[Archived] Back Or Sack?

[DE.]

Who knows? My belief is that allowing Bowyer a second season to get us up is a better alternative than allowing Venky's to pick somebody to take us up in their first season at the club. It's probably not going to end well either way but if I had to make a bet I certainly wouldn't put any money on Venky's picking a manager capable of promotion!

[Stuart]

Who knows? My belief is that allowing Bowyer a second season to get us up is a better alternative than allowing Venky's to pick somebody to take us up in their first season at the club. It's probably not going to end well either way but if I had to make a bet I certainly wouldn't put any money on Venky's picking a manager capable of promotion!

I would have agreed with you last season.

However, we are supposed to believe that with Singh and Agnew gone and with a new board in place that we are returning to the normal club mentality.

By accepting your statement above, it means that such a belief is based on a sham and, as a club, we really aren't getting any better.

On his own merit (as opposed to being the least bad option - which in itself is pretty damning) Bowyer may or may not deserve a second season. His results in the last 10 games suggest he does. However, his performances suggest he isn't the man that can get us what we need: promotion.

Feels like we are having to take things one season at a time, and hope than another one will follow.

[Black Burn]

I think the club returning to normal mentality should also apply to finances, with the boardroom dealing with the debt, cutting costs and spending, and carrying out other financial measures.

Speaking of which, I heard the key word thrown about in the club and Pune is stability, so regardless of what fans say, Venkys will most likely follow whoever's advising them right now and keep in line with stability - in other words, sticking with Bowyer. I could be wrong, though.

[DE.]

I would have agreed with you last season.

However, we are supposed to believe that with Singh and Agnew gone and with a new board in place that we are returning to the normal club mentality.

By accepting your statement above, it means that such a belief is based on a sham and, as a club, we really aren't getting any better.

On his own merit (as opposed to being the least bad option - which in itself is pretty damning) Bowyer may or may not deserve a second season. His results in the last 10 games suggest he does. However, his performances suggest he isn't the man that can get us what we need: promotion.

Feels like we are having to take things one season at a time, and hope than another one will follow.

I've never completely followed the stability mantra to the degree others have. We're a more stable unit on the pitch and in the management dugout, but in the boardroom? Not really. If Venky's had to make a big decision (a new manager) I would expect them to screw it up just like they always do. We still really only have Shelfy as the main footballing authority at the club, which pretty much says it all.

[Neal]

So effectively you want to sack the first decent, honest to goodness manager out of 4, who has improved the squad markedly simply cos you took a bit of girly offence from what I deemed inoffensive comments?

No, i'd sack based on the fact he's going to come up short with whats expected. I suppose that depends on your expectations of your football team but I feel if we don't make the playoffs then he'll have underachieved, many would agree.

IF we're lucky enough to sneak a playoff place, like I say he'll have earned the right to have another crack. I'm not saying I'd be over the moon with him staying on because i think we should be a lot higher than where we are now, again many would agree.

The comments didn't help my opinion but my feelings are based on what I've seen against, Wednesday (twice), Charlton, Burnley, Bolton, Bournemouth, Yeovil and many other performances. I accept, that this sort of opinion is in the minority, as you could tell by the way the fans chanted his name at the weekend and I've always commended his transfer business but put plainly... He's pretty much thrown away a chance of promotion this season on numerous occasions.

What I was intending to say is that I can understand him getting another season if we get into the playoffs, I could understand and accept that but we should be higher and a more experienced manager would of produced better in my opinion. Would absolutely love him to prove me wrong of course.

[Stuart]

I've never completely followed the stability mantra to the degree others have. We're a more stable unit on the pitch and in the management dugout, but in the boardroom? Not really. If Venky's had to make a big decision (a new manager) I would expect them to screw it up just like they always do. We still really only have Shelfy as the main footballing authority at the club, which pretty much says it all.

Not sure what on-field stability you are referring to. Do you mean consistency? We have been consistently average [under Bowyer] as opposed to being consistently poor [under different managers] I suppose. If next season means getting consistently good results (as Burnley have done) then it will mean progression. It just depends whether we can do so under Bowyer.

The performances I have seen make me think otherwise. I guess for those who don't attend (who seem to be Bowyer's biggest supporters) the comparative golden silence, due to lack of cirque du boardroom histrionics enabling focus to only be on football matters (and ignoring the spectre of debt), could be interpreted as 'stability' on the field. The last 10 games have seen us being harder to beat, either by design or some fortune but have also seen us monumentally @#/? up from very winnable positions due to poor performances, especially but not limited to the latter parts of games. Late in a game, a good manager will be demanding focus, concentration and professionalism, using substitutions at the right time to slow a game down or close one out - especially if a game is tight or a goal conceded has seen us at risk of dropping three points.

