JHRover

Wednesday will be going down and they know it. It has been inflicted on them by their owner and his financial decisions. Very similar to Rovers then, the big difference being that our mob have used cash from player sales to pay the bills whereas Wednesday haven't really had that option. A year from now Wednesday will be in League One but most importantly rid of Chansiri and under new ownership. They can move on and look forward. What have we got?

Just a ridiculous football club, it really is beyond laughable. So whatever Waggott was doing in return for his hefty salary he hasn't been doing since May, someone else down there has been picking up the slack, we haven't replaced him with any senior management appointment, yet he continues on the payroll for up to a year afterwards and remains appointed as a Club director at Companies House today (one of four directors, the others being Coar, Babu and Rao. In other news at least they've got around to removing David Lowe from the coaching staff website. They haven't had the decency to communicate his departure or to wish him well for the future but have at least updated the 'who's who' section of the website. I wonder if the most powerful man at the Club knows he's gone yet?

Yeah but enough about that, what about our gates in the mid 80s?

Their manager dare not lose this one. Unlike micky mouse Rovers a club like Southampton will ring the changes and try to improve their standing in the game so expect Still to be fired if they lose to lowly Rovers. This could be a curse or a blessing. If he still commands some respect in their dressing room and that solid squad is still playing for him then you would expect them to pull a win out of the bag to save his skin. On the other hand if he's on his last legs and the players aren't playing for him then we might have hit them at the perfect time to snatch a win before he's replaced with a better manager. I reckon a draw here, which doesn't really suit anyone but can be hailed as progress for both.

Impressive boycott at Hillsborough tonight. The place is empty save for the Boro contingent.

They've no plans full stop, they certainly ain't going to rock the boat and incur a £1 million+ expense sacking off Ismael and Whitehead. They want life as cheap and easy as possible. A managerial sacking / recruitment process is the last thing they want.

People rinsing a ton of money out of football both in the media and behind the scenes at clubs need to come up with such 'modern' terms to justify their employment. BBC are the latest - articles riddled with factual mistakes - example being that Dyche led Burnley to qualify for Europe for the first time since the 60s - but loads of pointless stats about Xg and other drivel about his 'style'.

They went down the Head Coach / DOF route with Broughton and JDT and for the first 18 months it worked to perfection - we got results, played an exciting brand of football, brought through academy lads by the bucketload and made good investments in new signings. They smashed that to smithereens after 1 year. Their choice, presumably the Broughton/JDT approach was costing too much and working too well / not greasing the right palms so a different approach had to be brought in.

Ridiculous that Oxford and Derby are shorter odds than us for relegation. And considering where those two clubs have come from - League One 18 months ago - it is a disgrace that we are mixing it with them It is rare - and hard - for a side to be adrift in this dismal division. As we saw in the last two seasons - usually the bottom 3 sides are regularly changing and are in touch with the rest of the pack up to the last couple of games of the season. Don't think that's going to happen with us - reckon we will be adrift and marooned pretty soon unless something significant changes.

With Ismael you just know sometimes when it isn't working and a change is needed for the sake of the club Last night one of 'those games' - winning at HT against a struggling side who don't score goals, then letting 3 in during the second half to continue the barren home run, manager stood for the last 10-15 minutes with his head in his hands and the air of a beaten man in his interviews. Engaged ownership / management recognise the signs and make a quick change. Ismael is already at his career average for games and tenure, he was unlikely to ever be anything more than a stop-gap as his career has proven. But the people running the show are going to let this run and with it toss away what is left of our Championship status. Deliberate destruction.

Why do I get the firm impression that the two stooges will be happier with Ismael and our current position than they will have been this time last year under Eustace?

