Oh, it was but only a few weeks ago that things looked to be finally looking up for a beleaguered Blackburn Rovers club and a fanbase that had been left to suffer through the turmoil and humiliation their beloved Rovers had been plunged into over the span of a couple of years following the Venky's takeover. Rovers had climbed back into promotion playoff contention, and combined with a dramatic and legendary win over Arsenal at the Emirates in the FA Cup, Rovers fans could be forgiven for thinking that a rocky road was becoming that much more navigable under recently hired manager Michael Appleton. As recent history has shown us, Rovers will always regress to a regrettable mean, as has been the case ever since that wonderful day in February.
Indeed, such an occasion as beating Arsenal away must seem like ages ago now, especially when one looks at the Championship table and sees Blackburn mired in the bottom three as opposed to being in the hunt for sixth place as one would have expected once upon a time. On the field, there are hardly any secrets to be uncovered as to why things have gone so wrong at Ewood Park. Key injuries to the likes of Martin Olsson, Colin Kazim-Richards, and Josh King, amongst others, have certainly conspired to see Rovers go winless in the league for almost two months, as did Michael Appleton's highly defensive (and questionable) tactics and a plethora of listless and utterly uninspiring performances. As such, a team that actually has a few players with an eye for goal, even outside of Jordan Rhodes, has been largely reduced to hardly looking like scoring over the span of 90 minutes or, as was the case against Millwall, 180 minutes.
Some hope had been restored with Gary Bowyer taking the reigns again on the heels of Appleton's dismissal, and why not? After all, Bowyer had engineered a nice little run of wins in his earlier spell as caretaker manager earlier this season, and players seemingly enjoyed his propensity for allowing them to play more of an attacking, free-flowing style. A draw salvaged against Blackpool was nice, and at least for a short while things looked to be going well against Sheffield Wednesday. Yet, once again, any hope of three valuable points was tossed away thanks to a penalty call and some rather dubious defending as Jermaine Johnson put on a show.
While conventional wisdom would suggest that a hard, solid week of training under Gary Bowyer would be vital in advance of Blackburn's game with Derby County tomorrow, Venky's, in their typical fashion of defying any sort of logic, saw fit to have Bowyer and Rovers executives Paul Agnew and Derek Shaw (yes, the Derek Shaw who was seemingly on the verge of being sacked only a few days ago) fly out to India for some sort of emergency meeting with the owners. Naturally it would have been far too much of an inconvenience to actually fly to England to hold these talks. They apparently hate the weather, anyway.
One can only ask just what of any value might have been discussed in these meetings at such a critical juncture of not only the season but also Rovers' very life in the second division, and Paul Agnew only offered up the most vague and euphemistic of insight into this dialogue in an interview with the Lancashire Telegraph. Why would Rovers fans expect anything less from someone attached to the hierarchy at the club at this point?
As things stand, any hopes of survival in the Championship solely reside with what Gary Bowyer can do with a squad that has under-performed for most of the season and is in a bit of a patchwork state at the moment. Six games remain, though current form would leave most to wonder exactly where a win is going to come from. Maybe Rovers are due to win solely by accident, as can happen from time to time in this crazy game.
Over the course of these remaining games, we can rest assured of one thing: Venky's will be sitting cozily in Pune all the while, playing their role of Nero as Rome burns.
No comments:
Post a Comment