[Archived] Rumour: Venky's To Sell?

[bob fleming]

Re BOLD

Im sorry but thats rubbish and its also disingenuous and a tad bit patronising.

1. I dont believe any Rovers fan thought that suddenly, as if my magic, there was a massive upturn in the amount of spare cash coming into the club just because the ownership changed. Every fan knows that Rovers burn cash and the only way to balance that was with player sales.

The early stories were about Venkys supposed business model of buying young talented players through Kentaro's links and selling them for profit.

2. Obviously, in order to sell these players off for big profit Venkys would have to dig into their own pockets as Rovers coffers were dry.

Every fan knew this. So, logically, for the Venkys to put their reported business plan into action they would have to stump up the initial investment.

3. The majority of fans took this assumption at face value, because at the time why shouldt we? It was the very early stages of their ownership and they hadn't broken everything by that point.

Re Italics

Agree totally, now. But its only the last few months that anyone could 100% know this as fact. Anything before then was suggestion and supposition.

1. Nope, I'm pretty sure there have been several waves of huge excitement fueled by the mighty Venky's PR / Marketing machine. I don't remember many fans saying "Hang on just a moment nicko, who is funding all of this by the way?" - in fact if anyone did post anything remotely even advising caution they would be shot down and be accused of having an “agenda”.

We've had the Ronaldinho bid. Beckham, Kaka etc. Lately we had a meeting at Ewood of Kentaro, Pablo Bigbeak (or whatever his name was) an agent from Brazil, Philip Huber from SEM, some Venky types, Steve Kean, the landlord from the Manxman and the bloke who owns Ewoodnews. A shortlist (keep a straight face) of some 30 names was drawn up, “leaked” and most of the names can be found in separate threads in the Transfer section.

Again every Rovers fan sat around saying "Well really, this is all very well but which players are we selling to fund all this?"

A week after this list was drawn up it was thrown in the bin - according to nicko who was almost speechless by the goings on in the Big Tent. This because of the fury of Flippo the Clown at the list being leaked (what are the chances of that with all those people in the meeting?!?) or was it more to do with a sudden realisation that this really is going to get expensive? Surely not?

2. Or take a mortgage out? Sssshhh. We still don't talk about that.

3. No, they hadn't broken everything by that point. In all fairness to our Chicken / Clown Overlords Rome wasn't dismantled in a day. It takes time.

No alarm bells then after Steve Kean’s 3 week managerial trial and subsequent 2.5 year contract award because he’s “a thinker” and doesn’t get air sickness?

Nothing when John Williams left?

This is the crux of the matter. The Clowns admitted they knew nothing about football. So why not listen to those at the club that do / did? What on earth possessed them to take all their advice from one source? A source where you or I would say “Well you can hear them out but you do know that they are football agents don’t you? You do know that they have a vested interest in all this? i.e. they want some CA$H”

It’s criminally naive decision making at the very best. In fact I just don’t buy it. They just don’t care.

Premier League Fit and Proper Person Test:

Question 1: Do you have a head?

If answer is “yes” then welcome!

What about Tom Finn leaving? Seeing how everything was going so swimmingly by this point you can understand that not being a problem.

The signing of Myles “3 minutes for Aberdeen last season” Anderson didn't suggest anything untoward? The replacement of an experienced club secretary with a 27 year old (no offence here - he might be dynamite), no Club Chairman, three club Doctors have left, a Deputy Chief Exec, No Chief Exec, No sponsor (OK, OK, give it two weeks, neeeearly there now), reports or chicken binge eating taking place in the dressing rooms, no new strip in the shops (not for the first time in all fairness), season ticket sales down (well according to the barber on Bolton Road anyway), a pre season trip to India with no game as yet arranged. Several players less compared to last season including one player / nutter AWOL.

You say “now” Hemel. A lot of the above took place months ago. The long contract for Steve and the loss of Williams said all that was needed about The Venky’s. The rest is all just icing on the cake.

[PAFELL]

Interesting comment.