Bowyer seems to watch rather than direct.

I don't see him being sacked anyway so I guess we will have to wait and see.

[ABBEY]

I think the club returning to normal mentality should also apply to finances, with the boardroom dealing with the debt, cutting costs and spending, and carrying out other financial measures.

Speaking of which, I heard the key word thrown about in the club and Pune is stability, so regardless of what fans say, Venkys will most likely follow whoever's advising them right now and keep in line with stability - in other words, sticking with Bowyer. I could be wrong, though.

go on then do tell us who you know in Pune ,

[Blue blood]

I think the club returning to normal mentality should also apply to finances, with the boardroom dealing with the debt, cutting costs and spending, and carrying out other financial measures.

Speaking of which, I heard the key word thrown about in the club and Pune is stability, so regardless of what fans say, Venkys will most likely follow whoever's advising them right now and keep in line with stability - in other words, sticking with Bowyer. I could be wrong, though.

What's stable about our finances. We've still a huge bloated squad with much more expenditure than income. And it's only going to get worse. Another £8 million to find from dropped parachute payments last season - it'll take more than a few good deals on seats, and the odd waster got off the books to make up the £8 million alone, let alone arrest the current difference between expenditure than income. This season again we will have made a huge loss with payoffs, lower TV money, gate revenue etc.

And even if we do somehow miraculously balance the books (which is NOT going to happen) what about the £50 or so million debt we've already racked up and the interest payments.

Not even the most ardent Bowyer supporter can argue we're stable financially.

[Black Burn]

Misunderstanding, no, I didn't say we were financially stable, I said the finances are normalizing under the current boardroom with their cost cutting measures. That doesn't mean the 50 million debt will disappear somehow.

And the source wasn't from Pune. It was from interviews with Shaw and Bowyer regarding the debt.

About underachieving, you do realize that Bowyer practically rebuilt half the team, right? He got rid of Danny Murphy, Nuno Gomes, Morten Gamst Pedersen, the Portuguese contingent, sent Bradley Orr and David Goodwillie on loan, with 12 or more players sent on loan by January, and brought in virtually an entire team (Alan Judge, Alex Marrow, Simon Eastwood, Tom Cairney, Tommy Spur, Corey Evans, Ben Marshall, Matt Kilagallon, Craig Conway, Rudy Gestede, Michael Keane, with the latter three only coming in during January transfer window). Did you expect all these players to gel and immediately form a promotion unit within the space of one season?

And as I have pointed out with my previous post, even experienced managers need time to achieve promotion. Mick McCarthy took 2 seasons for Wolverhampton, 3 seasons for Sunderland, and even if he succeeds with Ipswich, it will be his 2nd season. Malky McKay took 2 seasons to get Cardiff promoted. If Harry Rednapp's Queen Park Rangers get knocked out of the playoffs, should Rednapp be sacked, or should he be given another season? People are expecting miracles from a rookie manager when even the experienced managers need time to win promotion. Underachieving with a newly put together squad where half of them have just only arrived in the summer?

What's worse is that some of you are expecting a challenge for promotion immediately after a season where we almost got relegated. Neal, you said many would agree with you that we would have underachieved. I don't know, I was pretty sure "experts", pundits, other Rovers fans (not from Brfcs but from other websites and networking sites) expected a mediocre mid-table finish this season, about 10th to 12th, which we've managed to achieve so far. From what I see, people are mostly surprised that we're still within a shout of the playoffs. Especially on Ewood Park's Finest Reloaded, or Vital. Even the neutrals agree, they had us down for a mid-table finish rather than challenging from playoffs. I'm not doubting your words, but I'm just saying I see a different world of expectations from my side.

People might have me down as a Bowyer supporter, but actually I'm not so much of a supporter of Bowyer than I am a supporter of not sacking. I hate seeing managers get sacked from their jobs unless he's Steve Kean. I would have given Michael Appleton or Henning Berg more time either. Well, maybe Appleton not so much because he clearly dragged us into a relegation dogfight, but I would have wanted Berg to manage longer. That's because I'm an advocate of stability and not sacking the manager, and not because I particularly like Berg or Bowyer.

Every manager has his flaws. That applies even to Jose Mourinho or Alex Ferguson. The problem is people having high expectations, and when those expectations aren't met, they blame the manager. Look at poor David Moyes. I wanted him to stay, and I think he just needed more time to put his style across. Only one team can win (or in this case, only three teams can get promoted). That doesn't mean the other 21 teams should sack their managers every summer just because they don't achieve promotion.

