's a clever narrative trick – with this one line, Blackburn supporters are characterised as impetuous ingrates, their judgement too clouded by their dislike of their club's foreign owners and inexperienced manager to notice that those owners saved the club from certain financial ruin. What credibility could an outside observer possibly attach to the impassioned protests of Rovers fans if the owners they so desperately want out of the club in fact saved it from the fate that befell Rangers and Portsmouth?

Unfortunately for Mr Alexander, this reading of the situation at Blackburn is simply untrue. While no one connected to the club would deny that finances were tight in the year's before Venkys' arrival, there are simply no grounds for an informed observer to suggest that the club was close to financial crisis and possible liquidation. Although the money bequeathed by the club's late owner, Jack Walker, had largely dried up by the time of Venkys' arrival in 2010, a highly-competent executive management team led by John Williams had ensured that the club remained on a secure financial footing, achieving a consistent mid-table Premier League finish while selling highly-value players and operating with a limited transfer budget. This management team was widely admired in the football world for its achievements in enabling a small-town club to punch above its weight in the Premier League while avoiding the serious financial difficulties seen at clubs such as Portsmouth, and it is no surprise that, since he was forced out by Venkys in 2011, John Williams has gone on to work at Manchester City. This is hardly the career progression you would expect for someone who very nearly turned Blackburn into another Rangers or Portsmouth.

So while Blackburn Rovers fans were happy to welcome their new owners with open minds when they arrived in the autumn of 2010, particularly as those owners promised a new era of healthy transfer budgets and big-name signings, there was certainly no reason to hail them as the club's saviours from financial ruin. But they were welcomed (I was at Ewood Park at our 2010 home match against Chelsea when the Rao brothers were applauded on to the pitch at half time), and the fans' reward for that welcome was the agony of watching their stable Premier League club be dismantled from the inside, culminating in its eventual relegation in May 2012.

I shouldn't need to recount the timeline of this dismantling in a letter to a national newspaper's sports desk, but allow me to summarise. A successful manager, Sam Allardyce, was removed in December 2010, despite promises that he would be backed and allowed to see through his project, and replaced with a caretaker in the form of an unknown first team coach, Steve Kean. After just two (not particularly successful) games as caretaker, Kean was appointed as the manager, and shortly afterwards the club's owner, Anuradha Desai, declared him to be unsackable. Meanwhile, Venkys were receiving advice from Jerome Anderson, who also happened to be Steve Kean's agent. While the circumstances surrounding Mr Anderson's association with the club are unclear, it is fair to say his involvement raised eyebrows among Blackburn fans, particularly when his son, Myles Anderson, was handed a contract off the back of a career consisting of one professional appearance for Aberdeen. As the months progressed, the club's executive team was dismantled, with John Williams leaving, later to be followed by other key backroom employees. In the transfer market, fans were promised Ronaldinho and Beckham, only to be given Radoslav Petrovic and Bruno Ribeiro, while delusional promises of European football and domestic cups ultimately culminated in relegation. Compounding this misery was the wall of silence that greeted the fans from the owners in India, as the Rao family blankly refused to answer the protests from the fans (and local business partners) who demanded action to avert the disaster occurring at the club.

The focus of much of this protest has, of course, been Steve Kean. Personally, terrace abuse is not an aspect of football that I appreciate, and I would admit that at times some of the anger directed at him has gone too far. However, I reject Mr Alexander's suggestion that this amounts to "verbal terrorism", with its implication that the anti-Kean/Venkys protests have gone beyond what has occurred at other clubs. If it appears to have reached new levels, this is only because fans have been forced to continue their protests for so long. Usually, when a club's manager so drastically underachieves, the fans protest for a short time (often just at the end of one or two games), and the manager is removed. Blackburn fans have had to endure the survival of Steve Kean through months of underachievement, and while it is regrettable that our home matches have become associated with chants for the manager's job, it is not exactly surprising. Ultimately, it's hard to avoid thinking that Blackburn fans receive unfair treatment in the media on account of the unfashionable status of their club. Were Manchester United fans so roundly condemned when they called for the removal of the Glazers, or Aston Villa fans when they called for the head of Alex McLeish? Will Liverpool's fans be condemned in your newspaper as "verbal terrorists" when they inevitably begin chanting "Rodgers Out" later this year?

