Last week, Michael and Simon provided us with contrasting responses to a set of questions relating to Steve Kean, Venkys, Performance and protesting.
After the fantastic response to the initial debate, Simon and Michael were provided with each others answers, and asked to disect them and provide a direct contrasting opinion.
Today, Michael who is an open anti protester and pro Kean man, analyzes Simon’s protesting ways.
For Your information,
Italics= The initial question
Bold= Simon’s initial answers
Plain= Michael’s analysis of Simon’s response!
Grab a coffee and enjoy. We shall bring you Simon’s analysis of Michael’s intial response soon!
Discuss your opinion on the protests. (Simon-pro protests, Michael- against protests) Are they effective and how do they portray the supporters, the players/coach and the club.
I think that the protests are effective in evidencing how the majority of fans who support and regularly attend Ewood Park feel about the clubs current plight. For our part in the process, I feel that we have conducted ourselves in a dignified and professional manner.
How does 50 people standing isolated at the Chelsea game represent the majority? Thats like asking the population of the Orkney Islands deciding the outcome of the General Election. 20’000 people on average attend Ewood on a weekly basis, so I guess that means Kean overshot on the 1% comment? I know that the other 19’950 don’t all support Kean, but it says a lot that the numbers have dwindled from roughly 700 against Arsenal to what the Sun reported as 50 against Chelsea. Read your own comments further down with regards dignified, and have a rethink when you read that you’ve threatened Steve Kean with physical violence, hardly the stuff that UN peace pacts are made of.
From speaking to supporters of other clubs regularly, they recognise that Blackburn fans are not known to ‘kick up a fuss’ and feel that to have to resort to such protests must mean there is something seriously wrong. We have not gone around like ‘Green Street’ gangs and caused riots or disturbances and we have not dragged the name of the club through the mud.
I don’t know what clubs the other fans are from, I’ve listed the clubs associated with who I’ve spoken to, and they on the whole agree that Rovers normally just get on with it, we are the club that no-one (really) has anything bad to say about except maybe the Moron Arsene Wenger and his apostles who live on the wrong side of London. I do however disagree with the second part here, in that the people I speak to cannot fathom why we protest before games, it makes us look petulant and childish, and to then release footage on Youtube of fans singing about how SK’s fat and bald… well you might as well all have had Bigot tattoo’d on your foreheads.
Sadly, I cannot say the club have conducted themselves in the same vein and I feel that their actions have had a negative impact upon on the view of all Blackburn Rovers supporters [Pro/Anti-Kean].
Correct me if I’m wrong but did Venky’s not fly a group of fans out to India? I cannot think of another club who would have gone to those lengths to listen to their fans. They are criticised constantly for their conduct towards the fans but you can’t top that! Most fans are lucky to go to an AGM once a year let alone get the owners to dip into their pockets.
Childish and silly tricks such as playing music louder over the fans [on Paul Hunt’s direction] only serve to enhance the view that we are dealing with a bunch of amateurs [not just Venkys – Paul Hunt, Paul Agnew, Simon Williams and Simon Hunt].
This is guaranteeing the overall enjoyment for most of the fans, like a nightclub turning the music up to make sure the rest of the club goers can’t hear the rants of the drunk bloke growling at young girls stinking of his own urine. It’s called Anti-social behaviour management, sort of like when Super Nanny puts the spoilt brat on the naughty step. BTW what you’ve just proposed is a total vote of no confidence in the entire hierarchy of the club. So does anyone at the club do a good job, in your opinion, the Stewards? The Kit Staff? The Groundstaff? You’re starting to sound petulant now, and I’m not gonna dwell on it, because I don’t believe its your honest answer, it can’t be, because you wouldn’t be a Rovers fan if it was, and you wouldn’t be partaking in this debate.
It’s difficult to say how it portrays the players/coaches as you would expect that they will be loyal to Kean at the moment [to make sure they get a game/stay in a job as we know Kean has the knife in his pocket ready for any possible moment – see John Jensen].
Maybe your right about Jensen, but three of the staff almost got sacked (by Kean, as manager of the club) for defending him when some moron in the crowd started hurling abuse at him, they basically told the idiot to get lost, and so as a good manager, putting the business first, an enquiry was launched by SK to get to the root of the incident.
