[Archived] Venkys Vs Jack Walker

[T J Hooker]

Bloody hell goes without saying who the winner is there^^^

But, I've just realised that the Venkys have now owned the club for about half the amount of time(roughly 4 and half years) that mr. Walker did before he passed away, During Uncle Jacks first 4/5 years he rebuilt the Stadium, training ground and Academy, Hired a great manager and supported him fully in building a squad that got us promoted to the Premiere league and above all expectations winning the league in just 3 years. BOOM

Now in the same space of time under the Venkys ownership We've become a fading shadow of The club that Jack built.

Now are there any of you footy nerds out there that would like to try and do a sort of month by month Comparison chart of sorts that shows side by side the clubs highs and lows during the first 5 years of each owners reign, Sure it would take a fair bit of researching but it would be fascinating to see.

[bluebruce]

This contest is somewhat akin to Superman vs Forrest Gump.

[T J Hooker]

Sorry mods, if you have time can you please change the thread title to 'Venkys Vs Jack Walker (the1st 5 years-ish.)'

and then delete this post,

thanks.

(Oh! and whilst your at it can you please change my name to something a little subtler(less obnoxious) please , it was funny of you though.

[Bucksrover]

Not much discussion to be had here. But then Jack Walker against any other owner is a no-brainer

[tomphil]

It's like comparing Winston Churchill to Adolf Hitler !

[Stuart]

Maybe that's a better track for this thread: best opposites.

Like comparing Heaven and Hell.

[T J Hooker]

This contest is somewhat akin to Superman vs Forrest Gump.

totally agree with the sentiment, But even forest gump achieved some incredible things in his life(yes I know it was just a fictional film )

I think it would just be very interesting(I think ) to see in black and white the extremely opposite turn off events at the club by the 2 owners over the same amount of time.

[Mercer]

Should not be mentioned in the same breath.

IMV, that lot in Pune are not even worthy of polishing the great man's shoes.

[Proudtobeblue&white]

Nothing really to debate, they should look at the disaster they have caused, apologise and bugger off, leaving a war chest to allow us to survive.

[T J Hooker]

thanks, but i really wasn't looking for any kind of debate, just an 'interest piece' or general friendly discussion and can the totally understandable(but a little tedious and clichéd) remarks about our current owners please me kept to a min or not at all (not that i don't agree or that im defending them in anyway, its just we've heard it all before a million times)

[DavidMailsTightPerm]

Jack only made one big mistake - not investing in the squad following the title - Dalglish had some fantastic players lined up which may have seen us stay around the top for years to come.

In comparison I think Venky's have only got one thing right (possibly two at a pinch) :-

1. Continuing to fund the club when many thought they would have pulled the plug by now

2. Making GB caretaker to prevent a second relegation.

Unfortunately don't have enough time to write up their mistakes.

[T J Hooker]

i agree about your '1 mistake of jacks' although to his credit he did again invest heavily in players during kidds and hodgsons times as manager but we had just fell to far behind the pack by then and those 2 managers invested their transfer money very very poorly and we couldn't get that walker/dalglish magic back.

[tomphil]

Jack only made one big mistake - not investing in the squad following the title - Dalglish had some fantastic players lined up which may have seen us stay around the top for years to come.

In comparison I think Venky's have only got one thing right (possibly two at a pinch) :-

1. Continuing to fund the club when many thought they would have pulled the plug by now

2. Making GB caretaker to prevent a second relegation.

Unfortunately don't have enough time to write up their mistakes.

1. Continuing to amass but service debt so far...

2. Really can't credit them with that as basically they'd just run out of options and got lucky when he proved to at least have a calming influence on the team.

3. Jordan Rhodes although some will argue the money could have been better used, fair enough but his goals have been every bit as valuable as GB's contribution in helping keep our heads above water imo.

So i'll score that 1.5 out of 3, with x100 at least in the against column giving them an overall success percentage of minus 298.5

[perthblue02]

Maybe save all the Desai and Rao's ächeivements for a thread starting in November celebrating their , their friends and project partners glorious 5 years of destruction

[T J Hooker]

I cant believe Jack Walker was only in full control of rovers for 9 years and yet left such an enormous(and absolutely positive) impression, not just on our club but also on football in general in this country

[JHRover]

Interesting. A comparison between Jack Walker and Venkys yet no mention of the group of people entrusted by Jack Walker to ensure his legacy at BRFC lived on beyond his death.

In my opinion the people of the 'Walker Trust', whoever they may be, are as culpable, probably more culpable, than Venkys and even Kean for the situation we find ourselves in today.

If they had fulfilled their side of the bargain none of the last 4 years would have happened.

[Rover_Shaun]

Didn't they fulfill that bargain for almost a decade? Do you have psychological evaluations when you sell a house, a car or your old superman underpants on Ebay? How else were they supposed to know the Rao's were reckless fruitloops?

