The bizarre Ewood Park plan Venky's hoped would win over Blackburn Rovers fans | OneFootball

The Venky’s came up with a rather odd idea back in 2011 to improve the relationship between themselves and the supporters.

Blackburn Rovers’ standoff with the Venky’s is closing in on being two decades long.

The Venky’s took control of the club in the winter of 2010 and drew fierce criticism in the opening 12 months due to mismanagement of the football club.

And things haven’t got any better as the years have gone on, with fans of the club continually demanding them to sell the club and give it to prospective owners that can help the Lancashire outfit thrive again.

Under their tenure, the club has been in a serious decline, with the owners at the heart of all the negativity that has ensued.

Blackburn Rovers’ decline under the Venky’s

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Under the Venky’s tenure, Blackburn have spent just two seasons in the Premier League, one season all the way down in League One and 14 terms in the Championship, highlighting their decline from going from an established top-flight team to a side that’s grateful for battling their way to survival in the second tier.

Meanwhile, back in 2011, a year into the Venky’s owning the club, the owners had already made a series of questionable decisions that led to the relationship between themselves and the fans breaking down.

And at that time, the owners were thinking of ways they could repair such a fragmented relationship, with a bizarre decision coming into their minds which would involve some well-known R&B music artists.

Why Venky’s became quickly unpopular at Blackburn Rovers

The Venky's became intensely unpopular with Blackburn Rovers fans in 2011 due to what supporters saw as severe mismanagement, a lack of footballing knowledge and a breakdown in general communication.

They got themselves off to the wrong start just weeks into taking over, surprisingly sacking Sam Allardyce, who had recently guided the club to a 10th-place finish the previous season, with his dismissal shocking everybody connected to the club.

They then went on to replace Allardyce with inexperienced first-team coach Steve Kean, and to no surprise, results rapidly deteriorated, with the club narrowly avoiding relegation after going on a 10-game winless run in the early part of 2011.

But to everybody’s amazement, they bizarrely handed Kean a new contract and publicly claimed he could manage the club ‘forever’.

Throughout their time at the club, they rarely visit Ewood Park and don’t engage with local staff, while a leaked internal letter in early 2012 detailed that even Blackburn senior directors were left in the dark regarding major club decisions.

It’s clear that these things haven’t changed all these years later, with Blackburn standing no chance of waking from their slumber while the Venky brothers remain in charge.

The Venky’s Ewood Park, R&B concert idea

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At the time of their footballing decisions receiving fierce criticism from supporters in 2011, the Venky’s were trying to come up with new ideas to implement at Ewood Park that would get the fanbase back on side.

And this one could be the most bizarre yet, with the supporters saved from the embarrassment and shame it would have caused as it had failed to be implemented.

A report by the Guardian in the winter of 2011 revealed how the Venky's hoped to have free R&B concerts at Ewood Park to win the fans back over.

Leaked emails detailed plans for major free music events to be played at Ewood Park, with the Venky’s wanting the likes of Akon to headline them.

Kelly Rowland and David Guetta were also believed to be approached to see if they could be persuaded to head to Lancashire for a one-off gig, pencilled in for 11th August, which would have been two days before the start of the 2012-13 campaign.

And unsurprisingly, the idea never got off the ground, with none of the acts agreeing to perform.

The concert would have cost an estimated seven-figure sum to stage, with the Venky’s more interested in getting the top artists from the music world to perform at Ewood Park, rather than putting the necessary funds in to help the playing squad.

The Venky’s have been an embarrassment to Blackburn Rovers

Such a nonsensical and out of touch idea like this from the Venky’s is proof they have no footballing brains whatsoever, and the writing was on the wall at what Blackburn’s future would look like years later.

Their inability to read the room about Steve Kean meant they suffered relegation from the Premier League and have spent a season in League One before ever winning their place back in the top-flight.

Now they are floating between play-off runs and relegation battles in the Championship, with no consistency mirroring owners who are not fit for purpose to run such a historic club like Blackburn.

Supporters have been through the mill watching the club under the Venky’s guidance, and hopefully in the near future, they will have moved on from the club so people with footballing brains can come in and get them back into the big time – where they deserve to be.