The real problem at the heart of all of this is that we are not being heard by the club. To round off my point – under the old regime things would not have been allowed to have got to this stage. We wouldn’t have even needed a protest as Steve Kean and his merry men would be nowhere near Ewood Park – John Williams would have seen to that!
C’mon now, the Walker Trust didn’t give a damn about our club, John Williams was heading for Man City anyway, and in every new administration, comes new faces, the inevitability of the Venky’s takeover was that the people at the top would change, to believe anything else was naive.
As regards Steve Kean – the protests portray him to be the arrogant, egotistical novice that he is. I can count more than one occasion now in which he has said ‘only a couple of hundred at the protest’ and it is the ‘minority’ that are not behind him. GET REAL – the reason people don’t protest is not because they love you – it is out of APATHY. If Steve and the club had the correctly sized genitalia then they would ‘test’ their theory and survey the clubs season ticket holders.
No-one in football is not egotistical, to be a successful player/coach/manager you have to have a certain degree of self belief. Otherwise every time an idiot on the terraces starts slating them or their families they’d pack up and disappear. In fairness to SK, a lot of the time the numbers are quoted the same in the press. The comments flying round twitter the day after Arsenal varied from between 1000 to 150. Apathy is a good point, especially now that he numbers have dwindled so far, I’m not saying that the passion has died but when the numbers do, can you blame the club for ignoring the protests. If the protesters can’t be bothered to turn up every week why should they listen? The fans who don’t protest are the ones paying the bills! Why should the club only survey the season ticket holders? More fans aren’t ST holders than are, and from your point of view, the protesters have started handing in their ST’s in a stayaway protest, so surely that proposal is self-defeating for you?
Where I sit in the Ronnie Clayton end is approx 10-1 in favour of Anti-Kean and from fans I speak to in other areas of the ground, it is similar. As a side note – the one person who was pro-Kean sits behind me and he is a racist scumbag [for disgusting comments aimed at our very own Junior Hoilett]. I can only hope that the other Pro-Kean fans I meet are not of the same ilk.
Seriously!?! Are you honestly telling me that no-one on the Anti-Kean side has never told a racist joke? I am not defending racism, I utterly abhor it as the act and thoughts of the idiotic and small-minded, but there are 100’000 people in Blackburn, and I bet that more than 2 of them are racist.
Discuss your opinion on Steve Kean. (Michael pro, Simon Against) How is he faring, is he the man for the job
I often wonder to myself what we did to deserve this cretin who certainly seems to think he is the next Taggart [AKA Fergie]. The only similarities that I can draw from these two people are that they are both Scottish and I would love to smack them both in the face. Other than that – they are worlds apart. Although I hate Man United to the core you have to admire Taggart for what he has done and what he continues to do. When you look back over Ewood Park managers past and present, there is only one that comes close to him and funnily enough, he is also Scottish. Yes you remember the day he got one over on Fergie [BTW – he is still the only manager in the EPL who calls him Fergie – LEGEND] – it was the best Rovers related day of my life! It also makes me remember that Jack Walker’s first managerial appointment was the legend that is Kenny Dalglish. Venkys can only wish they had made a similar appointment as this guy isn’t fit to shine his shoes!
So your point is that a first time manager isn’t as good as two legends of the game?!? Surely its a bit unrealistic to expect that of him, despite how he gets quoted/misquoted.
Onto the facts. Steve Kean league games in charge = P 32, W6, D10, L16 = 18.75% win ratio. Is he the man for the job? Get real!
In six games time that’ll be a full season. A good time to judge him I’m sure you’ll agree? Well funny that our next six games are Wigan, a struggling Stoke, Swansea, Sunderland West Brom, and Bolton. 4 of those are easy wins, and a couple of teams we should be taking points off. So by Christmas that win percentage is looking more like 25 – 30 %. My biggest criticism of the protests is that they’ve generally figured against the big name clubs, Arsenal, Man City, Tottenham and Chelsea. It’s easy to pick faults against teams we’ve got no business beating, but actually we beat one of them, deserved a point from two more and were well beaten by a team who are demolishing everyone.
The only other manager in the premier league I have seen with such tactical naivety is Paul Ince and we all know what happened there!
The difference between Ince and Kean is the players. It was obvious to see with Ince that the players didn’t back him, there was no fight from them in matches, they hated his outdated training methods and none came out vocally supporting him. Whatever you say about Kean it is clear the players would die for him on that pitch.