[K-Hod]

I think this might be the first thread where everyone is in total agreement.

[yoda's brother]

I think this might be the first thread where everyone is in total agreement.

not if the "plants" have their way, :lol:

[T J Hooker]

Although i agree with jh over the way the trust sold and washed their hands with the club, but i was really looking to compare the turn off events during the owners 2st 5 years at the club and if you want to add the trust to that them you have to say they did a great job in theor 1st 5 years of of runnng the club(on a modest budget as well)

[Glosrover]

Should not be mentioned in the same breath.IMV, that lot in Pune are not even worthy of polishing the great man's shoes.

With regards to running a football club, certainly. In business though? walker a self-made man, built and sold the family business, made a fortune along the way and used it to save his football club as a fan.

The raos inherit their fathers fortune, and while they have an established business to manage, they are clearly not fools, however they have been persuaded to indulge themselves on a whim into buying a football club as a fashion accessory. They dont care for it and dont know how to run it, as long as they can 'lose' the losses against tax, and borrow against assets they dont give a toss about Rovers. jack loved the club and all it stood for, he respected the directors that ran the club and put up his own money to make it better. He knew that fixed assets secured its future and that developing players was necessary to make the finacial accounts sustainable. He had a plan.

The raos dont match up as owners, as business managers or as human beings.

[K-Hod]

not if the "plants" have their way, :lol:

There are definitely some plantpots on here, if that's what you mean?

[JHRover]

Didn't they fulfill that bargain for almost a decade? Do you have psychological evaluations when you sell a house, a car or your old superman underpants on Ebay? How else were they supposed to know the Rao's were reckless fruitloops?

I understand what you are saying.

However, I believe that if we are looking at the Venkys era of destruction at this football club and the wonderful period of 1991-2000 under Jack Walker then one HAS to also consider the events of 2000-2010 whilst the club was under the ultimate control of the Walker Trust Fund.

Fair enough, nobody could have gazed into a crystal ball in 2010 and saw what was going to happen when Venkys took over the club.

However, the closest people could get to seeing what was coming were those on the trust and those in their employment, who had all the time and resources they needed to carry out thorough research and background checks into who these people were and what they had planned.

Anyone with an ounce of interest for the wellbeing of the football club would have had alarm bells ringing when a group of Indians with no interest or knowledge of football want to buy the club and are being influenced by an agent.

At the time a large section of the support base were voicing concerns about selling the club to such a group of people. If supporters had such concerns then why didn't the people who owned the club and were supposed to be long term custodians?

I don't have the details of their instructions from Jack Walker. Infact I'm sure the precise nature of those instructions are confidential. However, when Jack Walker died I clearly remember someone on the trust saying that they were to own the club long term and continue to invest money into the club.

That didn't happen. The club received investment for about 3-4 years before the money dried up and even with the Premier League income we were reliant on selling the likes of Bellamy, Duff, Bentley and Santa Cruz for profit. Mark Hughes got fed up of the lack of funds and quit. Allardyce frequently complained of having little to no money to strengthen the squad.

The club did well to remain in the Premier League because of the fantastic work of John Williams and the team he assembled at Ewood, and the good work of top managers Souness, Hughes and Allardyce. The Trust don't really deserve much credit for that. They sat back and let them get on with it but little more than that.

As early as 2007 the club was put on the market. And by 2010 we had the likes of Ali Syed and Shah trying to buy the club despite nobody having ever heard of them. I remember the footage of Ali Syed's 'team' turning up at Ewood to go through the books. Who knows how close that deal was to happening but I do wonder what would have happened had the 5 Live investigation into Syed's murky past not taken place. Would they have sold to him instead of Venkys? We then saw him soon after take control of Racing Santander and make a real mess of them.

This period of misery all began with the Walker Trust wanting shut of a club that wasn't really theirs to get rid of, and wanting shut so quickly that they couldn't care less who they let it go to or the long term implications for the Football Club and the region which it has such a vital role in. I believe that they should be held to account for their actions, yet where are they? They are happy to jet off into the sunset with £20 million for a club that wasn't theirs to sell.

They have got off lightly in all this and will continue to do so. Supporters will, rightly, direct their anger at Venkys, Kean and the others, yet I believe a huge chunk of it has to go towards the people who were entrusted to look after the club by Jack Walker and who have ultimately failed in their remit, and have so little regard for the consequences of their actions that 4.5 years after selling it we still haven't heard a peep from any of them.

[ABBEY]

some of us predicted all this from Vday 1

[tomphil]

Jack took one of his simple business rules into football and that was get the very best people for the key jobs and pay them well, the rest should follow. Things could have been different even for this lot if they'd just followed that basic principle.