PERHAPS one day a support group will exist for football managers who had the misfortune to work under the dreaded Venky's regime at Blackburn Rovers. There is an absurdity to life as a manager in the SkyBet championship where one season is a lifetime but never more so when it comes to the eccentric Indian family for whom running this once proud Lancashire club seems but a bizarre marketing ploy to promote their chicken processing business. Such little disregard do they show for this club that for once, when he called the situation an "absolute mess", even former Blackburn star Chris Sutton was possibly being kind.
Any assessment of Owen Coyle's eight months in charge, which were brought to a not entirely unexpected end yesterday, should perhaps begin with some context from his predecessor. Originally designed as a long-term appointment, Paul Lambert decided this summer that doing nothing each day and waiting for another club to come along was a better career move. "It is a great club with great fans," the Scot told me a few weeks ago, "but I said to myself that I would never put my through that."
Put himself through what, then? Well, basically, having to contend with what seems to be a cross between having an absentee landlord and outright apathy from the owners of the football club. For all the numbers that were rehearsed about Coyle's reign - the eight games he went before registering his first league win, the eleven victories he managed in 37 games in charge, the five matchdays the club have spent outwith the relegation places or his 29% win percentage, less than Lambert (36%) and Gary Bowyer (34%) - it is worth crunching some other vital statistics too. In two transfer windows, Coyle brought in more than £20m in transfer fees on the likes of Jordan Rhodes, Grant Hanley and Ben Marshall and spent approximately £200,000.
Despite dealing with a severe injury crisis, the squad of misfits and callow young signings which he pieced together had won three and lost three of their last 11 matches ahead of Sunday's FA Cup tie, and beaten promotion chasing Newcastle twice, both times through solitary Charlie Mulgrew strikes. I don't subscribe to the theory that they were already doomed to relegation.
Of course Coyle was never going to be everyone's cup of tea at Ewood Park. To some, he was still burdened by an association with their deadly rivals, Burnley and Bolton Wanderers, but throughout all this product of the Gorbals has held himself with a dignity that his detractors (and the club's owners) could only dream of. While it is always raw to see a manager lose their job just days after you had seen him in person, at the club's Brockhall training ground this week, Coyle had been stoically ignoring all the internet rumours of his imminent demise, heaping all the pressure on his own shouders.
It should be noted that his team - with Mulgrew excelling again in a midfield role - deserved far better than the 2-1 defeat and the warm words they got for their performance against the millionaires of Manchester United. So too did Coyle. But it clearly wasn't enough for his paymasters. It wasn't too long ago that this Republic of Ireland international declined the Celtic job, so it seems far fetched to immediately start linking him with the job across the city at Rangers. But if the evidence of his stint at a basket case club like Blackburn is anything to go by, they could do far worse.
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