Fit & Proper - Blackburn Rovers - John Williams
May 14, 1995. The Blackburn Rovers fans in the away end at Anfield are celebrating. Rovers, so long an archaic throwback clogging up the lower divisions, a club with a stadium as outdated as its honour-roll and a chairman who, by necessity, blagged his way out of paying the milkman each week, have just won the Premier League.
The Blackburn fans, basking in both the May sunshine and this unlikely triumph, are cheering their idol, the man who made this possible. He's not one of their transfer-record-breaking strikers - Alan Shearer or Chris Sutton - and nor is he the big-name manager Kenny Dalglish. He is Jack Walker, local boy made good, a steel magnate who has ploughed his considerable fortune into reviving his beloved Rovers. It's possibly the first time in English football history that the owner of a title-winning club has secured this much adoration.
The Rovers fans were right. To date, there hasn’t been another Jack Walker. Roman Abramovich and the Sheikh at Manchester City may come close – when it comes to resources they certainly dwarf Walker, who was a mere multi-millionaire – but anyone waiting for another local sugar daddy to come along could be disappointed. Rovers know. They’ve been looking for someone to come along for years.
The money that fired Rovers to the 1995 championship has long gone. In 1999 Rovers were relegated, after spending much of the previous season signing big money flops on an almost weekly basis – the likes of Kevin Davies, Christian Dailly and Ashley Ward arrived for big money, proving an open chequebook is no guarantee of success. Blackburn made it back to the top flight in 2001, and have enjoyed a League Cup win and several top-seven finishes since, but supporting a Premier League wage bill on gates of around 20,000 is no easy task.
Blackburn’s chairman post-Walker is John Williams. Although born in Southampton, Williams is generally a popular figure with Rovers supporters, perceived as a competent caretaker running the club well. In particularly, he has worked in recent years to arrest the slump in average attendances at Ewood Park, reducing ticket prices to levels that are competitive for League One and Two, let alone the Premier League. At the beginning of the season 15-game tickets were available for just £150 and the club regularly offer package deals for seats in the underused Darwen End.
Jack Walker sadly died in August 2000, by which time his team had plummeted back into the second tier where he’d found them, but the club is still owned by the Walker family. The club is currently administered by the Jack Walker Settlement, a trust set up to take care of Walker’s business interests. The trust shies away from publicity and little is known about its intentions for the Walker estate, but it's no secret that Blackburn Rovers are for sale.
Several years ago the Walker trust appointed the investment banking organisation Rothschilds to advise and find a potential buyer. During Mark Hughes’s spell as manager there was interest from American-based businessman Dan Williams. Rovers chairman John Williams (no relation) announced the club had made “some progress” and Dan Williams went as far as to conduct an interview with the Lancashire Evening Telegraph in which he claimed to be a lifelong Rovers fan, complete with a horse named after defender Colin Hendry from that 1995 team. The Dan Williams interest fizzled out, but in 2008 Rovers also fielded bids from JJB owner Chris Ronnie and local property developer Nabeel Chowdery. Neither takeover happened.
Although the exact instructions to which the Walker trust is obliged to act are a closely-guarded secret, it is widely speculated both on Rovers message boards and in the press that Jack Walker's will included stipulations designed to ensure the club's long-term health. These stipulations may seem frustrating to supporters but do mean Rovers are much less likely to fall prey to a Newcastle or Portsmouth-style fiasco. Consider that Chris Ronnie's potential takeover was funded by an Icelandic bank and Chowdery’s liquidity depended on a healthy property market – two lucky escapes for Rovers. The global recession means that while Blackburn remain up for sale, a suitable buyer may still be some distance away. In the meantime, the Walker trust periodically helps with the club's running costs. This usually comprises a £3m cash injection per season, although this is not guaranteed – the trust didn't invest in 2007 and planned not to in 2008, before relenting soon after Paul Ince’s appointment.
Indeed, John Williams has conceded that the trust is increasingly leaving Blackburn to fend for themselves, i"We are not going to become a selling club because the board or owners say we want to be a selling club, because we want to make money. That is not going to happen here," said Williams. "Since Jack's death our owners in fairness to them have never looked for returns, they just don't want to put any more money in.”
Thanks to Mark Hughes’ excellence in the transfer market, Rovers have recently sold several players for big money – in the past three years Craig Bellamy, David Bentley and Roque Santa Cruz have left for a gross in excess of £40m – but the board has been relatively parsimonious when signing replacements, something Williams admits, “Occasionally, we may have to sell high and replace at a lower level.”
Williams does however remain proud of what he and the Blackburn management have achieved. “We are starting our longest stay in the top flight since 1936, not too bad for the town club in the land of the giants.” You get the impression that Jack Walker, who built his fortune from nothing after starting out in a Blackburn back street, would have appreciated his beloved team's recent battle against the odds just as much as he enjoyed splashing the cash.
See the full list of OLBG's free Football Tips here.
Related Articles
|