No manager, no money and no direction – but Blackburn carry on regardless of Eustace’s exit

Blackburn Rovers’ 2-0 win at the Hawthorns on Wednesday would have been an impressive result regardless of the circumstances. Having barely survived a relegation battle last season, this was three points which ensured Blackburn stayed firmly in the play-off mix, pushing them up above West Bromwich Albion into fifth – but to pull it off despite their manager’s unexpected departure only made the result all the more remarkable.

On Thursday, it was confirmed that John Eustace had left Blackburn to take charge of Derby County, after the Rams triggered a £500,000 release clause in his contract. It was a sudden and acrimonious split with a club he had managed for just one year – and his decision to leave a club scrapping for promotion to take on a relegation battle spoke volumes about the constant undercurrent of chaos at a club whose owners seem to lack the desire to either invest in or sell a team which have slid from being Premier League staples to second-tier also-rans since they took over 15 years ago.

Despite the lack of a head coach or any palpable sense of direction from the highest levels, Blackburn press on. They now have perhaps their best shot at promotion since they were relegated from the top flight back in 2012 – but they are now rudderless after a disappointing transfer window, and face an uphill battle to get back to the big time. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be done.

Why John Eustace left Blackburn – and what it says about their owners

Few outside of Ewood Park’s corridors of power suspected that Eustace was on the brink of leaving the club he had only taken charge of in February 2024. Everything seemed to be going smoothly enough – after some dicey moments as the club avoided dropping down to League One on the last day of the 2023/24 season, Eustace eventually instilled his ideology and seemed to have the squad singing from the same hymn sheet. Blackburn have consistently been in or around the top six since the start of the season. Managers rarely jump ship for a tougher assignment under such circumstances.

There were some understandable personal motivations behind Eustace’s decision to take the Derby job – a Midlander born and bred, he will now be working closer to his family and for the club at which he finished his playing career – but there were other, more pressing concerns which encouraged him to drop 16 places down the table.

Reporting from The Lancashire Telegraph reveals that Eustace had serious concerns about the lack of strategy behind the scenes as key staff were appointed and removed almost non-stop, and was frustrated by a lack of investment in the playing squad and the club’s decision not to offer him a new contract which he felt, with some justification, that he had earned.

Despite their promising league position and the fact that they have earned an estimated £33.5m from player sales since the start of last season, mostly from the sales of Adam Wharton to Crystal Palace and Sammie Szmodics to Ipswich Town, Blackburn invested sparingly in the team over the winter.

According to the club’s ownership, who released a rather snarky club statement in which they noted that they were “extremely disappointed” by Eustace’s decision to leave, he did so despite “significant investment” being made in the playing squad – but that investment consisted of signing unproven forward Augustus Kargbo for around £1m, three loan deals and the addition of two short-term free agents.

It was, by most standards, a fairly underwhelming investment in a play-off push. Blackburn are not a particularly wealthy club, don’t have the benefit of a vast support base purchasing tickets and merchandise, and are further hampered by an ongoing court case in India involving the owners which has reportedly impacted their capacity to invest directly - but rather appeared to have been promised than was delivered all the same.

Had the owners communicated a strategy of cost-cutting in order to maintain long-term sustainability, the low spending might have been more palatable – instead, there is no communication at all from owners who have not been seen at Ewood Park for a decade, and there is such a constant churn within the backroom team that it’s hard to see any form of long-term strategy whatsoever.

Gregg Broughton lasted two years as director of football before he was dismissed last summer and was not directly replaced, with former striker Rudy Gestede appointed as ‘head of football operations’ in November. John Park was appointed as chief scout in 2021, left in 2022, returned in 2024 and was gone again five months later. His post remains vacant. The Head of Academy, Stuart Jones, has also left and Eustace only found out about it when he was asked for his opinion at a press conference.

Then there is the fact that Blackburn haven’t extended the contract of a single player on their books since 2023. Winger Tyrhys Dolan is set to become the latest first-team regular to leave on a free at the end of the season, and Eustace – who never spoke directly to the owners during his entire tenure - had already gently aired his grievances at the lack of clarity over several players’ future . In retrospect, the first hint of what was to come.

