Kean and Scudamore back Venky’s

It is no great surprise that Blackburn manager Steve Kean has said that Venky’s are ‘100 per cent’ the right owner to take the club forward.    It is also no surprise that deputy chief executive Paul Hunt has been sacked over the leaked letter that was critical of Venky’s stewardship of the club, although it is entirely clear that Hunt was not the source of the leak.

It is no great surprise that Blackburn manager Steve Kean has said that Venky’s are ‘100 per cent’ the right owner to take the club forward.    It is also no surprise that deputy chief executive Paul Hunt has been sacked over the leaked letter that was critical of Venky’s stewardship of the club, although it is entirely clear that Hunt was not the source of the leak.


The position of Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is a little more complicated as he has tried to reassure Blackburn fans while defending Venky’s.    He has stated that he has access to confidential information about the financial situation at Blackburn and at Portsmouth, that there is no comparison between them and there is very little danger that Blackburn as a club would be threatened.


Scudamore also expressed sympathy with Blackburn’s fans regarding the club’s plight and admitted that there was a clear breakdown in the relationship berween fans and the ownership.  A visiting Martian would sense that pretty quickly but it is important that Scudamore has said it.


However, he also said that while it might be that other owners would have made different decisions, ‘That doesn’t take away the owners’ right to make those decisions and make those mistakes, if they ultimately turn out to be mistakes.’   This is clearly the position in law: it is the owners of the club who run it not the fans unless the fans are the owners through one of a variety of available forms of mutual ownership.


A broader issue here is whether football’s ‘fit and proper persons test’ is sufficiently broad in scope, an issue raised by Blackburn MP Jack Straw.  It can reasonably be argued that Venky’s have shown a limited understanding of football of which they have no real prior experience, certainly in the UK.


The difficulty is that if one tried to broaden the scope of the test it could fall foul of Britain’s international treaty obligations in relation to foreign direct investment.    What I have in mind here are the provisions of World Trade Organisation treaties and also obligations arising from membership of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).