Very very few people run businesses in a deliberate and consciously irrational way. This is not a charge I would level against the Venky's as I think they have acted rationally within their own terms of reference.

The first thing to understand is that the personalities of the four key people are very different from each other.

In a rather masculine society, Mrs D has emerged as the number one figure. She is clearly enormously self-confident and has successfully carried on the chicken business from her father.

Mr D is in the background but carries clout.

Venkatesh comes over as a bit dim if you listen to his radio interviews.

Balaji is something else.

The set up is that all four have equal shares (look at the Venky's India shareholdings) and as a result they seem to have adopted a system of requiring unanimity in decision making because there is built-in stalemates with unbreakable 50-50s.

Balaji seems to operate on his own account and has generated significant cash independent of the family. This has helped fuel the confusion over how much they are worth which the family has been happy to ferment. Of course they are comfortable but no way are they Premier League owner rich.

This is how I believe we have got to the mess we are in today.

Anecdotally, Kentaro had been looking to control a PL club for years and had been looking for "Tim nice but dim" style owners through which to achieve their ambition. They found their targets in Rovers and the Balaji brothers who were scripted to perfection to get through the PL fit and proper and all the Rothschilds/Trust hurdles. Mr and Mrs D were all but invisible in this process of buying the club- read John Williams' words in the latest annual report.

However, Mr and Mrs D have a different agenda- they are happy for the boys to play so long as it doesn't mess with the real business and when needed they have been brutal in taking toys away- most publicly Balaji's ill-fated venture into Bollywood.

So when Mrs D found the boys had bought a football club, she had very limited knowledge of what it was they had got, believed the hype that becoming India's PL club would follow effortlessly but knowing the boys, she was going to take no risks of them wrecking the family fortune.

Without consulting anyone she imposed the rigid way of doing things that had served her so well with the chickens and immediately removed all decision making from Blackburn so her people could micro-manage Rovers in Pune.

This created a vacuum at Ewood which people like Kean and Anderson manipulated to their own advantage. Power at the club became a function of whom Mrs D listened to and as she is not in the habit of taking advice from anybody, that became an extremely narrow coterie of English courtiers re-enforcing her prejudices and making sure she remained ignorant of the reality of PL football to further their personal gain.

There was a nasty surprise in December about PL cashlow from BSkyB but that got papered over with the new Barclays mortgage which was apparently allowed to go delinquent when it expired on 30 June this year.

This unstable compromise lasted until this summer when a whole load of untrue assumptions on the part of everyone involved were tested and found wanting when it came to the real world of a major transfer window- January had been too short, the budget small (even that wasn't thrashed out until JW put his foot down on 7 January) and the cool head of JW was around even though all around him were marginalising him. The assumptions that have been exploded this summer are:

- that Venky's were really rich (Kean and Anderson)

- that Mrs D knew even the most basic things about accounting, wages, transfers, agents and contracts in the PL (Huber)

- that Mrs D had the slightest interest in being told anything about English law, corporate governance and football regulation (anybody in a managerial position at Rovers)

- that the cash Balaji had put in was family money (Kean and Huber)

- that Balaji actually has any say when the chips go down (Kean and Huber)

- that Mrs D has any interest in any promises, systems or processes put in place other than her own say so (Huber)

- that PL football is as simple as chicken feed and that the money needed for cup winning, European qualification and market domination was about £10m a year for everything (Mrs D)

- still to be exploded completely is the assumption that running a PL club without local management is a feasible proposition (Mrs D). Rovers are still falling apart.

Hence the series of car crashes all through this summer. This is why stories (particularly from Nicko) were completely true when they were written and are looking absolutely risible now.

As I say, the decisions taken have been rational based on the knowledge and experience that Mrs D (and it is primarily her) chose to have at the time she took each one. The brutal realisations she must have gone through in the last month or so culminating in the rumoured firing of Kentaro must mean she is now regretting ever having allowed her brothers so much leaway on this project.

The catalogue of errors is so huge than any rational person would take any half-decent offer and get out now.