Ultimately, the line of Mr Alexander's article most guaranteed to amuse/enrage Blackburn Rovers fans concerns Steve Kean."What some have condemned as arrogance," writes Alexander with regard to Kean's reaction to the protests, "others would commend as brave dignity in the face of deplorable behaviour". Was this brave dignity on display when Kean was caught on video drunkenly telling fans that his predecessor Allardyce was a "crook", and promising (even making a cash bet) that he would win the Carling Cup in his first full season? How about when he denied a drink driving charge despite being caught well over the limit, and suggested some Rovers fans must have spiked his drink in a local pub? How about when he engineered the sacking of his assistant John Jensen as the fall guy for the team's poor performance, or suggested that he had "forfeited" a lost Carling Cup quarter final at Cardiff? I must have missed the dignity on display in his post-match interviews last season, when time and again he chose to blame his luck, or the referee, or the lack of dew on the grass (yes, really), for his shortcomings, rather than admit that he might have got something wrong. Above all, I must be blind to the dignity and humility inherent in his utter failure to apologise for the relegation he engineered last season.

I'm sure that to national newspaper editors, who are no doubt by now well accustomed to receiving emails such as this, Blackburn fans must seem bitter and twisted, unable to accept their small town club's rightful position in the footballing hierarchy. However, if you were to talk to fans, what you would discover is that, while of course relegation from the Premier League hurts, what ultimately drives the protests is the fact that the club has become a circus, governed by none of the rational concerns that drive decisions at other football clubs. Events at Blackburn over the past two years have ranged from the bizarre to the suspicious, and what Blackburn Rovers fans would like to see from national newspapers are articles that take an investigative and analytical look at these strange goings on, rather than half-baked opinion pieces such as Mr Alexander's which adopt a lazy but convenient narrative that pits Steve Kean and Venkys as the innocent victims of the club's unruly and ungrateful fans.

The story of Blackburn Rovers since the Venkys takeover is surely as bizarre and as suspect as any to emerge in football in recent years, and the fact that it has been allowed to happen by the footballing authorities makes it of concern to all who follow the game. Surely it is time our quality national newspapers looked at it with the detail it deserves?"

Then I got this reply:

Many thanks for your extremely eloquent, rational and well-argued email. May I suggest you send it to reader@guardian.co.uk, our readers' editor, who would consider it for publication. I know that Jeremy had valid reasons to write the article in the way that he did having done plenty of research of his own and spoken to sources with a deep understanding of the club, but I take on board your comments and will discuss them with our sports editor and head of sport to consider how we cover the Blackburn story in future.

Best regards,

Mike

To which I replied:

Thanks for your reply Mike. I've forwarded it to the readers' editor.

I think what's frustrating for Blackburn fans, who've been living this nightmare for two years now, is they feel they don't get a fair hearing in the national press, compared to all the sympathetic takes on Kean (your own paper's "manager of the year?" piece last year being one of the more infuriating!). There's a serious story at the heart of this about what can go wrong with a takeover, and I think most Blackburn fans just want to know that the quality press are taking it seriously and investigating it.

To which he said:

Sure. We certainly do take what is happening with Blackburn seriously. Indeed David Conn and, to a lesser extent, have written investigative, critical pieces on the takeover in the past 12-18 months. Clearly the piece this morning was of a different nature, however.

That's all of it. Hope it's of interest. Look forward to getting involved in discussions on here in the future.

[sambo]

Gorie South +10000

What an excellent post!

[The Dart]

Hi all

First time poster here - been a reader of the forums for a long time and always found them to be the best source for good Rovers-related discussion, so keep up the good work etc!

The reason I've ended up signing up for an account today is that I read the Guardian article this morning and was so irritated that I ended up emailing their football editor Mike Adamson. Got a reply from him too, so thought people on here might be interested to see it.

So here's what I sent:

Very good piece. You must keep contributing to this forum.

[Kendalrover]

'I know that Jeremy had valid reasons to write the article in the way that he did having done plenty of research of his own and spoken to sources with a deep understanding of the club'

I guess that will be Agnew and Anderson then. Funny he didn't think it fit to speak to BRFCAG or BRSIT to produce a balanced report. But then why let the truth get in the way.

[Clitherover]

Particularly enjoyed this paragraph - had to check at first that I hadn't re-read 'continues to employ Steve Kean' at first!

I thought it was an error when I first read it.