[ABBEY]

Black burn ,you made it sound like you was yet another ITK . Shaw interview ,must be true then .I wouldnt trust the fat little wazzock as far as i could i could throw him.

As for all the other boards and forums ...must be true then .

[John]

I've never completely followed the stability mantra to the degree others have. We're a more stable unit on the pitch and in the management dugout, but in the boardroom? Not really. If Venky's had to make a big decision (a new manager) I would expect them to screw it up just like they always do. We still really only have Shelfy as the main footballing authority at the club, which pretty much says it all.

Exactly - just because the muppets have shut up doesn't mean they know what they are doing.

[phili]

I think the club returning to normal mentality should also apply to finances, with the boardroom dealing with the debt, cutting costs and spending, and carrying out other financial measures.

Speaking of which, I heard the key word thrown about in the club and Pune is stability, so regardless of what fans say, Venkys will most likely follow whoever's advising them right now and keep in line with stability - in other words, sticking with Bowyer. I could be wrong, though.

Ok as a Director of several companies and a person who has turned around several others, let's actually start thinking as a actual well run club would think who has a board of directors, because I'm really starting to get sick of this complete myth that we have stability on and off the pitch. In reality this season stability is really the lull before the storm.

This little wake up call possibly should be in it's own thread but this is how I or most other directors would see this season and how we should be planning for the next 2.

Let's start at the beginning, the premier league created parachute payments the way they did to give relegated clubs 2 seasons to try and get promoted back to the premier league and then 2 season to get the clubs cost back in line with having to rely on the income generated by the club and a very small amount of tv money that championship clubs receive.

Like it or lump it we have had our 2 seasons to try and get promoted. Over the course of the next 2 seasons we need to get our costs down drastically.

To give an idea of what we will be looking at and what we start to budget to from this season. We can analyse Financial Fair Play to show that owners maybe able to contribute to a £3m a season loss. So in 2 seasons time reality will hit and this will be the total income which we can look at:

Match Day + Ticket Income - £3.5m

Corporate + Sponsorship Income - £1.5

TV Money - £1.5m

Sundries 0.5m

Possible investment from owners £3m

Giving us a maximum potential income of £10m. With a bit of fiddling, Venky's maybe able to rename the stadium and sponsor the team This will have to be at commercial rates for a championship team, so probably looking at maybe an additional £1-2m.

What does this equate to? Well for a start our player budget will be including all National Insurance costs, bonuses etc of £125k a week at maximum. Presently it is Presently it is around £700k.

So over the next 2 seasons what will we have to do?

Players:

There will be no new signings. We will have to sell, offload or release as many players as possible. Our Academy will need to be revamped to actually produce players for the first team whilst also producing players that other teams will want in lower divisions.

We will now have to produce players that will fill gaps in the team and at the same time have potential sell on value in order to reduce our debts. We may have to change our style of play for the Academy and the first team so that we are producing players that have attributes that premier league teams want such as Pace, Power technique and passing ability and that these players can seamlessly slot into our first team with very little change to their style of play.

We'll have to become much more adept at the loan market to fill in our deficiencies. We'd be looking at a potential first team squad of 16 players + 10 academy development players giving us a first team squad of roughly 26 players.

As we are facing a potential transfer embargo in the next 6 months, changing the academy and using it in this manner is imperative anyway.

As for the manager, who I can see being Gary purely because of his youth development prowess, we need someone who can drastically reduce the squad number, develop youngsters, mount a promotion challenge without signing any players. Who also does mind potentially losing his best players when a bid is made inorder to start to pay off our debt levels.

Commercial

Over the next 2 seasons we have got to raise income levels for our commercial and match day income. For this reason we have to spend time re-engaging with fans. We have got to get rid of fan acrimony, unite the fans and get the club back to being known and nice family club to increase commercial and sponsorship income. No business wants to be associated or wants to pay top dollar to be associated with a war zone.

If we can start to get the club back to being known as a family club we can then start to canvass local businesses and build up our corporate income. If we can just increase corporate income by 20% that will equate to increasing our player budget or possibly alleviating non player redundancies.

We'll also have to look at ways to make Ewood generate an income on none match days such as possible conference venue, concert venue etc. We have got to start getting more commercial income because at the moment the amount we get is insulting. You have to ask, why as the first club with Indians owners are Indian companies not queing round the block to associated with us?

Debt

So far all of this has not discussed the likely hood of being a £100m+ in debt by the end of the parachute seasons. For this reason we need to get used to all players being sold as soon as sensible offers are made for players and having to use the youth academy to replace them.

