Sam eyes good relationship

Blackburn are 12/1 to be relegated after their win over Villa. Will the new owners have an impact? Bet now.

Sam Allardyce is looking forward to working with Blackburn's new owners after they watched Rovers triumph 2-0 against Aston Villa on Sunday.

Venkateshwara and Balaji Rao, the directors of Venky's, came on to the pitch to greet the club's fans before kick-off and received warm applause.

The pair - who have dismissed claims they are considering renaming Ewood Park as Venky's Stadium - then saw Rovers go on to win the game thanks to a Morten Gamst Pedersen brace.

Allardyce told Sky Sports: "I have spoken to them today - nothing in terms of how the club's going forward, I'm looking forward to that, you know it's a new era and I'm looking very much to meeting them and giving them my ideas on how the club should go forward.

"Hopefully we will have a good working relationship in the future, going on together, and of course I think we've probably excited them today because they came against Chelsea, which was a terrific performance but a disappointing loss at the end.

"They came to Tottenham and while we did the attacking right with two goals, defending was awful and today they've seen their first win."

He added: "I need to know what their ultimate plan is for the football club based on what their business is and how they want to link the two together.

"I hear they are very keen on tapping into particularly the Indian market which is always good news when you're globally looking at more revenue.

"And if you can gain any more revenue that will benefit the football club we're very interested in helping as much as we possibly can and hopefully as a good working relationship and money to develop the team is basically what we need, as in terms of how much that is we don't know but I'm looking forward to sitting down with them next time that they're over."

Allardyce felt his side deserved a lot of credit for the way they played against Villa.

He said: "It's a fantastic game for us, I think the balance of being able to attack and open the opposition up was there for all to see.

"I felt that we really should have added more to the total today on golden chances, particularly (El-Hadji) Diouf's two in the second half, the one-on-one with Brad (Friedel) and the free header on the far post.

"We should have settled the game even more so before Villa threw everything at us. And at 2-0, you know what, you only need a slip up and a goal to go in and you know its going to be a little bit of a problem to go into the last few minutes.

"We felt that tension against Wigan a couple of weeks ago and I shifted to getting to the defensive side right, we got the 2-0 and won the game.

"I said let's get the defensive side right from here on in lads, play on the break when we get the chance and I thought the lads played the game out superbly well and I think it was a terrific performance from us overall."

View the original article here