You couldn’t make it up.
Last week I was sniggering about how shambolically-run a club Newcastle United was.
In short, after more than 30 years of being a superbly-stewarded, prudently-run club, the seemingly-clueless new Indian owners have rendered Blackburn Rovers an utter and complete laughing stock. If it was happening to anyone else it would be funny.
But Sam’s sacking – pusillanimously forced upon his honourable and loyal friend John Williams to administer – was very much the wrong decision at the wrong time for the wrong reasons by manifestly very, very wrong people.
We can only be grateful that Williams, whose position under this madness is virtually untenable, has opted to remain in situ despite what must be overwhelming misgivings. Perhaps the admirable Chairman, who is surely coveted by the FA or bigger clubs, feels that for him and Tom Finn to desert now would leave a bunch of bewildered, dazed players at the unrestrained mercy of complete nutters!
You could perhaps have comprehended Sam’s dismissal the better had it come as a knee-jerk reaction in the immediate aftermath of the 7-1 Old Trafford humiliation.
The Bolton defeat was equally as deflating in many ways; After all the talk of Owen Coyle’s new purists and their flowing football we were hoist by our own petard, conceding first from a free-kick and then, unforgivably, a restart goal that would have shamed a pub side on Highams.
For the opener, as we managed to make Bolton look like the team with an extra man, a notoriously shot-shy bloke who has scored once in 100 games was turned into Christian Ronaldo for 10 seconds while Ryan Nelson, rather than close him down, effected a strange leap ten yards in front. What was he trying to do to Fabrice Muamba, frighten him?
Nelson’s more familiar Achilles heel, his aerial fallibility, was exposed by, of all people, Kevin Davies for the winner.
A former colleague once said that Rovers were looking for something that wasn’t there when they signed Davies in 1997. He was wrong – Rovers had failed to unlock a talent which was latent in the player and ironically it was Allardyce who located it. How rich that it should be Davies who practically provided the last wound of Sam’s Ewood tenure.
How ironic too that the winner came from a long ball, a proper centre-forward doing his robust job and a dead-eyed midfield runner arriving at speed – Sam’s exact philosophy, but sadly all too rarely a reality.
The theme of my column in the light of that sorry effort against 10 men (nine if you count Ellmander’s anonymous contribution until Davies’s dismissal) was going to be fury at Allardyce’s inability to mastermind a team to deal with a mediocre foe away, while confidently anticipating another resounding and vital home win against a similarly woebegone rival.
Just as Rovers enjoyed a rehabilitating victory over Wolves after the Man United fiasco, I fully expected a comfortable triumph over the dreadful Hammers.
But now it’s far from simple. Even senior players, unconsulted by the new regime at any stage, must be disorientated and frozen with fear about what the next barmy step is with this lot.
If you were a West Ham player, fan or manager, what would your ideal scenario have been this week? That’s right – not a visit to a club whose manager enjoys the knack of winning home games against all but the elite, but a trip to a club in utter turmoil thanks to the lunatic actions of its owners with a bloke who once made four unheralded appearances for Swansea in charge!
A contact whose knowledge of Portuguese football is comprehensive can recall no major or lasting impact which Scotsman Kean, who is represented by super-agent Jerome Anderson, made on domestic football in that country although he is said to have become fluent in the language which almost led to a job at Chelsea. And he was offered the Kilmarnock job once! Obviously a titan in the coaching cosmos then.
Ah, Jerome Anderson. His SEM company is a partner of sports rights agency Kentaro with whom Rovers’ new owners work closely. It seems we are the first club to become the plaything of organisations whose distinguished portfolio includes distributing the rights to the disreputable spectacle which was the David Haye v Audley Harrison nonsense!
I warned with some foreboding last week that it heralded ill that these people were behind Allardyce’s back lining up potential transfer targets, not for one second expecting the fall-out to explode so immediately.
Now I would usually regard agents as just further down the evolutionary scale than people who nick charity collection bottles from hospital wards, but it is a measure of what farce we are descending into that, having studied the words of Venkatesh Rao and Mrs Anuradha Desai in the light of Sam’s sacking, one hopes that someone within Kentaro or SEM has more knowledge of football than the Venky’s people, for whom the back of a First-Class stamp would seemingly suffice.
Suffice to say that any of the pronouncements emanating from the sub-continent have caused Rovers fans to gasp and recoil in horror. I can’t even dignify the twaddle I listened to and read by regurgitating it.
These people are truly, truly, without the slightest inkling what is involved or required in running a football club, even one in the Third Division of the Mumbai Combination, let alone a big business and important employer in the town such as Blackburn Rovers.
As I said when simple-minded people were raving about the takeover (“A £5m January transfer kitty! Whoopee doo!”) you have to be careful what you wish for.
At least at 7am on Thursday after a few troubled, sleepless nights fearing for the very future of my club, a humorous text beeped on my phone and caused me to smile through gritted teeth for the first time in 72 hours.
“What has Sam Allardyce got in common with Ashley Peacock?
“Neither of them will be on The Rovers Christmas Do.”
As I said, if it was anyone else it would be funny.
As it stands, Rovers stand on the cusp of catastrophe and it’s far from a laughing matter.