A view on the takeover

After almost 3 years of rumours and false hope, our glorious club has finally been sold to new owners. As a die hard Rovers fan, I find myself asking; where do we go from here?

When Venky’s were originally linked with the takeover, the news was greeted with a mixed response from Rovers fans, ranging from sheer delight to absolute disgust. My personal opinion leans more towards the first of those two views, I can only see this being a positive move, both for our club and our fans.

There are 2 key areas which we need to look at improving upon.

The first major area is our playing squad. Looking at what we currently have available, I think we can all agree that our squad needs bolstering, and the first port of call has to be up front. The likes of Benjani, Jason Roberts, Niko Kalinic et al will never catapult us into the top 6-8, and let’s be honest, we would all like to see Rovers established as a regular top 8 club, akin to Everton. There are some quality strikers out there, and the vast majority of them will not sent us back more than £10m.

I like Sam’s policy for bringing in young talent, but personally I would like to see him bring in some more experienced strikers between the ages of 25 to 30. There has been far too many occasions this year where we have completely outplayed teams, but our attack has just been unable to finish the opposition off. Take Chelsea for example, that game should`ve only ended with 3 points in the bag for Rovers, but when you miss such a glorious chance as Roberts had moments before they scored, inevitably Chelsea will punish you for a costly miss. We have too many midfielder`s, and we have plenty of defenders, we need to take a risk and spend all available funds on a striker who will score more than 10 goals a seaon.

The second area is our style of play. One of Venky`s major ambitions is to sell Rovers into the as yet untapped Indian market, but how are they supposed to do this with Big Sam`s long ball tactics?

India have the IPL, and let`s be honest 20/20 cricket is thoroughly entertaining, so it is going to take something special to grab their attention. Our current style of football certainly won`t do that, but if Big Sam starts to play attractive football, and we are well capable of doing so, Venky`s may be able to realise that ambition.

We have lived in the shadow of ‘lesser’ teams for too long now, and when it comes to the transfer market, I think it’s reasonable to say that we are pretty much a none entity.

I plead with Venky`s to please take our club back to the glory days. We will never win the league again, but there`s no reason why we can not make it into Europe and establish ourselves as one of the Premier League`s major forces.