Nor is any of this a blip on the radar – the circumstances under which Eustace will leave Blackburn are remarkably similar to those under which his predecessor, Jon Dahl Tomasson, left Ewood Park a year earlier, when he too grew frustrated with the club’s transfer business and a lack of joined-up thinking behind the scenes.

Tomasson’s resignation was initially refused by the club, but he eventually forced his way out and made way for Eustace. The only significant difference is that under Tomasson, on-pitch performances had tailed off dramatically – with Eustace, the points have been flowing steadily enough to make a return to the Premier League a realistic ambition. Still, a disorganised back office with a patchwork recruitment team failed to invest enough to make the odds of that dream being realised much shorter.

Hope remains despite the chaos

There was some irony in Blackburn’s victory at the Hawthorns. Sat in the home team’s dugout was Tony Mowbray, who was in charge at Ewood the last time the club had enjoyed a few years of relative stability. On the pitch was Adam Armstrong, once a superb striker for Blackburn, who West Brom stretched the budget to sign on loan on deadline day. There were plenty of ghosts in the Hawthorns, and reminders of a calmer time.

Acting in Eustace’s stead, meanwhile, was David Lowe, who has been a part of Blackburn’s coaching staff since 2011. The avuncular 59-year-old told the media after the game that he was “really proud” of the players for their performance despite “a difficult couple of days”, and he was right to be impressed – having been given every excuse to be flustered or frustrated, Blackburn dug in and executed the hard-working, whole-hearted defensive game plan which Eustace had drawn up for them.

As a result, Blackburn are once again sitting pretty as ‘the best of the rest’ in the Championship, behind a top four who look down on their second-tier peers with an enormous points advantage. They may not have had a manager, they might have been missing key players through injury and they might not know which of them will even be at the club come the summer, but the effort and application which Eustace had demanded of his players was still present and correct.

Blackburn are not the most exciting team to watch at the moment, and their league position is a testament to collective determination and grit over individual quality. There isn’t too much guile or flair, but there are a lot of players who will run themselves into the ground for three points. Even with Eustace abruptly leaving, the team spirit appeared to be intact. That offers some hope.

There are 14 games left in the season, which is of course more than enough time for everything to come off the rails in such a tight division. Just one bad result could easily see Blackburn spat back out of the top six once more. It remains unclear whether Lowe will remain in charge alongside former player Damien Johnson, another long-standing member of the coaching staff – the two also oversaw a 3-1 win over Stoke City during last year’s brief interregnum before Eustace took over from Tomasson – but some form of continuity could be crucial.

Blackburn’s owners – or at least their COO Suhail Pasha and CEO Steve Waggott, who seem to be responsible for the running of the club in place of the invisible grandees of Venky’s – have not got a great track record in terms of ensuring a consistent tactical style or broader coaching methodology between appointments. Tomasson was chalk to Mowbray’s cheese, and Eustace, with his conservative, counter-attacking strategy, was almost the exact opposite of Tomasson, who preferred a free-flowing, possession-based brand of football.

Another strategic U-turn could easily be damaging to the club’s short-term prospects given how well suited the current squad seem to be to Eustace’s system – and given the uncertainty over contracts, cash flow and backroom staffing, one wonders if the long term doesn’t look a little bleak regardless of the next managerial appointment. It’s already a minor miracle that a team which barely dodged relegation is putting together a coherent promotion campaign despite losing its only first-rate goalscorer over the summer, and this could be an opportunity to good to squander on a high-risk appointment.

It's also an opportunity which has come about more by luck than by judgement, at least on the owners’ part. The club has no clear direction forward, no apparent overarching philosophy, and no stability in key staff positions or within the playing squad, and serious concerns over cash flow – but in Eustace, they found a manager whose methods fit his players to near perfection. All that remains to be seen is whether the club can stumble upon a way to keep his approach in place for the next three months, or at least to find a way forward which builds effectively on Eustace’s foundations.

If they can do that, Blackburn might just pull off a promotion which would be deeply improbable given the farcical circumstances. Miss out, and one wonders whether Venky’s or their proxies have anything resembling a plan to get a clear run at the top six again.