So to a certain extent, venkys have also become victims as well as the club. Others have advised venkys wrongly, snidely for their own advantage. appears to be a sad situation all around.

I really hope for all concern that Mr & Mrs D talk sence to the brothers and convince them it is time to sell. Get back what we can and move on. But the likelyhood of this happening - well who knows.

[imy9]

That is a fantastic story Phillip.

Now how much of that can you prove? Yet you write it as fact, and here I was thinking people can change.

[Teacup]

Thanks for the post philipl.

Without consulting anyone she imposed the rigid way of doing things that had served her so well with the chickens and immediately removed all decision making from Blackburn so her people could micro-manage Rovers in Pune.

I never looked at it like that before. However that does explain so much.

I just hope this situation is sorted soon so we can all move on.

[Kelbo]

That is a fantastic story Phillip.

Now how much of that can you prove? Yet you write it as fact, and here I was thinking people can change.

OK, how can you prove Jesus existed? the gospels ascribed in the bible were not written by the supposed scribes and were written years after the event.

I mention this for in state schools, RE is taught as part of the national curriculem!

[chaddyrovers]

Thanks for that Philipl. Very interesting things there.

So the current owners didn't have a clue to what they were getting into and now they have found out how much money it takes to run a football club, they have made cutbacks to the club now!!!

Do we have money to spend this summer? probably not now. Probably looking for free's and loan signings now.

I still surprise that the Walker's trust and family sold the club to these owners. Clearly now the walker's family must now regret selling the club to Venky's because we haven't move on as a club and we have lost key members of the board like JW and TF plus SA as manager.

So, Kentaro have now been fired as advisors to the current owners now then?

Where does this leave Kean as manager? surely he can not be happy with the way things are at the club with no money to spend and the club not going forward and no Huber/Anderson at the club to support him and talk to the owners.

[philipl]

That is a fantastic story Phillip.

Now how much of that can you prove? Yet you write it as fact, and here I was thinking people can change.

I can back up all of it.

[chaddyrovers]

I trust that everything Philipl is telling us and is true.

[imy9]

OK, how can you prove Jesus existed? the gospels ascribed in the bible were not written by the supposed scribes and were written years after the event.

I mention this for in state schools, RE is taught as part of the national curriculem!

Jesus existed as numerous sources other than the bible state it, Eesa as he is refered to in Islam.

The entire post by Phillip is guesswork, say its that and no issue but sheesh...after the last few months surely lessons should have been learnt?

[tony gale's mic]

I personally never bought the line that we were well run before. The huge increase in Sky money went on wages AND we ran up a further 20 million overdraft AND we sold our best players to pay the dross who are paid to much to be moved on. That is not my definition of a well-run business. There was nowhere for a new owner to go, rich or not, idiotic or not, other than shovel in money they would never see again.

That's absolute rubbish. You continually try to compare the business of running a football club to other types of businesses and it's an utterly redundant comparison.

We WERE well run before. We had little option but to spend that much money on wages so we could compete with our peers. I guarantee that at almost every club that huge increase in Sky money went on wages. The only difference being that other clubs' revenue streams are much more than ours; their gate receipts, sponsorship and money ploughed into the club by the owners was a hell of a lot more than what we were getting.

But even with that, our debt levels compared to some of our peers (eg Bolton) was minimal, and compared to clubs like Sunderland we had zero money ploughed into our club by rich owners. And the number one test of how you judge how well a football club is being run is by the results on the pitch. We were on course for our fifth top ten finish in six years (the only exception being when we appointed Ince, and even that season we showed top 10 form from December onwards) until Venky's started going absolutely crazy. How many clubs with our revenue streams achieved anything close to that in the same period of time?

Zero.

[Teacup]

Philipl, do you have any idea how long it would take new owners to turn the club around to get it into a position where players can be brought in? Could we (in theory) be sold on, sorted out and bringing in players before the window closes? Or is there not a realistic objective any more with the time left?

