[Archived] October Review

[bob fleming]

October Review

OK a little early but what the heck....

Hello and welcome Black.

“We crawl on our knees towards our doom!!” For Eric wasn’t everyone’s number one choice. Certainly not poor old Johnny’s anyway.

Into October we go.

Monday 1^st October - Rovers had just drawn away with Charlton if you remember. Oh and Steve “Dignity” Kean had resigned on the eve of that very match.

Details were unclear as to what exactly triggered the resignation (remember earlier on that Friday, Kean had told anyone daft enough to listen: “I’ll be here forever!! Mwhahahahha!!!”) but one rumour doing the rounds was that Kean needed another wee, just after the team coach had set off on its way to Stockport railway station, to get the train to Charlton Central.

With Rovers having been forced to pay well over the odds to bring Givet’s all-important beard of magic powers back on loan from Huddersfield Town, they now had to make sacrifices. And that didn’t just mean chickens. They now had to travel on a coach without a toilet. The horror.

Despite the coach having been on the move for only three minutes having set off from Ewood, they had to stop at the Darwen International Services on the M65.

Having to stop again on the M61 just 15 minutes later annoyed everybody immensely, as you can well imagine, particularly Global Cultural Attaché Shebbington Singh who shouted at Kean: “What is wrong with you! Can’t you just bloody hold it in man!”

Of course he couldn’t - a lack of bladder control, add that to the CV.

Global Apache Singh was absolutely fuming: “Leave him, leave him! I’m sick of him and his useless winkie, I’m not waiting any longer, drive driver drive! Go! Go!” he almost certainly didn’t shout as none of this actually happened.

Anyway, they left him behind apparently, and the rest, as they say, is made up history.

Despite the fact that he can’t finish his dessert in a restaurant, the embarrassingly pathetic results record, the alleged slander, the lies, the inability to spot a plane with his name on it at 50 foot, the invisible dog, the fans “spiked” drink, the death threats from the postman (come on, if there really were any, and I don’t believe there were for a second, if anyone, it must have been the postman. 500 letters a day?!? You can only push someone so far…), the dreadful football and being the most disliked manager since Sam Allardyce…

Kean quit. Resigned. Just like that.

‘Cause he needed a wee.

Tuesday 2^nd October - So the speculation began, or should that be continued, for it had already started hours after Captain Slackbadder had thrown his ticket in.

Names frivolously tossed around included: -

Sherwood, Shearer, Hill, Berg, Davies, Redknapp (H), Ballardini (Who?), McCarthy (Michael not Benedict), Freedman, Holloway, McCall, Daum, Antic,Tugay, Black, Appleton, Robinson (K), Rangnick, McKinley, Flitcroft, McLeish, Keegan, Curbishley, Solskjær, Grayson, Clemente, Reid (P), Sousa, Schuster, Larsson, Ali (J), Ali (G), Klinsmann, Hitzfeld, Hendry, Benitez, er, Ince, Keane, Sven Gordan Eriksson, Trapattoni and probably Luca Toni.

Trapattoni: shortly before declaring an interest in working for Venky’s.

Rovers obviously needed a thinker, a hard worker, a very good man who worked long hour, someone who had a friendly wife. Hmmm. This could prove problematic….

Wednesday 3^rd October – Nottingham Forest 0 Rovers 0

Enough of all this new manager talk. Football. That’s what it’s all about. Football, and winning, and playing well. Promotion! As someone or other once said before quitting: "We have one goal: promotion. It is our focus; it is our drive; it is our determination."

It was back to the nitty gritty, the bread and butter, the meat and two veg, that is commonly known as “The Championship”.

Eric Black took charge of the team again. Givet had recovered after picking up a nasty looking “not in the right frame of mind” at Charlton. This was presumably brought on by having to play next to Bradley Orr Scott Dann.

Rovers played out a dull nil - nil. The first such score line in living memory. Not a bad point? How the hell do I know? We’ll find out at the end of the season won’t we?

Saturday 6^th October – Rovers 0 Wolverhampton Wandererers 1 (Someone or other)

Poor. Really poor. Not good enough again. Alarmingly mediocre.

Three and a half thousand more fans turned up to support their team though.

Danny Murphy showed all the mobility and drive of a 37-year-old. Jordan Rhodes was starved of any service whatsoever. We were flat. Bereft of ideas.

As a distraction, and it really wasn’t hard to be distracted from the fare on offer, there was talk before the match of a major story hitting the press the following day. It didn’t happen. No one knows why.

However, it was confirmed that Kean’s contract actually expired in 2016 and could have been worth (had promotion been achieved – OK, so it wouldn’t have been) £14.9m to him. Absolutely unbelievable.

This somewhat made his decision to walk away even more strange. I wonder what it could all be about?

Monday 8^th October - Cultural Global Attaché The Shebinator Singh appeared on Sky Sports News and said that they’d hope to have a short list drawn up by Thursday 11^th. “A short list”. Not “a long list”. Just a short one.

