Blackburn Rovers Sold

m0r94n

m0r94n

m0r94n

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For those who do and don't care, The Walker Trust today sold Blackburn Rovers to Venkys for around 23 million (plus the clearing of 20 million in debt apparently).

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Saucer

Glad its over and done with, especially after the business with Shah and Syed a month or so ago. We've needed something like this for a while now and although I'm not expecting substantial investment we will hopefully have a small cash boost in January to bring in some new players.

Hopefully within a season or two we'll be a fair bit stronger as a club, possibly aiming for something better than mid table.
 

m0r94n

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Worthless is one word I suppose... I'd agree with the suggestion it was a coup ;).

As for a new manager, hopefully not. I'm one of the few that likes Sam and his massive hippo head. After the calamity that was Ince he rescued us from relegation and although we've not done much, I've been happy with him during his time in charge.

Plus "The_Big_Sam" on twitter is fantastic and I'd hate for the Blackburn jokes to stop on there.


jakeke said:
James Milner is worth more than Blackburn
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As is Gareth Barry, and Adebayor.
 

Gribs

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m0r94n said:
Hopefully within a season or two we'll be a fair bit stronger as a club, possibly aiming for something better than mid table.
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Mid table is probably about as good as we'll ever be able to get now, with the occasional poor run in Europe, as we're just a small club without the fan base to support anything more. I'm glad I was there for the Walker years as that sort of thing won't be seen again in English football for a long time.

As long as the takeover doesn't result in us overspending and building up debt I'm happy enough with it but I don't quite see how they're hoping to make a decent return on the investment.
 

jakeke

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Man City are doing what Walker did? Spending loads of money in the attempt to go from a small club to one who wins the league? Chelsea also did it recently. It's not exactly unique what B'burn did
 

m0r94n

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jakeke said:
Hate to stick my beak in again but so is Jo Lescott. How does this make you feel?
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Like value for money.


Gribs said:
Mid table is probably about as good as we'll ever be able to get now, with the occasional poor run in Europe, as we're just a small club without the fan base to support anything more. I'm glad I was there for the Walker years as that sort of thing won't be seen again in English football for a long time.

As long as the takeover doesn't result in us overspending and building up debt I'm happy enough with it but I don't quite see how they're hoping to make a decent return on the investment.
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I'm not sure, if we are sensible there is no reason at all we can't compete for Europe. From the looks of their earlier statements they're looking to tap in to the Indian market for merchandise and overseas support (the takeover story has been front page news over there). I'm keeping optimistic for the time being, provided we are prudent it could be an amazing deal for both parties.


jakeke said:
Man City are doing what Walker did? Spending loads of money in the attempt to go from a small club to one who wins the league? Chelsea also did it recently. It's not exactly unique what B'burn did
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I love this argument. Yes we spent money, but on the same level as Chelsea and Man City? No way. We spent money building the club up rather than attempting to buy success instantly and whats more, we made a very good return on a lot of what we spent. Jack Walkers philosophy was that youth should be the foundation of a clubs future, we spent the majority of our money on training facilities for the club. As for the title winning team, a few of them were already playing for us post 91 and we spent a further three years building ourselves up before we won the title.
 
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drunkenmaster

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Well, technically they've bought the club for 23mil + 20mil debt, so 43mil.

Not quite sure how you think a midtable premier league club can't make a decent return on 43mil to buy to be honest. You get money for the final position, cup games, tv money is INSANE for every club in the league. Some of the lower end clubs are actually pretty profitable, the ones that keep a sane wage budget, younger squads or less famous squads have the potential for pretty huge profits. PRoblem is most clubs get in the league spend millions upon millions to stay in the league and overstretch themselves massively.

31k capacity stadium isn't half bad either, better than a lot of teams in the league.

I really can't understand how the club cost so little though, 43 mil total seems ridiculously low. Were the current owners desparate for the cash? Blackburns revenue must be way higher than 43mil. Utd would cost 4-5 times their yearly revenue to buy out, as would most clubs.

From what I can tell Ashley bought Newcastle for £134 mil before he paid off huge sums of debt, which were WAY higher than Blackburn had and the club was on the brink of going under due to the debt(it was around 100mil wasn't it). So Newcastle were basically more desparate with way more debt, yet cost not far off 6 times as much.

Get the feeling Blackburns previous owner was very very desparate for the cash for something else, saving another business or something maybe. Hell, surely the stadium alone has to be worth a lot more than 23mil, seems very very strange.
 
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Gilly

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jakeke said:
Man City are doing what Walker did? Spending loads of money in the attempt to go from a small club to one who wins the league? Chelsea also did it recently. It's not exactly unique what B'burn did
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Ah. By Manchester Awful I thought you meant the non-Manchester Manchester club. Sorry.
 

jakeke

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m0r94n said:
I love this argument. Yes we spent money, but on the same level as Chelsea and Man City? No way. We spent money building the club up rather than attempting to buy success instantly and whats more, we made a very good return on a lot of what we spent. Jack Walkers philosophy was that youth should be the foundation of a clubs future, we spent the majority of our money on training facilities for the club. As for the title winning team, a few of them were already playing for us post 91 and we spent a further three years building ourselves up before we won the title.
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Wasn't having a dig but it's the same principle. You got a rich single owner in, broke transfer records, spent an unsustainable amount of money (without Walker it wouldn't have been plausible) and then won the league because of the expenditure. It was done in a more sensible fashion to City sure, but you can't compare the two era's as they're massively different
 
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