In the coming days and weeks the gormless Sky Sports and followers of other clubs around the league will start to question how it can be that Rovers have plummeted from a side that was in the top 6 all last season and finished 7th on the final day to one that looks nailed on for a relegation zone finish. Most of us know the answer to that is a combination of Venkys and their chums destroying us from within, unnecessarily dismantling a competitive Championship squad and then throwing everything into the hands/laptop of a former player with zero track record in football management. But hey he wears a nice suit, he's a nice lad and he's cheap so all the right requirements for handing the keys and control of football over to and putting the club's future in the hands of. As I say, to so suddenly and effectively drop 14-15 places either side of a summer transfer window isn't common or usual. To go from a competitive albeit limited side last season under Eustace to this shambles takes a special level of incompetence/self-destruction but we've managed to find it. As others have correctly said - Ismael is still serving a purpose to the Regime so won't be going anywhere - whilst results continue to be dismal he is the perfect human shield - with each passing defeat more attention goes onto him - he gets to absorb the pressure and deal with the media whilst the two cowards hide away upstairs in silence. His sacking will come at the right time for them and their agenda, not for our league status.

As predicted amazingly Gestede didn't come possessing knowledge of a novel way to conquer football by signing a raft of randomers from overseas on the cheap. Almost as though it isn't that easy and there's more to competing in the Championship.

Southampton getting tubbed tonight at Bristol. Next up a long journey north to Ewood. Lucky them just as their manager is facing real pressure, unlike Ismael who will be as safe as houses here.

What me, you or anyone at Rovers wants is absolutely irrelevant. The only thing that matters here and has for the last 15 years is what the Indians want. Time and time again they've proven that they don't give a solitary about what any fan or employee thinks. We're heading for League One because that's what the Indians want. It is the inevitable outcome of their 'management' of the club. It won't be pretty no, but it will happen, it has to with the way they've chosen to own the club. No time or place in competitive sport for corner cutters, timewasters and disinterest. This is a serious league packed with competition. There's no place left for us here and I expect I'll be saying the same about us in League One in 3-4 years' time.

The only way they get their money back is via promotion to the PL. That's the only time at which their shares in the club are actually going to be worth anything. They've had 3 good opportunities to try and get there under 3 different managers in the last 4 years and on each occasion have barely lifted a finger to try and get over the line and secure promotion, infact there's a good argument to suggest they've actually sabotaged the manager's efforts by selling key players making it even more difficult to sustain results, then making the conditions so intolerable that two of the managers walked out of their jobs soon after the window closed with no proper effort made to keep them Either way, they've proven that they don't want promotion and that even when presented with a surprise opportunity to try and get it they won't make any effort to do it, so I think we can safely park that notion on the shelf with other fantasy theories. Promotion has never, was never and will never be a factor in their thinking. I still think we need to get ourselves back to what Venkys were brought into this club to do. They were never here to take an interest or run the club as any other owner would do. Their sole purpose since day one has been to sit as legal owners, top up the running cost shortfall, reap the 'benefits' whilst leaving it to others to run as minimal hassle to them. Why? Well that's what the orchestrators and designers of the model had in mind - a vehicle by which there is legitimate ownership in the background and on the title deeds but in the void a space for third parties to run it and profit from it. So we are now back to the original plan - let trusted henchmen do the dirty work (Shadow man and his mate), the owners aren't interested and never have been in the running of the club. They're prepared to tip in the necessary for running costs but at the moment want that to be at the bare minimum.

And of course whatever the reality of it things were back-to-front. It isn't the manager's job to 'advise' the owners on whether to 'go for it' or not. They should have made a decision on what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go and then if Mowbray was uncomfortable with that he should have been replaced. That is what happens at just about every other club in the world - owners decide what they want and then attempt to get it whilst making changes along the way to help them get there. Here just an utterly ridiculous backward situation where it seems the interest was all on the part of the manager who managed to get out there and prick a bit of interest on the part of the legal owners and was the one setting the pace and deciding on the form. They were never really interested, just had a brief spell of a couple of years where they liked what Mowbray was saying and thought they'd roll with his plans and see where it ended up. This is all because he, Bowyer and Kean managed to get out to sit around a table with them and persuade them to support them. To them it is all about backing 'their man' and not letting 'their man' down - and by extension that means sackings or performance/result based decisions are off the table - job's theirs as long as they want it. More important to them that they have 'their man' running the show than it is the football club progressing, improving, building, growing. That's never been a factor worthy of their consideration. He presumably told them that 3-4 years of solid support would either lead to promotion or worst case a valuable squad. So by the end of it, after plugging 3-4 years of losses and losing faith in mid-table finishes every year they pull up the drawbridge, disappear again, cut communication and impose more significant cost cuts just like they did when they got bored with Bowyer's approach and dismantled his squad. This isn't going to change now until or unless we find ourselves a competent manager who is willing and able to get out to India and talk them into a different approach. That isn't going to happen because we've got communication lines well and truly cut, a couple of stooges enjoying themselves and running the place as their own kingdom and there aren't many competent managers out there willing to play that sort of game. Bowyer was because he was a rookie and Mowbray was because he was on the scrapheap and content to plod for a good few years. Most - Lambert, JDT, Eustace - would tell them to 'do one' and secure more lucrative and easier working conditions elsewhere.