How long does it take to write up a “short list”? Not long I can tell you. “Milk, bread, bacon , eggs”. There, done. That took me what, 5 seconds? This lot? Kean had walked out ten days previously. Now there was talk of crafting a “short list” of potential managers. Hopeless.

Tuesday 9^th October – More or less irrelevant local club Bolton Wandererers sacked their manager Owen Coyle. The “short list” was in tatters, all the painstaking hard work was ruined.

Many now held the belief that we wouldn’t be able to find a new manager at all. Kean came straight in as joint favourite for the Rovers job along with a couple of those reporters from Sky who stand outside Stoke City’s ground in the rain on transfer deadline day.

Still, there was no great rush.

Wednesday 10^th October – Quite incredibly, and presumably with a straight face, Shebby Singh revealed that “the club want a Manager who could be groomed into England’s answer to Mourinho”.

I couldn’t see that being much of a problem although maybe the club would have to put an advert in the Blackburn Citizen. I expected this to happen sometime over the next three or four weeks / months or maybe even years. As for who had the knowledge and experience to do this magical “grooming” at Blackburn Rovers for the next Mourinho…?

Tumbleweed: Demonstrating the lack of answers to the blooming grooming question.

Also on this day, Trapattoni denied all knowledge of being interested in the Rovers job. “What?? I’m 73 for Heaven’s sake? Are you trying to finish me off?!?” he almost certainly thought if asked.

Friday 12^th October - I nipped out for a pint.

Monday 15^th October – Well I’m not quite sure what happened there. Anyway, there were no Rovers games that weekend that I could recall. This could be down to the International break.

Talking about nothing happening, the efforts to recruit a new manager for Blackburn Rovers Football Club were now, as if by magic, rapidly moving into first gear (or at least somewhere between neutral and first).

Just seventeen days after Slackbladder had fallen on his sword, the Lancashire Telegraph revealed that Rovers might, if they’d nothing else on and there was nothing on TV, ask Blackpool if they can speak to Ian Holloway.

Tuesday 16^th October – It rained quite heavily.

In other news, a man who used to sit around at Brockhall being injured, signed for Melbourne Heart. Or did Vince Grella sign a heart from Melbourne? That would make more sense, it’s just the rest of him that’s knackered now.

As for a new manager? Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all. Yawn.

Thursday 18^th October – Sherwood was clearly the number one preferred option but Rovers gave the impression that they couldn’t even see the forest for the trees.

The Telegraph stated that Rovers may now turn their attention to Option B. Whatever the hell that was. Unless Option B was doing nothing – in which case they were well on top of it.

Friday 19^th October – and nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all.

However, just when you thought things couldn’t get any more surreal, it dawned on me that there was now a man in power at Brockhall with a comedy ‘tache walking up and down with SS on his jacket.

Par for the course really.

Saturday 20^th October – Derby County 1 Rovers 1 (Robinson / Rhodes)

A ha! A football match. I remember these vaguely. Not that I went. Instead it was the pub and an attempt to break the record for running down my phone battery trying to keep up with the game on BRFCS, Twitter, and that footy app thingy. It would be cheaper just to go I reckon.

Jordan Rhodes scored again, with a well-placed shot into the corner. Rovers played well I believe in the first half but the old frailties emerged again and Derby equalised with just two minutes to go through Robinson whose shot went in off Robinson.

A frustrating result, then and our slide down the table continued. Oh for those halcyon days of Kean, eh? (Yes, believe me, that was sarcasm.)

Monday 22^nd October – The new manager. The new ruddy manager. How much longer now? What are they doing? Could it be Alan Shearer? Possibly but that rumour changed within a matter of minutes as Sky Sports News (aka the Jerome Anderson acting clinic) revealed that Rovers had had an approach for our ex-injured midfielder Billy McKinley rejected by Fulham.

Elsewhere it was reported that Global Cultural Apache Shebbington-Upon-Singh had told someone on the way to the railway station after the Derby match that a new manager would be in place before Wednesday on Wednesday.

I’m sure, if you think back, you can imagine everyone’s complete surprise therefore when Balaji Rao told a stunned / totally uninterested audience on day 12 of the “Today’s Chicken Plucker” Conference in Las Vegas that it could be as long as another two weeks before an appointment was made.

This delay may or not have had something to do with him trying to distinguish between his arse and his elbow.

Meanwhile a theory started doing the rounds, like Groundhog Day, that maybe we were waiting for Ole Gunner Solskjær? Who maybe didn’t want to disrupt the title aspirations of crack pot Norwegian outfit Molde? Or were Venky’s looking to grow some mould in a laboratory in Pune and turn that into our new manager? Potentially cheaper? Who can tell anymore?

(By the way – if we did at some point before the end of time appoint Solskjær would it be another first for Rovers? The first manager in the English leagues to have two letters stuck together? Kind of like a grammatical Siamese twin. Someone will know. Probably John Motson. That’s those crazy Norwegians for you though. Bonkers.)

