Blackburn Rovers blog: Ewood will always be Ewood to me (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Blackburn Rovers blog: Ewood will always be Ewood to me

3:40pm Tuesday 23rd November 2010 in John Myles By John Myles, Blackburn Rovers fan columnist

Blackburn Rovers blog: Ewood will always be Ewood to me

It was good to be able to usher in the new Boll-Ewood era with a victory, especially against a team wearing claret and blue.

The welcome given to new owners, the Rao brothers, was warm and genuine, but it was also good to hear the fans pay tribute to Jack Walker and I suspect that is a tradition that will continue for some time.

Other familiar features surrounding our club may not survive the new regime, of course.

It seems likely it will only be a matter of time before the ground is renamed and while I, as a football traditionalist, would not welcome that, it is a price I am prepared to pay if the commercial benefits will be used for the good of the team.

It’s just a pity there’s already a Walkers Stadium as otherwise we could have done a deal with the crisp company and named it after Uncle Jack.

Whether it’s going to be officially named The Venky’s Stadium or The KFC Arena, it will always be Ewood Park to me and I suspect most other fans.

Venky’s chairman Anuradha Desai wants to find the football equivalent of cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar in her home country and bring him to Blackburn.

We’d all say amen to that, but is it realistic to expect a country ranked 133rd in the world by FIFA, where last season the team who finished third in the Indian League, Mahindra United, disbanded because hardly anyone turned up to watch their games, to produce a player capable of being a Premier League star?

If it ever happens, it’s not going to be overnight, that’s for sure. In the meantime, we’d rightly resent any Indian import who was picked for their commercial worth rather than purely on football ability.

So we visit Old Trafford in good spirits next week and despite United being the only unbeaten team in the Premier League I believe we can approach this game with a realistic hope of giving a good account of ourselves and possibly getting at least a draw.

We will need to cut out the individual defensive lapses that plagued us at Tottenham.

With Morten Gamst Pedersen in such scoring form at the moment, what price a repeat of his double a few seasons back which was the last time we won at the Theatre of Dreams?

It will undoubtedly be interesting for our new owners to experience Old Trafford, but I suspect they may be just as interested in the commercial setup as the football on offer.

So long as they realise that us lot are more pie and peas than prawn sandwiches, they won’t go far wrong.

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