Inside Blackburn's slow and painful demise under Venky's
After an afternoon of gale force winds and driving rain in South Wales, it was a bedraggled and rather resigned band of 200 Blackburn Rovers fans who gathered in Swansea’s away end on Tuesday night to see if their side could improve on a run of one win in 12 games.A group of local youths found an adjacent spot from which they could taunt them with a rendition of ‘You’re s*** and you know you are’ - but given the dark humour which has taken hold among Rovers fans these past months, this abuse didn’t really land. ‘Yes? Your point being…?’ was the gist of the Lancashire contingent’s response.When Mathias Jorgensen equalised for Rovers, the hardy contingent offered, ‘How s*** must you be? We’ve scored a goal’.It wasn’t the fragile young Rovers side’s 3-1 defeat which consumed the fans, as they trudged away to contemplate the five-hour drive home, but the sense that their club is without direction or purpose; presided over by absentee Indian owners Venky’s who, for reasons known only to themselves, are unwilling to sell.‘I want someone to own the club who feels the pain we feel when we lose,’ says Ian Herbert (no relation to this reporter), a fan who rode the magic carpet of the Jack Walker years, including the Premier League title of 1995, and now hosts the 4000 Holes Rovers podcast. ‘If that owner is a guy from Blackburn with the right intention who’ll put in £10,000 a year, I don’t care if we’re two divisions down, playing a derby against Accrington Stanley.’ Almost apologetically, Jamie Hoyles of the Rovers Trust agrees. ‘League Two football with proper owners would be better than this.’ Boss Valerien Ismael cuts a dejected figure as his Blackburn Rovers side slump to another defeat away to Swansea City in midweek Blackburn have now won just one of their last 13 games and are sliding towards relegation It's been a miserable decade and a half for Rovers supporters under the ownership of Venky's. Here fans protest against executive Suhail 'Pasha' SheikhThe reasons why this view prevails among many fans was written through Ewood Park, the day after that Swansea defeat. It is an unloved place in need of something as fundamental as a pressure wash for its green-stained exterior brick walls, someone to weed the block paving stones and to attend to some of the rusting steel structures. The bronze statue of Walker - ‘Man of the People’ proclaims its plinth - has also seen better days.These symbols of disrepair and others, including the cursed drainage system which caused the home games with Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday to be abandoned mid-match this season – have brought fans to such despair that a planned boycott of the home game with Watford is planned this weekend.In truth, they long since started voting with their feet. A Freedom of Information request tabled with Lancashire Police by the Blackburn Rovers Coalition (BRC), a vibrant umbrella group of supporter organisations, has established Ewood attendances as low as 7,000, from a game against Swansea in September. (You know a club’s relationship with fans is truly broken when supporter groups are asking police for such numbers.)It didn’t have to be this way. Rovers were half an hour off a play-off place when leading at Sheffield United on the last day of last season, but that hope vanished – along with much-loved defender Dom Hyam and club captain Lewis Travis, both sold this summer as Venky’s cut their costs and signed 10 players, eight of whom had never played in Britain.Fans were baffled. Just as they had been when Venky's recruited Valerien Ismael as head coach after John Eustace left for Derby following a disappointing transfer window last year. In a 15-year managerial career, Ismael has rarely stayed at a club for more than 10 months. Many Championship sides with ambition would not have kept him this long.The sense of a plan is hard to come by because Venky’s have not been seen at Ewood Park since their co-owner and matriarch Anuradha Desai, known as ‘Madam’, visited the club with her family in January 2013 and her husband was hit by a snowball as he entered the ground.‘They were determined to arrive in big limousines,’ says a source who was working for the club that day. ‘The club had just been relegated from the Premier League and we knew there would be protests, so the advice would always be to go in the back way. But she had to come in a big car and go through the front.’It was a minor setback compared with the way the Indians were ripped off by football industry grifters who saw them as a meal ticket after they bought the club from the Jack Walker Trust in 2010. ‘I saw these kinds of people at the training ground, looking for their opportunity to rip them off,’ says a staff member from that early Venky’s era. ‘I actually felt sorry for the Venky’s people. They didn’t seem to trust traditional English football people after that.’ Shaikh alongside Blackburn's former CEO Steve Waggott. Fans who brought a ‘Pasha Out’ banner into the ground claim they have been warned that they will have their season tickets rescinded if they display it again Supporters have become utterly disillusioned with their club. ‘League Two football with proper owners would be better than this,' says Jamie Hoyles of the Rovers TrustThe latest of several Indian executives to have run the club for the Venky’s, Suhail Shaikh - also known as Pasha - certainly doesn’t take prisoners, despite a benign exterior, with sources describing him delivering stinging rebukes to staff for perceived faults and slights.Pasha’s LinkedIn profile suggests he was a breakfast cereal and dog food distributor for eight years, before becoming Venky’s head of international business and, he claims, playing a part in the India company’s purchase of the club. With little experience of running a football club, he undertook a football management course in Manchester after arriving in 2024 and effectively put himself in charge, having announced that the experienced chief executive, Steve Waggott, would be leaving. Waggott has not been replaced.Daily Mail Sport’s request for an interview with Shaikh has not been accepted, which is in keeping with the low profile he maintains.He has been instrumental in the local Lancashire Telegraph being banned from Ewood Park after a tweet stating that he had prevented the paper from interviewing director of football Rudy Gestede. The paper has not published anything particularly offensive about the club, though Rovers deemed the tweet ‘personal’. So the media organisation best placed to explain the club’s actions is ostracised.Fans who brought a ‘Pasha Out’ banner into the ground say they have been ordered not to do so again. ‘People took pieces of paper spelling out the same message,’ says Katie Hull of the BSC.She and others describe a club desperately needing football experience and intelligence. Head of academy, Stuart Jones, left last May after 13 years, to seek ‘new opportunities’. Head of recruitment John Park left his role after just five months. Director of football Gregg Broughton also left, replaced by Gestede, who appears to have no credentials for the role.Fans contrast this malaise with what they now view as a golden period from 2017, when the arrival of Tony Mowbray with his experience, wisdom and no nonsense, took the club straight back up to the Championship after relegation to League One, and re-energised the place. Mowbray’s successor Jon Dahl Tomasson was also popular before he became frustrated with Venky's and left.Shaikh is very much at the hub of Ewood operation and Lancashire based. But some describe a complex power structure, with Shaikh having a direct line into co-owner Balaji Rao, Rovers co-owner and Venky’s director, which they fear can result in decisions others have taken being reversed. ‘Decision-making can be interminable,’ says one source. ‘Suhail is a fiddler. He enjoys the power but is reluctant to front up before the cameras.’ When Mathias Jorgensen equalised for Rovers at Swansea, the hardy travelling contingent chanted: ‘How s*** must you be? We’ve scored a goal’ Venky's director Balaji Rao (left) is said to be in direct contact with Shaikh. ‘Decision-making can be interminable,’ says one sourceThe environment became more challenging after Venky’s came under investigation in India over tax issues in 2023, which resulted in them having £7.3million seized, relating to money they had used to buy a hilltop luxury home near Bolton from Gary Neville in 2011.The Indian courts imposed a block on the firm sending money to Rovers, insisting that they match any money transmitted to the club with a ‘personal guarantee’ to the same amount. The need to pay the guarantee has now been removed but insiders describe how they doubted local club contractors would be paid for basic services. The contractors were paid for those services, despite the doubts.The initial £18m fee Crystal Palace paid Rovers for Adam Wharton in 2024, along with the £9m Ipswich laid out for Sammie Szmodics and the sell-on money when David Raya was sold to Arsenal, effectively covered the working capital requirements of the club during the period when the Indian tax case prevented the dispersal of funds from India.‘If Adam hadn’t been sold, my fear was that the club would have been at risk of administration,’ says Herbert.Blackburn is divided about this weekend’s proposed boycott. Those in favour form a majority, yet others don’t feel angry enough to disrupt their Saturday routine. ‘If people want to go to the match, that’s totally their right and they’re entitled to it,’ says Hull. 'This is the way to tell Venky’s that we don’t want their ownership and that we are prepared to do all we can to help them sell,’ adds Glen Mullan of the BRC. Many fans were disappointed by Rovers hiring Ismael last February - the Frenchman has rarely stayed at a club for longer than 10 months in his 15-year career Blackburn is divided about this weekend’s proposed boycott. Those in favour form a majority, yet others don’t feel angry enough to disrupt their Saturday routineIn a statement, Rovers told Daily Mail Sport: ‘The club recognises and respects the strength of feeling among sections of the fanbase and understands that supporters care deeply about the future of the club.‘However, at this crucial stage of the season, we firmly believe the team needs the full backing of its supporters, as we look to overcome what has been a challenging run of results. The club remains committed to working constructively with supporters and values their passion.’Venky’s are not rogue owners, transparently dismantling the club in a way that provokes a public backlash which might force them out. They put in their estimated £15m annual funding, keep the club afloat, and otherwise don’t seem to notice a club which quietly dropped into the relegation zone this week.It is the club’s 150th anniversary season and it should be a joyous one, but Rovers are diminishing in plain sight and in Blackburn, the overwhelming emotion is sadness. ‘It feels like death by 1,000 cuts,’ says Herbert.
