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  • "The controversial owners of Blackburn Rovers, Venky's, the Indian poultry company, passed the Premier League's financial tests for club ownership easily, chief executive Richard Scudamore said yesterday. He argued that the league could not legislate for plain bad decision-making.

    Scudamore conceded that in terms of their management of relegated Blackburn since November 2010, Venky's, run by co-owner Anuradha Desai, had "messed up". But he also said they had unfailingly provided the Premier League with the financial guarantees required from every club – a safeguard put in place after Portsmouth went into administration in 2010. Venky's have taken Blackburn into the Championship, the club having finished 10th the season before they were sold by the Jack Walker family trust. However, Venky's have fulfilled the future financial guarantees and passed the owners' and directors' test.

    "I am not going to get dragged into criticising Venkys as people or as owners," Scudamore said. "They have behaved themselves as owners of clubs in terms of what we require of them."

    Scudamore met the Desai family before their acquisition of the club to get from them the necessary guarantees of funding. He also points out that former chairman John Williams and former managing director Tom Finn, who sold the club to Venky's, are "no mugs" and went through their due diligence on the company from Pune, in western India.

    The Premier League chief executive said that the Venky's approach from the start had been to cut costs and to try to run the club as close to break-even as possible, a not dissimilar strategy to that of Mike Ashley at Newcastle. "One has come off spectacularly well and the other, effectively the wheels have come off," he said. "How do I feel? I feel sorry for the fans at Blackburn because I feel sorry for any fans who are so disconnected from the people who are actually in control. I don't know any club where the fans agree with every decision the owners make but I have never seen a bigger disconnect from the start of the season in terms of what the fans wanted to happen and what was doing.

    "I will defend the fact that our rules will only take us so far. They ask are they legal? Is there anything to stop them owning the club? Is there funding in place to keep the club alive? We never test whether they have got enough money to create Premier League champions.

    "When they came along and said, 'This is the money we have got, this is our source of funds, this is where we are going to put the money and this is how much we are going to invest,' we all came away from that meeting knowing they weren't going to become champions but it's hard to say breaking even and not losing a lot of money is not a good plan."

    All potential new owners have to demonstrate to the Premier League that they have a plan for the club staying in the league and one in the event of relegation, which would appear to give the lie to the suggestion that Venky's were not aware that clubs could be relegated. The Premier League is currently in a similar period of due diligence with the Russian Anton Zingarevich, who is in the process of buying newly-promoted Reading.

    "Of course the decisions they have made and their strategy and their management clearly have conspired to relegate them but that has also been true of some very well-run football clubs," Scudamore said. "Wolverhampton Wanderers are an extremely well run football club. No debt. They have an extremely competent chief executive and chairman. The infrastructure is good. They got relegated. Jeremy Peace has run a fantastic football club at West Bromwich Albion and managed to get relegated twice.""
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Rovers bidding to retain stars

7:52am Thursday 10th May 2012 in Blackburn Rovers Relegation Photograph of the Author By Andy Cryer , Blackburn Rovers reporter

STEVE Kean has stressed that Blackburn Rovers must keep their squad together this summer as they look to take ‘one step back to make two forward’ in the years to come.

Rovers’ relegation from the Premier League was confirmed with a home defeat to Wigan on Monday and the under-fire manager has insisted that he will be staying at the club, along with controversial owners Venky’s.

And Kean says Rovers must now look to retain their key players this summer.

Asked if he feared other clubs coming in for his best players, the Rovers boss admitted: “Yes, I think they will.

“That won’t be a surprise. That’s a reality with any team.

“I was doing it myself. I was thinking a few weeks ago, ‘Who do we think is going to go down and who have they got who could do us?’ “I think that is just natural.

“Clubs will look at us and they will look at Wolves and I will be expecting there will be a lot of interest in a lot of our players.

“We are attempting to keep the majority together and build a squad that can bounce back.

“We know we have to bounce back quickly, like clubs have done. If you can keep the majority of the squad, you can probably only do that for one or two seasons.

“If you don’t get back up as quickly as possible then your players are attracted back to playing at the highest level.

“We are going to attempt short term to keep the majority of the squad. We have to make sure it is one step back to make two forward. The key is the depth and the blend of the squad, I think you can get out of the league. Our only objective now is promotion.”

And Kean is also eager to add experience – something that they have been lacking following the departure of players such as Ryan Nelsen, Brett Emerton, Chris Samba and Jason Roberts.

“We lost a lot of experience and I think that will be a big part of the recruitment prog-ramme,” said the Scot.

“If we can give the young guys we have a bit help in making sure we can assemble a squad with a bit of experience and young dynamic players, that is going to be important.”

Rovers finish their season at Chelsea on Sunday, in a game that will now mean little to either side as the Blues missed out on a Champions League place following a 4-1 defeat at Liverpool on Tuesday.

But Kean wants Rovers to end their campaign at least on a more positive note.

“We can only look forward,” he said.

“The only important game is the next one, not the last one.

“We will try to finish the season and build a squad that is really competitive in the Championship.

“Things have been very flat, a bit numb initially because we felt as though we could take it to the last game.

“We have got an honest bunch of young players, and them and the senior lads we do have left gave it everything.

“The way the team has played every game will show that our dressing room is very tight. We are disappointed but we made a fist of it and there has never been a question the dressing room has been together.”

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