Thaindian News

London, Dec. 19 (ANI): Former Blackburn boss Graeme Souness has blasted the club’s new Indian owners for sacking incumbent coach Sam Allardyce, saying: “They haven’t got a clue.”

Souness, who guided the club to a Carling Cup triumph in his stint between 2000 and 2004, told the Daily Star Sunday: “Despite a background in poultry, the new owners think they know a lot more about football than Sam does.”

Allardyce was sacked last Monday but in a withering attack on the Rao family, who now own Rovers, Souness said: “While it might have been understandable for the club’s new owners to say they didn’t like the type of football the team played under Allardyce, they lose all credibility when they say it should be achievable for Blackburn to claim a top-four finish in the coming years.

“I know Blackburn Rovers inside out after having ­managed them myself, and they are a small football club. For them to just about survive in the Premier League is an achievement and probably the best they could ever hope for,” he added.

“The new owners are kidding themselves, especially if it’s true that they’ve allocated a budget of just 5 million pounds to buy players in January,” Souness said.

Souness is worried but not surprised by the sacking culture that now exists in the top division in England.

He said: “When I started out in football ­management, myself and other managers used to laugh at the plight of our peers on the continent.

“Their club owners seemed to be incredibly trigger-happy and it was in no way unusual for clubs to go through a couple of managers or more in a season.

“No one’s laughing any more, though, certainly not in the Premier League anyway, because the culture of hiring and quickly firing managers is now just as endemic in the British game.

“It all comes back to money. Clubs are ­desperate to survive in the Premier League because that’s where the money is, so they panic if results don’t go their way for a period of time and managers are most usually the fall guys, ” he said. (ANI)