After a few turbulent months Blackburn fans seem to have a cause for optimism again, as Phil Crossley reports
Sometime between the end of Euro ’96 and late October we were led to believe that the world had fallen apart for Blackburn Rovers. Within a matter of weeks we had contrived to part company with the ‘dream team’ which won us the title. First our talisman, Billy Bigpockets, the man to whom it does not matter who scores (as long as it’s not any of the ten makeweights in the side), closely followed by King Ken, fed up with sorting out away travel arrangements for the reserves for five grand a week. When ‘Laughing’ Ray Harford decided that enough was enough as we floundered at the bottom of the division, we were told that the game was up.
However, taking stock after the customary dollop of tabloid-induced hysteria, we found that we still had a few valuable knick-knacks in the display cabinet. Tony Parkes for instance, the best caretaker manager in the biz. (I have a theory that he is being groomed for the Blackburn manager’s job on the instalment plan: a spell of four or five games every five years; he should be ready to take up the reins in 2006. You can’t rush these things.)
We had eight or nine full internationals on the staff and a rather smart new stadium and training facilities as well. Most significantly, we still had everyone’s favourite uncle, Jack Walker, seemingly more than happy to chip in once again with the proceeds of a few weeks’ interest on his granny bonds.
Once Alan Shearer had decided to leave it became clear that our reaction to his departure would be crucial to the immediate future of the Rovers. I’m sure I wasn’t the only Rovers fan watching Euro ’96 who winced slightly every time Alan popped in another one, sensing that each goal scored was another little wave goodbye. We all knew he would leave at some point, but at least he didn’t go you-know-where. Again.
After the dust had settled, Rovers fans began to do what all fans do at times such as this: construct a mythology to take the pain away. It went something like this: Yes, he was the best player at Ewood in living memory; but he’d become rather a bighead; he was strongly rumoured to be unduly influencing the manager’s team selections; and if he was going to leave, why didn’t he give plenty of notice? (The reception Alan got at the Blackburn v Newcastle match on Boxing Day will have given him a big clue about his standing on the old resentment-ometer.)
Kenny Dalglish severing his connections with the club came as much less of a surprise, and actually something of a relief. There was a job for him to do after he stepped down, but the Blackburn board weren’t able to come up with a dictionary definition of what it was. Surprising that, for those masters of the art of dissembling. Memo to Uncle Jack: Get a new board. (And while we’re on the subject, for pity’s sake get someone at Ewood who can even make a stab at working out what the letters PR stand for.)
Bye bye also to Ray Harford, who did the decent thing and nipped into the library with his pearl-handled revolver. Ray was reasonably popular with Rovers fans and it was impossible not to think of him as an all-round good egg – but he must have realized that he’d been handed the poisoned chalice. Without a shadow of a doubt the smart person to be would be the one who followed the one who followed Dalglish. It’s very much to Ray’s credit that he did, in fact, know when to jump. There just comes a time when a manager simply can’t ‘manage’ any more and the only thing to do is to shake up the bag and pull out a new one.
Ray’s departure was significant, also, in that it brought to a complete close the ancien régime. In retrospect, this was the defining moment of the whole affair. Kenny brought Ray to Blackburn and they both brought Alan along for the party. It was a brilliant party but when it was fizzling out we stayed on in the kitchen, chatting and smoking old dog ends, when we should have been moving on to the next one. With Harford’s resignation we were at last able to draw a line under things and start checking out future invites.
The first invitation has a rather interesting name attached – Sven Goran Eriksson. For a club in our position (NE Lancashire, just off the M6) it is a truth universally acknowledged that the gaffer must be a ‘big name’ in order to attract star turns to Ewood. (We’re talking Mattie Holmes and Graham Fenton here, let’s not forget.) We don’t quite have the problems in this respect that Middlesboro, say, have, but then . . . enough said, I think. With a potential manager of the stature of Sven Goran, and a backer to whom the phrase ‘please refer to your branch’ is as much of a novelty as green Kryptonite, anything can happen. And probably will.
We are now about to enter the glorious age of the post-modern at Ewood Park: post-Dalglish, post-Shearer, post-Batty, post-Harford. And we are quite looking forward to it.
From WSC 120 February 1997. What was happening this month