Wednesday 24^th October – Rovers 1 Sheffield Wednesday 0 (Hanley)

A win. A home win! Rovers took the game to Wednesday from the off, playing some fantastic football along the way. Hanley took the lead after great work from Dunny on the left wing, after just 5 minutes. Hanley stroking the ball home from 5 yards like the predatory werewolf (just thank God it wasn’t a full moon) we all know and fear. Then after about 25 minutes it all went back to normal. Dunny went off injured. We rode our luck. CKR decided to walk around for the duration of the second half and Martin Olsson went presumably lame.

Also on this day, Rovers took out an advert in the Clitheroe Advertiser for the “next Mourinho” to make himself known.

Thursday 25^th October – Harry Redknapp blah blah blah.

Global Nutcase Singh appeared on Sky Sports and went on a bit. Jason Brown basically told him he was talking out of his hat. For a Global Advisor working for Blackburn Rovers Shebby sure doesn’t know much about the club does he?

“Shebby – the owners promised that the club would be in the top five of the Premier League?” “That was before my time, ha ha ha!”.

“Shebby, you’re looking to recruit a new manager and yet Venky’s had a perfectly good one in Sam Allardyce?” “Yes, up to seventh in the Premier League, but that was before my time, ha ha ha!”.

“Shebby, it’s quite obvious that between them, Venky’s would struggle to run a bath let alone Blackburn Rovers…” “Yes, but that was before my time, ha ha ha! – hang on, what was that…?”

Friday 26^th October – Short list, interviews, rumours. Nothing happened.

Saturday 27^th October – Rovers 1 Watford 0 (Rhodes)

It’s ever so slightly better. There’s an inkling of a method. Obviously the defence has tightened up. Jordan Rhodes scored in the 90^th minute, a great bit of play from him with his “quick feet” to give himself an angle to shoot into the corner of the net through the defenders legs. Great work.

Monday 29^th October – Could this really at last be “The end game” of the manager hunt? Henning Berg due to be interviewed? Redknapp? McLeish? Past caring anymore? Possibly, I’m sure some of the applicants definitely are.

Will we be here at the end of November waiting? I sincerely hope not.

So who is going to get it? No one is saying. Not even ‘Arry.

Rovers:

Played: 13

Goal Difference: +5

Points: 23

Position: 5th (5 points from the top, 2 points from second)

Top Goalscorers:

Rhodes: 5

Gomes (N): 4

Hanley, Rochina & CKR: 2

[DE.]

Great stuff Mr Fleming, as always.

[old darwen blue]

Class Bob as usual

[philipl]

Great stuff.

Of course not half as funny peculiar as the real life story of those everyday idiots at Rovers.

[Neil Weaver]

Another masterpiece Bob (despite the lack of New Order lyrics, maybe next month you might be able to say I used to think that the day would never come. Then again it could be next year.)

[CrazyIvan]

Again, a great read. I spotted the Del Amitri lyrics though!

[Majiball]

well done Mr Fleming.

[Amo]

The rest of the review doesn't matter. Anything that opens with Johnny 'Nice' Painter is instant win.

'What shall we do with father, mother? Fold him like a ticket and poke him in a hole!'

[Stuart]

Excellent Bob. Made me chuckle that.

I don't know how I found the strength!

[Ozz]

Needs a couple of people to voice the audio book.

[braddock]

Funny stuff but you should have waited until the end of the month so you could include the new manager stuff (presuming it's announced today).

[bob fleming]

Funny stuff but you should have waited until the end of the month so you could include the new manager stuff (presuming it's announced today).

Awfully sorry to have let you down braddock.

[braddock]

Awfully sorry to have let you down braddock.

It's just it will be weird starting next months review (which I look forward to reading) with Octobers press conference in which Shebby makes wild claims and twitches his Gadaffi tache.

[moerpho]

Brilliant stuff once again, mr. Fleming!

[1864roverite]

A bright light amongst the darkest of days as a Rovers fan. Congrats Mr Fleming.

[Glenn]

Always top notch!

[den]

Some of the best stuff on the 'net Bob.

Never miss it. Very satirical.

[Rover95]

Excellent stuff as usual . Makes me laugh out loud.

Can I cheekily suggest an update on the last couple of days. Fitting that this latest saga should come to an end on Halloween

We could have poll on whether we'd like part 2.

[colin]

Eric Black took charge of the team again. Givet had recovered after picking up a nasty looking “not in the right frame of mind” at Charlton. This was presumably brought on by having to play next to Bradley Orr Scott Dann.

Sir, I tip my hat to you for that one.

[seanc88]

"a lack of bladder control, add that to the CV." Just superb

[booth]

"However, just when you thought things couldn’t get any more surreal, it dawned on me that there was now a man in power at Brockhall with a comedy ‘tache walking up and down with SS on his jacket."

Google images is a goldmine.

[den]

[bob fleming]

Class booth!!

[booth]

Can't take the credit for it, looked on google and there it was.