White Rose of Yorkshire making yet another appearance though

Happy Diwali from everyone at 'Blackburn Football Club' Chat GPT again?

We've chosen to go down the overseas signings route. We didn't need to and nobody forced us to. So having made that choice we can't then expect results / performances to be rubbish and to sit in the bottom 3 of the division and for people not to complain or criticise because you need a 'settling in period'. We knew when the season started and we knew when the games were going to be. If we weren't ready for those demands that's another mark against the names of those responsible for dismantling an experienced squad and replacing it with a totally inexperienced squad. This 'settling in' process just another excuse. It isn't going to get us retrospective points on the board or let us move up the league table and it won't stop us being relegated.

At least in the Coyle season we still had a limited core of experience/nous/battlers - Graham, Conway, Evans, Bennett, Mulgrew - people who knew the level and I suspect could sort out the dressing room side of things. Now?

A lot of this comes back to Gestede and the inexplicable decision to hand him control of the footballing operation overnight despite him having absolutely zero by way of experience or track record to justify it. Something very, very strange and probably dodgy going on there with that one especially when we factor in the bizarre period pre-appointment where he was following Waggott around to meetings and loitering around the training ground - again just not what happens in modern day professional high level football. If you want a new director of football or 'head of' you identify suitable options from a range of backgrounds and experiences and then you whittle the list down and plump for a choice. None of that here though, oh no, we go straight for a friendly face, I bet there was no recruitment process the job was his the minute they managed to get Broughton down the road. Why and how it came about more mystery. But as we've seen here countless times with randomers being parachuted into top jobs, going right back to the first major decision the scum made in 2010, they seem to enjoy this sort of thing. The idea of having a thorough due process and ending with someone getting a job running the show who is unconnected and has a CV that stands up to scrutiny unheard of - it's jobs for the boys and who you know not what you know. In his haste to make a name for himself Gestede's recruitment probably the final nail in our coffin. I'm sure there will be people along sooner rather than later to explain how we couldn't remain competitive on our finances/crowds in this league, despite Eustace doing just that with his wheeling and dealing last summer. So why was that 'model' that was working well under a competent manager so radically and suddenly ditched? The answer I suspect is all to allow Rudy and his chums to get to work and 'do their bit' whilst 'proving himself'. Unfortunately that gamble/experiment will probably finish off Blackburn Rovers in its current form.

Gestede's head will be the one they serve on a platter to the fanbase in May when relegation gets confirmed. Then the bots on twitter and facebook will heap all the blame at his door for poor recruitment/choice of coach and nothing to do with the ownership and their mate. Shadow man will remain in the shadows and they'll find some other good talker to step in and take over.

Just need another two places to be taken now. Any ideas on who might fill those other two slots ahead of us because I can't think of anyone!

Indeed there are, and we got one of those in JDT (but only after Broughton delivered the curveball, before then we were looking at Duncan Ferguson). But finding one of the leftfield appointments and it working well is only half the story - you've then got to harness it and build on it to try and let it blossom into something successful. At the good ship Rovers the agenda was never to be successful or for it to get anywhere, so all efforts were geared towards undermining it and ensuring it fell to pieces. Again, results a minor trivial issue in the equation. What was important was a willingness to tolerate the Venky shenanigans and not complain. Now they've got their ideal man 'aligned' to their project: Won't complain or call them out in public Won't attract interest or offers from elsewhere Won't object to them offloading whichever players they fancy cashing in on Will agree to work with whatever randomers Gestede unearths Such a man is worth his weight in gold to this regime, hence the 3 year contract. Again, results inconsequential to all this, so as long as he carries on doing as he's told and behaving himself he'll get to collect his wage and continue.