One of my favourite pub conversations amongst friends, is the great imponderable as to the extent to which innate personality traits guide an individual towards a particular job, or is it that performing a role for many years shapes your personality?
From my personal perspective, most of my professional career has involved work with significant elements of planning and risk assessment (& mitigation). This has seeped into my personal life (excellent Life Hack coming up BTW...) to the extent that for instance, when packing for holidays, I insist on splitting our clothes across two suitcases, so my clothes and those of my wife are evenly distributed, mitigating the risk of losing one suitcase en route to our destination.
We’ve done this for many years now (with more enthusiasm from me in fairness) and when it finally happened and my case was left outside Caffe Nero at Manchester Airport by Jet2 a couple of years ago, I was beside myself with joy that my planning and foresight had significantly reduced the impact of their error.
The Life Hack? If you have an iPhone, place an AirTag in your case – you can then spend the next 48 hours watching your case travel from Manchester to Stansted and then be reunited in Madeira in real time...terrific poolside entertainment.
Anyhow, what has this to do with Blackburn Rovers? A reasonable question in the circumstances, please read on...
Well, the impact of my job means that for some time, I cannot simply watch Rovers play football without thinking about “what might happen next?”, “what do we need to do to make sure that bad thing X doesn’t happen?” &/or “What needs to be done to improve the chances of this project being ultimately successful?” – it’s just the way I’m now programmed.
The run of results we have “enjoyed” since the heady days of September suggested that the natural position of the side appears to be considerably lower than play-off contention.
What are the key metrics? Well, two goals in seven games yielding four points from a possible 21 suggests that there are several risks and issues that need urgent attention and mitigation.
Losing at home to Sheffield United was a salutary lesson into just what quality money can buy. The experience of watching them nullify Rovers' somewhat blunt attack (zero shots on target), whilst making surgical incisions in the home defence to score with relative ease, meant that the feeling at full-time experienced by Rovers spectators was akin to opening up the first post-holiday credit card bill.
The euphoria of September was fun, but at some point, you have to account for it all. For Rovers, that point seems to have started with that crushing defeat at Coventry on 1st October.
The performance at Ewood against Stoke was in many respects an improvement, but for context, Stoke arrived at Ewood without a goal in an away fixture since the 31st August – them scoring two without reply was a dagger to the Rovers heart.
Eustace proclaimed that the performance was excellent in his post-match interview. As the boss, he must paint a positive picture in public that suggests hope and serves to galvanise but hyperbole such as this risks antagonising a proportion of the match-going fanbase.
The problems are plain to see, injuries, loss of form/confidence, a squad containing a number of recruitment gambles and a manager trying to weave something meaningful from the resources afforded to him.
What can be done in January to address these issues? The expectations of Rovers fans have been structured by the recent interview granted by Rudy Gestede who perhaps unsurprisingly, is keen to trot out a robust defence of the people who pay his wages.
Some of the arguments clutched at by Gestede suggested that his opinion of the intellect of the average Rovers supporter is significantly lower than the actuality. For the record Rudy, we are aware that transfer income is received in instalments, but equally, we also acknowledge that when we buy players, we also make payments in instalments. We really aren’t that gullible.
The risk is that these warning signs go unheeded and the league campaign rapidly resembles that of last season. One where looking over the shoulder is the default setting.
After 14 games last season, Rovers had 19 points. After the Stoke fixture, Rovers once again have 19 points from 14 games. Last December, Rovers lost six of seven and were on a run that ultimately yielded just one win in 18 games.
It’s one win in seven so far but the next two games fall into the “eminently winnable” category. Somehow, from somewhere, Eustace needs to tease out a result to calm everything down so that Rovers enter January requiring modification, not a rebuild.
It is said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. What happens over the next couple of months will illustrate who at Blackburn Rovers understands and mitigates risks and perhaps more pertinently, is a history student.
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