If we are not sold on, what is Mrs. D likely to do next? Will she continue to to fund the club while actively looking to sell us? Will she cease all funding and just let us get micro-managed until everyone decides to sell and just accept any offer? Will she make sure we are sold to people who can fund us and not put us in this same situation again?

Ultimately it appears as if we are going to be sold on, if it isn't this window, what is the most likely happen?

[neekoy]

Jesus existed as numerous sources other than the bible state it, Eesa as he is refered to in Islam.

The entire post by Phillip is guesswork, say its that and no issue but sheesh...after the last few months surely lessons should have been learnt?

The bit about jesus is rubbish, he is not metioned anywhere in history accept for hearsay accounts, and if you are trusting the bible and the koran for historical accuracy then you do have a problem. For a man so popular across not one person ever wrote about him during his lifetime

The 2nd bit though I half agree with, it is still conjecture, haven't we all become a bit tired of it all now though anyway? Who really cares anymore?

[funny-old-game]

I can back up all of it.

philipl,

Thanks for your insight.

How do you think this will pan out.

[rogerjonesgloves]

I can back up all of it.

Just like you did with Ali Syed!

[philipl]

philipl,

Thanks for your insight.

How do you think this will pan out.

In the nature of these things, the sale is going to look very uncertain/unlikely until virtually the moment it is announced. I am not putting any %ages on it not least because there might just be an Indian concern talking to Venky's over in Pune which could be a more attractive exit to Venky's than the Bugshans.

If we are sold, it is a huge leap into the unknown.

If we are not sold, we will be relegated this season

... you asked my opinion.

[cn174]

If we are sold, it is a huge leap into the unknown.

If we are not sold, we will be relegated this season.

Great options we have

[funny-old-game]

If we are sold, it is a huge leap into the unknown.

If we are not sold, we will be relegated this season.

Do you have any info on potential buyers and if they are proper football people?

[BangkokRover]

If we are not sold, we will be relegated this season

Off we go to Lets Make Lots of Money

[rogerjonesgloves]

The bit about jesus is rubbish, he is not metioned anywhere in history accept for hearsay accounts, and if you are trusting the bible and the koran for historical accuracy then you do have a problem. For a man so popular across not one person ever wrote about him during his lifetime

The 2nd bit though I half agree with, it is still conjecture, haven't we all become a bit tired of it all now though anyway? Who really cares anymore?

Actually there are Roman texts that mention him, however local Hebrew texts refer to various characters who may or may or not be Jesus. The real question is who he actually was. Most of the stuff suggesting he was son of god etc came centuries later. Very little being written at the time is not surprising given the oral tradition of history and limited literacy amongst the majority.

Here endeth the lesson.

Yes I can back this up but like philipl I'm not going to.

[chaddyrovers]

In the nature of these things, the sale is going to look very uncertain/unlikely until virtually the moment it is announced. I am not putting any %ages on it not least because there might just be an Indian concern talking to Venky's over in Pune which could be a more attractive exit to Venky's than the Bugshans.

I guess that person is the guy who have shares in QPR and did a good job there and fans like the way he run the club.

[philipl]

Do you have any info on potential buyers and if they are proper football people?

They don't list football in their profile but then neither did Abramovich before buying Chelsea or Sheikh Mansoor before buying Man City.

[yeti-dog]

Great options we have

Jeez...don't slash your wrists just yet.Remember this is just Philip's opinion.

Opinions are like arseholes,we've all got one.

[cn174]

Jeez...don't slash your wrists just yet.

lol don't worry I'm not, I was just saying!

[Alan75]

Great options we have

Just like team selection - with the current squad I cant see where the goals are coming from.

And if we also lose Samba, any injuries / suspensions to an already depleted defence I dread to think of the consequences.

Talking of injuries - do we have a club doctor now or are we relying on the NHS.

Back on topic.Excellent posts from Paul and Philip.

[BangkokRover]

They don't list football in their profile but then neither did Abramovich before buying Chelsea or Sheikh Mansoor before buying Man City.

The Bugshan family