A question that sometimes is asked is "why do wolves howl at the moon"? The answer is that they don't. They howl at night because the conditions permit sound to travel further. It is not directed at the moon because that would be a lesson in futility. Rather like football fans believing that club owners are influenced by their complaints. The only time owners take notice of the fans is when they fear the fans will stop attending and lower their income stream. Welcome to Blackburn Rovers, the club where even that rule does not apply. The owners have contrived to lower a healthy level of season ticket holders to just four thousand full priced tickets. Which means nothing to them. They have employed two men, Suhail Pasha and Steve Waggott, to manage the situation. They tell them how much they need to keep the club running and the pair simply divide that by the anticipated number of season ticket holders and arrive at a price for the ticket. Their business acumen in growing the number of fans to avoid the price exceeding affordable levels in a depressed catchment area is best demonstrated by the close season just passed. After avoiding relegation with the last kick of the season, losing a manager who clearly could not work with broken promises, playing some of the worst football seen for some time and achieving some of the worst results and finally selling star players who they replaced with cheap replacements, the dynamic duo anticipated an increase uptake of season tickets of ten per cent. They thought the £30 reduction on offer for a very limited time would have made fans forget what had preceded it. Explaining the realities for the average fan is the equivalent of howling at the moon. Any attempt to explain that legacy support disappears each season will never reach Pune. Suhail and Waggott are employed to produce a level of income from spectators. They have no commitment to the club other than their employment contracts. They have no reason to anticipate how few supporters will remain in the forthcoming years.
In some ways history is repeating itself. When John Lewis lost control of the club because it became a limited liability company and he had not the wealth to match Richard Birtwistle and his friends, he fought a long campaign to ensure that the views of the fans (the small shareholders) were taken into account.
His campaign was continued between the wars, mainly by Alderman Brierley, but even bringing in the big guns like Harry Chippendale, John Charley, I.P.Campbell and Alderman Porter, failed to bring them any platform for their views to count. It did not change until 1966 when Derek Barnes challenged the board. He lost but co-opted on the board was Bill Bancroft, who eventually became chairman and was the first director that realised that he needed to communicate with the fans and take on board their opinions. It was a template that lasted until the Venky's takeover in 2010, when any belief that the views of the fans mattered were totally destroyed by their continued support for Steve Kean, probably the most pernicious influence ever seen at a football club.Many of those who protested at the time, have drifted away, defeated by the continued lack of any meaningful input that might arrest the club's decline. Some remain, clinging to the wreckage like survivors of a shipwreck, convincing themselves that WATR, or the Fans' Forum or an invitation for coffee with Waggott will produce change. They won't. These are devices used by the club to mollify and silence dissent, easier to deal with than organised protest marches along Jack Walker Way. Those who think a chat over coffee and biscuits will enable their views to be taken on board will leave as defeated as those banner waving marchers. You cannot reach disinterested owners, nearly five thousand miles away. You are just howling at the moon.
