John Eustace is about to quit as Blackburn manager to join Derby and Sam Allardyce has pointed the finger of blame at owners Venky’s – with the former England boss furious about the saga
Sam Allardyce has blamed Venky’s for John Eustace’s exit to Derby and claimed the under-fire owners should sell up at Blackburn.
Allardyce claims Eustace has left Blackburn after a year in charge because he feels he will get the backing he needs from the Derby board. Eustace’s departure was caused a stir because Blackburn are in the promotion places while Derby are fighting relegation.
Eustace’s predecessor Jon Dahl Tomasson quit a year ago because Rovers bungled a deadline-day signing and Allardyce says Venky’s are not running the club properly. He claims all the money from player sales, such as Adam Wharton’s £18million move to Crystal Palace in January last year and Sam Szmodics’ £9million switch to Ipswich in August, have gone into keeping the club afloat.
He says Venky’s prioritise this over backing the manager and building a strong squad. “I’ve always said this, it’s something managers can’t do until later in their careers, where whatever the board says determines whether you take the job or not, irrespective of how big the club might be, because you will ultimately fail if that board doesn’t support you,” he told the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast.
“There will definitely be a bigger budget at Derby and from what I hear from behind the scenes, Blackburn have lived on what money they can generate themselves within the club.
“They kept the money from the sale of Sammie Szmodics, so it’s about the financial structure of the club first and surviving, so it doesn’t fall into debt being more important than the quality of the team on the field, which then affects the fans.
“Derby have obviously hit the compensation factor that’s in his contract and they have to let him move on.” Venky’s sacked Allardyce as manager in December 2010, a month after buying the club for £23million, and they were relegated from the Premier League 17 months later.
They have not been back to the top flight since and went down to the third tier in 2017. Allardyce claims they are no longer the well-run club he remembers and says Venky’s should sell. “I don’t know why they don’t sell it,” he said.
“Blackburn was one of the best-run clubs I’ve been at. John Williams was the chairman and had everybody in their place, and they’d all know exactly how the football club was run. If you were the manager, you just needed to go and manage the team.
“There were no other distractions, everything they were doing was creating the right opportunity for you as the manager, making sure Blackburn were doing as well as they possibly could and finish as high as they possibly could in the Premier League.”
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