The Rovers Return

It’s official, Rovers’ best young prospect – and probably the best thing to come from the youth setup at Ewood since David Dunn – has gone.

In a few years time, when Jones is captain of England, captain of Manchester United and unable to speak without some Daily Mirror journalist twisting his words and turning them into scandal, £16.5-million will seem one hell of a bargain.

Look at the comments on the Telegraph website, and some of the nasty things being said to the youngster on Twitter, and people have already made up their minds about who is to blame for this.

Some say the club have messed up, putting that clause in the contract, setting it too low, not doing enough to try to hang on to him. The club is not to blame.

The club will have been forced to put that clause in or a deal would not have been signed. Venky’s also apparently offered to make Jones the best paid player at the club.

Others say Jones is a traitor, a one-season wonder who owes his hometown club a debt of gratitude and a bit more respect. In some ways I would agree with this point of view.

Jones has been taught everything he knows by Blackburn Rovers. He was given a chance, took it, and became a star. However, he has played only one season in the first team and the club deserves more for giving this young chap the career he wishes to pursue. Surely Alex Ferguson would have still wanted to sign him next season?

Look at it from Jones’s point of view, though. Manchester United, I don’t care how you look at it or how much you hate them, are the biggest club in the world. They are the champions of England and almost champions of Europe. When you see terrorists or rebel forces across the world jumping around with AK47s on BBC News, at least one of them is wearing a Manchester United shirt. That’s how big they are. This is a fact.

If you want to blame anyone for Rovers losing their hottest prospect in years, blame football. This corporate money-obsessed sport has taken the Chorley lad who finally got his dream of playing for his favourite club away from us and given him to one with more wonga.

Thirty years ago, Jones would have played for us all his career. It would be his dream. Local lads wanted to play for their local sides. But who can turn down £50,000 a week? I know I couldn’t …

All the best, Phil, just remember your roots.

From Wikipedia: “Jones courted controversy in 2004 for an interview for popular sports magazine Sport-BILD. When asked whether there were gay footballers in the Bundesliga, he said ‘hopefully not.’”

NOTE: If you have tried to comment but get an error message saying “Forbidden”, I have not blocked you or anything like that. There is a problem somewhere, I can’t even leave comments myself!

Maradona, Ronaldinho, David Beckham … Who next? Sylvester Stallone – he did all right in the nets in Escape To Victory!

Whatever Balaji Rao has been taking recently, it certainly hasn’t hindered his ambition. And it seems apparent that before actually trying to strengthen the squad, he and his Venky’s pals want to bring in a big name to put their firm on the map.

That’s all well and good, but Steve Kean, whether you like it or not, needs decent squad players to strengthen a side that has been hampered by injuries and suspensions in recent weeks.

Venky’s are happy for the national media to associate their name with any international superstar, whether there’s any possibility of Rovers signing them or not, and it just smacks of real unprofessionalism.

These are people who don’t know football. They don’t know how deals are struck in the Premier League and are going about their business extremely naively.

What I will say on a positive note is that Venky’s certainly seem to have money, if they have the funds to back up these wild hopes of bringing in superstars, and these are real statements of intent that they hope to attract big names to the club.

Again, whether that is purely naive or a realistic possibility remains to be seen. Read more »

Arse + town hall steps = yeah right …

Yesterday, he announced his desire to make his loan switch to Leeds United permanent.

That’s fair enough. He’s been a loyal reserve keeper for several years since his switch from Gillingham and it must be frustrating. I’ve said in the past we should let him, and Bunn, go, and promote Frankie Fielding to the number two position. He’ll just about be old enough and good enough to take over from Robbo when he calls time on his Rovers career.

But when he throws in:

“As good a club as Blackburn are, they don’t get crowds of 25,000, even for the visit of Manchester United, so it is a privilege to be at Leeds.”

That’s when we fall out.

If Brown judges the size and quality of a club by the number of fans it gets through the door, he’s a bit short sighted.

Yes, Leeds United get bigger crowds than Blackburn Rovers. The two key words are LEEDS and BLACKBURN.

I’ve had this debate many a time and I feel like a broken record sometimes, but Leeds is a city and Blackburn is a town.

Leeds has a population somewhere in the region of 750,000 people. Blackburn has about 120,000.

Need I say more?

The fact of the matter is, Jason Brown can’t get in the side at a small town Premier League club, so he’s dropping down a level to play at a big city Championship club. Accept it lad. Ta ta.

Rovers recently had Bulgarian striker Ivelin Popov on trial from Litex Lovech.

The 22-year-old has now gone home, with Big Sam still making his mind up whether or not to sign him.