[Stuart]

Good letter, GoneSouth - although I have to admit to cringing at the (now almost clichéd) apologetic "would admit" line with respect to the "abuse" of Kean. But this shouldn't detract from a quality email.

I would dearly love to know Alexander's "valid reasons", what his "plenty of research" involved and who his "sources with a deep understanding of the club" are, though, as I am highly suspicious that this was Kean inspired and Mike Adamson is simply making excuses for his man.

For this reason, and the removal of the comments on the article website, I very much doubt your letter will be published. I hope I am wrong.

It's also interesting that a staunchly anti-corruption publication is so keen to not only avoid any kind of investigative journalism on the subject of BRFC ownership and potential malpractice or negegect of duty, yet instead decides to paint Kean as a war hero.

Odd.

[AllRoverAsia]

Hi all

First time poster here - been a reader of the forums for a long time and always found them to be the best source for good Rovers-related discussion, so keep up the good work etc!

The reason I've ended up signing up for an account today is that I read the Guardian article this morning and was so irritated that I ended up emailing their football editor Mike Adamson. Got a reply from him too, so thought people on here might be interested to see it.

So here's what I sent:

Then I got this reply:

To which I replied:

To which he said:

That's all of it. Hope it's of interest. Look forward to getting involved in discussions on here in the future.

Well done for that.

Unfortunately their reply to you sums up the dismisssive way Rovers fans are and will be treated:

''I know that Jeremy had valid reasons to write the article in the way that he did having done plenty of research of his own and spoken to sources with a deep understanding of the club,''

It beggars belief. I would like to know the ''valid reasons''.

On a toally different subject is it cash or cheque and no reference intended to you GS?

[bypass06]

Hi all

First time poster here - been a reader of the forums for a long time and always found them to be the best source for good Rovers-related discussion, so keep up the good work etc!

The reason I've ended up signing up for an account today is that I read the Guardian article this morning and was so irritated that I ended up emailing their football editor Mike Adamson. Got a reply from him too, so thought people on here might be interested to see it.

So here's what I sent:

Then I got this reply:

To which I replied:

To which he said:

That's all of it. Hope it's of interest. Look forward to getting involved in discussions on here in the future.

Love to know what these valid reasons were that Jeremy had.

[yoda]

Love to know what these valid reasons were that Jeremy had.

spondoolis

[Rovermatt]

When contacting The Guardian about this subject always cite David Conn's article last season. While it contained some factual errors, it was a serious piece and lacked the obligatory pro-Kean rubbish. Acknowledging it takes away one excuse they seem to rely on.

In addition, we must never give any oxygen to this poisonous theory that Kean suffered unprecedented levels of abuse last season.

[Baz]

In addition, we must never give any oxygen to this poisonous theory that Kean suffered unprecedented levels of abuse last season.

100% correct.

Kean has had no more abuse than any other manager in a similar position, and significantly less than some.

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

GoneSouth, that was absolutely top notch. If writing isn't in some way related to your profession then I'd suggest you're in the wrong job!

[Ricky]

great letter that GoneSouth. very detailed and extremely well written.

[92er]

But hey 92er how about us having 8 (yes thats eight!!!) Corporate clients!!!???? That has to be a world record low for any football club outside Albania.

8, i mean come on - 8??????

Who is doing the catering , Mrs Miggins pie shop???

It gets more laughable by the hour this club.

I totally agree about the 8-I had mentioned it in an earlier post.

My other interest was in how the sale of STs-"in the region of 8500" seemed to be unravelling.

[Glenn]

Verbal Terrorist T-Shirts now available - http://brfcs.spreadshirt.co.uk/verbalterrorist-A21713087/customize/color/17

[thenodrog]

Presumably the 8 corporate clients is now 7 following the withdrawal by WEC. I believe one of those 7 eventually got a 90% discount on the amount they paid last year.

Businesses are very sensitive to not being associated with "toxic" organisations- if they perceive linking themselves to another brand is going to damage their own best interests, they simply walk away.

Looking at the Corporate Box windows will be quite a sport when Rovers play Hull- how many will be lit and how many will have warm bodies in them? And as for the comfy seats in the JW Upper....

I'd love to be a fly on the wall on the deal Nigel Howarth did with the Slumdogs. I understand Balaji was expecting him to trap up with the same deal as last season. Just how naive (or do I mean thick) is the fat Indian greaseball?