Summary

This season really was our best chance of promotion. Stability has been mentioned so many times that we've been hypnotised to think that is good and to not think of the consequnces. This summer Venky's will have very difficult decisions to make. With FFP, they can't fund the club by more than £8m easily without facing sanctions. If they do spend they have to get promotion. So the manager choice is very difficult, we can't really give Gary till December and see how it goes because that just means no promotion and no other option next summer than a real chainsaw approach to cost cutting.

[thenodrog]

If that's the case, isn't Bolton and Queen Park Rangers dealing with much worse debt than us? If I recall, both of them are town clubs, especially Bolton (I could be wrong about QPR though). I don't see any Bolton fans panicking about their debt, though.

Their debt is to individuals who are lifetime supporters of the club. Our owners hadn't heard of us 5 years ago.

[Baz]

I've been searching for that interview but I can't find it. I think it was after the 3-0 loss to Brighton or something, but I can't remember.

If memory serves me, Bowyer said something along the lines of "it's a young team, they're taking time to gel, it's a work in progress and we'll need at least another season before we can talk about promotion." He did say he'll try to mount a push for a top-six challenge, but I also recall him saying somewhere that he'll need at least 2 seasons to challenge for promotion. I just can't find that quote anywhere.

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/10448608._Promotion_is_the_aim__says_new_Blackburn_Rovers_manager_Gary_Bowyer/?ref=rc

Promotion is the aim - May 2013.

[DE.]

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/10448608._Promotion_is_the_aim__says_new_Blackburn_Rovers_manager_Gary_Bowyer/?ref=rc

Promotion is the aim - May 2013.

Bowyer's actual comments, just for proper context:

“I’m not going to stand here and say I am going to deliver promotion because it’s not that it’s too early,” he said. “But you saw how much it meant to Crystal Palace and the teams that got promoted, and I was always told if you are entering something you might as well try to win it.

“We’re going to try to win as many football games as we can and hopefully that will get us up the table and in and around the play-offs, and who knows then.”

[Baz]

Bowyer's actual comments, just for proper context:

And another:

http://www.itv.com/sport/football/article/2013-05-28/new-blackburn-manager-gary-bowyer-says-the-club-need-stability/

And while they finished closer to the npower Championship relegation zone (four points) than the play-offs (10) Bowyer insists promotion has to be their challenge.

"We can stand here and set targets but we'll do that with the players but ultimately everyone's dream is to get into the Premier League so that is where we aim for," he added.

"We weren't far off the play-offs and that is something we have to build on."

Im just trying to make the point that this Top 10 finish is our aim, is different to when he got the job.

[DE.]

Looks to me like he was aiming to be around the playoffs, which is basically where we are.

[Baz]

Looks to me like he was aiming to be around the playoffs, which is basically where we are.

"We weren't far off the play-offs and that is something we have to build on."

So has GB built on not being far off the play-offs last season?

[West Yorks Rover]

"We weren't far off the play-offs and that is something we have to build on."

So has GB built on not being far off the play-offs last season?

Well if we lose the next 2 games we could be 9 pts off the play-offs.

So he'd better win em then !

[Mike E]

"We weren't far off the play-offs and that is something we have to build on."

So has GB built on not being far off the play-offs last season?

Last season we finished 4pts clear of relegation and 10pts off the play-offs (on 58pts).

Currently we're 21pts clear of relegation and 3pts off the play-offs (on 64pts). Including a squad overhaul and an insistence on trying to cut spending, we've progressed very well. Top-half was what I hoped for this season and we've so far exceeded that.

[DE.]

"We weren't far off the play-offs and that is something we have to build on."

So has GB built on not being far off the play-offs last season?

As Mike just posted, it certainly seems that way.

[Tom]

Looks to me like he was aiming to be around the playoffs, which is basically where we are.

He said in and around them, we've never once occupied a top 6 spot this season and if the aim if just to be near them it's a Pretty pathetic ambition then no? Maybe it was realistic but you'd like to think we could aim for higher.

I don't think at any point this season we've looked like contenders but you never know we could sneak in

[Baz]

As Mike just posted, it certainly seems that way.

So from not far off the play-offs (his words) to a tiny bit closer, but not quite in the play-offs. I must admit to being bamboozled by peoples thoughts that this is success. I'd see it as the absolute minimum given the resources he has.

So I've pointed out that before the season started GBs ambition was promotion or to build on nearly getting in the playoffs last season, can anyone find his quotes when this 'Top 10 finish' ambition stuff was first mooted, or can we knock that one on the head? (And im not talking about the fans personal ambitions for the season)

[Kamy100]

In this morning's LT Bowyer has confirmed that he will be going to Pune at the end of the season to sort out summer transfer plans etc. For me that is a massive indication that he will not be sacked, if they were going to sack him they would not have invited him to come to Pune (they don't do face to face sackings).

[DE.]

Good to hear