Surely its not a surprise to anyone that players get tired? Rochina and Yakubu were absolutely knackered and so needed bringing off. Dunny was coming back from injury and Goodwillie is our 2nd choice striker, the other options for subs were Roberts, who judging from your comments below, you wouldn’t have wanted to come on, and Vuckevic who hasn’t fully settled in yet. Tired players make mistakes, end of. Kean was trying to prevent happening what happened anyway. But without the refereeing blunder this is a different conversation. Tactically, if you play a more open and attacking style of football, then you are more likely to concede goals, you complain about late substitutions being made, so if the players are tired, we don’t make subs and we play open football we’re gonna concede anyway. No team in the Prem makes no subs, the players would be knackered by the end of the season. Surely you’re not that short-sighted to see that we need to use subs?
Remember when we won against Arsenal – Kean said how he put Olsson on the wing to make sure we won the game as he had spotted a weakness in the full back [forgive me for not remembering who]. Well if that was the case Stevo – why on earth did you wait until the second half to exploit that weakness or why did you not to Hoilett to exploit that weakness?
Remember when we protested before the Arsenal game, and made the people of Blackburn look stupid when we won. Everyone is allowed to make a mistake, and ultimately he corrected it, at least he noticed the weakness, at least he is trying to make us a winning team. Not a drawing, defensive team like Allardyce. We play in the best league in the world and we should be able to attack and defend, however we have consistently had key defensive players missing, and we obviously aren’t going to play to our best with our best players missing.
Just to emphasise how much a cretin this fella is – after the game he went on a media frenzy – Fans phone in on Radio Lancs, Sky Sports News, 5 Live, Talk Sport etc – talking to everyone and their dog. My question to Steve – where the hell are you now on the fans phone ins etc? It’s easy to do all that off the back of a win.
Just to emphasize what a bunch of cretins these protesters are- they only protest when we play big clubs, they don’t protest when we play in the cup against minnows and will win they protest when we play massive clubs who we clearly aren’t going to beat. Not only is that cretinous its also cowardice. Its easy to protest when the team are likely to lose.
In the Radio Lancs one he said how they were working on defending, yet we still continue to play like a Keegan team. My other question is – when the hell are you going to meet up with Glen Mullan as promised? Are you waiting for a win first?
In short, why should he, to massage Glen’s ego? I notice that he puts himself into a position as leader of the protests, but yet he blocks those people on twitter etc that disagree with him. So in one hand he complains that SK won’t talk to him, and then he does the exact same thing to people who want to question his views constructively. So if Glen refuses to do it, why the hell should SK, or is Glen waiting for Kean to get sacked first.
In addition to his tactical failings, he does not appear to be able to work the media either. To say that the next games are winnable only makes the opposition managers job easier. He will just pin your comments up on the wall to wind his players up! Learn you nugget!
He’s only saying what we’re all thinking, it might motivate the other team but he’s also showing our squad that he believes in them, any employee needs a public show of confidence, ultimately it’s why O’Neill left Villa, It’s why big companies have Newsletters, it’s why McDonalds have Employee of the Week/Month, it shows the belief you have in your employees.
32 games – 6 wins [SPEAKS FOR ITSELF]. I have not mentioned cup games as I wouldn’t really count a win against Leyton Orient as something to write home about!
Just for the record – I backed Paul Ince right up until the last game when he got the sack. I normally advocate giving managers time but one look at the table tells you that we are in trouble. Does anyone really think we will win the next 6 games?
We’re almost up to a season in charge, In 32 games he’s won 6 and drawn 10, So he’s scored 18 points from his wins and 10 from the draws, leaving him on 28 points, so in truth he doesn’t need to win all six, last season 41 points was enough to finish in 16th place ,and Wolves had 40 points in 17th. SO he actually only needs 12 points or four wins, or two points per game, he could be successful with winning three and drawing three from the next six. Where do your impossible targets come from, the truth is that you just don’t like the guy, and that nothing he does is good enough for any of you. Actually he is on a par with previous managers and better than some of those you’ve mentioned. I’d rather have Kean than Souness, Hodgson, Ince, Allardyce or Kidd.