According to his Wikipedia page:

In August 2007, Dimitar Penev called Popov in the Bulgaria national football team for the friendly match with Wales. On 2 April 2009, Popov was the first goal scorer for Bulgaria against Cyprus, scoring a goal with his wiener.

Ooh err …

(Click to enlarge and look under ‘International Career’)

Spotters badge – John Chapman

Regarding any takeover, there was much excitement when Ahasan Ali Syed leaked his takeover bid to the Telegraph, prompting a number of other parties to declare their interest in buying the club.

I fear this saga will continue in this vein for a while, but hope, for the club’s sake, that one of these potential buyers is someone who has the club’s best interests at heart and can come in and secure our long-term Premier League future, and perhaps even turn us back into a top half force.

One thing is certain, any takeover will not be completed before the August 31 transfer deadline. So, were the club to get taken over, nothing would happen until at least January.

There’s no point going on and on about what a takeover means to Rovers. We’ve been there before.

We’re probably okay to stay up this season at least. But, without an injection of funds, the rest of the league will leave us behind and we will almost certainly fall into the lower leagues within about five years. Especially when Sam Allardyce packs it in.

We could have been taken over already. That is if we had had the same greedy outlook as clubs like Pompey, snatching the hand off anyone who purported to be a gazillionaire, but was actually living in a box under Darwen Street Bridge.

The good thing about our club is it is ridiculously well run, and neither the Trustees, nor John Williams, will allow the club to fall into the hands of any idiot intent on running our club into the ground then hopping back over to Saudi to forget the whole episode ever occurred.

Takeover aside, the transfer rumour mill has been in overdrive. Read more »

As I said in my previous post, a rumour emerged yesterday that Rovers had bid £2million for former England, Leicester and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, now plying his trade at Aston Villa.

It turns out the club is denying the rumour, but it hasn’t stopped people talking.

It amuses me how much one player can cause so much nationwide hatred.

On The Rovers Return’s Facebook page, I posted: “Heard this one at work yesterday but didn’t want to say anything in case Telegraph were doing something, but I see it’s hit the rumour columns today. Heskey £2m anyone?”

Here are the responses:

Duncan Miller likes this

Shaun Haworth: He wasn’t worth 2 million in his prime!!!! Let alone now..:-(

Richard Boardman: Exactly type of player alladyce will resurrect! Also will be good for niko.aslong as he doesn’t try step overs he’ll be a good signing for me.

Vicki Bell: Duh, duh, duh, duh E-mile Heskey!! His name fits into the song, so he’s fine by me!! xx

Shaun Haworth: Would rather them spend 1.5million on beattie, think he would score more goals.

Dave Walsh: oh great heskey and roberts up front just what we needed maybe we should consider buying someone that can score more than twice in the same season

Having sold Matt Derbyshire and Benni McCarthy (no great loss) we’ve been left with two recognised strikers in Niko Kalinic and Jason Roberts.

But a transfer budget of just £2.5 million has seen Allardyce struggle to get anywhere in the market.

This could force him to look at the resources he already has available. Junior Hoilett may be able to play up front, and he could use Diouf. He’s already used Chris Samba in a forward role in the past as well.

There is one other, though, in Maceo Rigters.

Remember him? He’s that Dutch lad that scored a wonder goal in the Euro under-21s against England a few years ago, then Mark Hughes signed him, only for him never to be seen again.

With the situation as it is, this could be Rigters’s last chance to make it at Rovers and in the Premier League.

He scored for us at Southport on Saturday, but he needs to be able to do it at the top level.

Rigters is one of those ever so frustrating cases of a player not living up to huge promise. Having started his career well at Dutch side Dordrecht, and going on to score six in nine for Holland under-21s, he never got going at NAC Breda and Rovers offered him a route out. Read more »

Ah the excitement of the close season. Transfer gossip. Ins and outs. Comings and goings.

Erm, no.

This has been one of the most boring close seasons of my relatively short time as a Rovers fan. You may have guessed this from the dire lack of posts on here.

It’s nobody’s fault really. The club has so little in the way of money that we can’t afford to throw money left, right and centre at any half decent-looking foreigner.

Things take time when you’ve got a transfer budget of 99p.

It always makes me laugh when you pick up the Sunday paper and we’re linked with a £5m move for whoever. No we’re not. If it’s 5p we might have a chance!

Balls to the Dindanes and the Nugents. If we can’t get anyone worth getting on our meagre budget there’s no point getting anyone at all. Stick to what we’ve got. Give Rigters a bash, or use Hoilett if we need to.

If we’re going to sign someone we may as well make it worthwhile, otherwise what’s the point.

If I’m honest, my money is on Benjani being a Rovers player by the start of the season. Read more »