Indian owners set target for Blackburn

London With more than a whiff of optimism, Blackburn's new owners Venky's are speaking of making the club "a global brand". Perhaps West Ham's owners are going to turn Avram Grant into a Hollywood star. More likely Grant will end up out of a job, as Sam Allardyce did last week and in this madcap world, Allardyce may end up at Upton Park.

The change would be mostly geographical because West Ham are no worse than Blackburn, but no better either.

Anchored at the bottom of the Premier League, West Ham nominated this as a "must-win" game, then played as though it was a "must-not-lose" match. Their performance improved in the second half when they were marginally the better side but Grant was stretching reality when claiming afterwards that his team deserved three points. The match ended in a 1-1 draw.

It would have been difficult for the game to live up to the week that preceded it. Nobody saw the bullet that had Allardyce's name on it, certainly not the man himself. Most imagined Venky's, the Indian company that bought Blackburn last month, would be content to wait while Allardyce worked his pragmatism.

But Balaji Rao, boss of the poultry giant Venky's India Limited, has built a highly successful company and clearly he's not buying the notion that anywhere above relegation is good for Blackburn.

When you pay £43m (Dh 245.365 million) for a football club, the deal confers entitlement, and Venky's decided Allardyce wasn't their kind of manager. According to a poll in the local Blackburn newspaper, 24 per cent of the club's fans agreed. Fourth or fifth place is Venky's target.

— The Times Newspaper Limited, London, 2010