Discuss your opinion on our owners, Venkys
To be talking of Steve Kean as a ‘brilliant manager’ is not only inaccurate but it only serves to increase the ‘joke’ that is currently Blackburn Rovers. As if the poultry-based promotional videos emanating from India and ridiculous ideas of signing Ronaldinho were not bad enough, we now have people laughing at us for pure footballing reasons. Who else in the best league in the world would even be discussing an improved contract for a manager who in his 32 league games in charge has won 6 games!
The truth is we don’t know what Steve Kean is like as a manager. You may have opinions on him as a coach and a tactician, but as a manager, the finances seem to be in order, the players are more than happy playing for him, so in terms of financial management and man-management he appears to at least be adequate. It was an inevitability that the club would be used for promo work in India, short-sighted again there, look at what Mike Ashley does with Sports Direct. The main reason their kit sponsor is Puma is because Ashley fell out with Adidas in a deal with SD. You mention Ronaldinho, but we also approached Beckham and Raul, we know that offers were tabled for the latter two, and look at what happened with Eto’o. He went a tiny club in the backside end of Russia cuz they offered him enough money. So where is your imagination? Why should we be stuck looking at the free transfers and the Bargain basement deals? People stopped laughing when the Eto’o deal was done and the offer went in for Raul, a deal which would have been done if Schalke (again) hadn’t gotten greedy. I’ve dealt with the issue of wins to games ratio above. Change the record!!!
They regularly fail to attend games and it seems as though they are naive about the footballing world. They don’t engage with the fans on a regular basis and we only seem to get ramblings of brilliant manager, top ten etc.
May I remind you that they asked us to judge them after a year in charge – nearly there Venkys and it certainly looks a hell of a lot worse than when you took over!
ay I remind you that they run an international business, much like my own company, its based all over the country but run by a parent company in the States. Well I can tell you that I’ve never seen one of the British Directors let alone one of the American one’s. They make A LOT more money from Venky’s so of course they pay more attention to that. DO you spend more time at your day job, or selling your stuff on Ebay? If its the latter then your priorities are seriously skewed. Does the Business look a whole lot worse than when they took over? We’ve got rid of some high salaries off our wage bills, we’ve promoted the club in Asia playing Villa, Chelsea and Kitchee, We’ve got an academy being built in the worlds 2nd most populous nation on earth ( a good source for talent if ever there was one), we’re one of 2 clubs in the UK to do that the other being Liverpool, so its probably a good idea, and we’re being publicised in that same nation, which wait for it, is the second biggest market in the world and predictions show that by the end of the Decade it will be the biggest nation on earth. They reckon Shirt sales in India alone could pay for the total redevelopment of Ewood Park and Brockhall, in one year. One Billion People live there. Statistically thats 490 Million men, or 300 Million potential football fans. It was always therefore going to be a priority to develop our fan base over there. The business model is Brilliant, Venky’s is a bigger name in India than Rovers, so remember we’re piggy-backing them over there!
If you could post one message to all Rovers supporters, what would it be!
If you sit back in apathy or don’t make your feelings clear then get ready to see the dingles in the league next year because with this guy in charge we have a one way ticket to the Chumpionship and I am sure Big Sam will take a wry smile as he passes on the way up and pulls the dagger out of his back!
The Season is a long way from over! We’re not even a third of the way through, lets not Panic just yet, there’s a lot of points up for grabs, a lot of 50/50 games that have gone this side of the season, with every chance of going our way at home
On a serious note – whatever your feelings [Pro/Anti-Kean] we should stick together for the good of the club and not resort to the ridiculous name calling I have seen on twitter recently!
Agree! More than I can put in words. This is the whole reason, I’m taking part in this debate, for one to better understand the other side of the argument, and to try to build the bridges between the fans. We all love the same thing just in different ways, clearly. But what you will see above is the same points from different perspectives, and in a lot of cases agreement. Both sides of this argument agree on so many things, but through lack of information, or perspective, both sides are guilty of misjudging and misrepresenting the other. Name calling is futile, infantile and downright hurtful, it is bullying, the first sign of lack of intelligence. If you can’t form an adult argument then please stop commenting. Some very good people who have tried to be as neutral as possible, and have attempted to give others some perspective have been widely abused by others, as fans of the same club, pushing largely the same cause, we as a group should not tolerate this from each other.
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