THE Blackburn Rovers centre-half, Matt Kilgallon, shakes his head at the memory of Paolo Di Canio’s “military” management at Sunderland. “I got fined for doing absolutely nothing,” he says in relation to one notorious incident at a casino involving his friend, Phil Bardsley — and he is clearly relieved that he is away from the turmoil at Sunderland.
Two years ago, Blackburn was probably a more chaotic club, but Kilgallon was told about their manager Gary Bowyer, who is as unobtrusive as Di Canio was in-your-face.
“Blackburn were getting some shocking results but I had heard good things about how the gaffer had started to turn things round,” Kilgallon says. “Before, teams would be thinking, ‘There is turmoil here. Let’s get after them and they will fall apart’. It’s not like that any more. We are doing the right things.”
Albeit quietly. Bowyer regards one of his most significant achievements since becoming manager at Ewood Park as sinking Blackburn back under the radar, a place where he has existed for virtually his entire career. Though he has been in the job for two years — a lifetime given the turnover that preceded his arrival — he still sits comfortably in the skin of somebody who is anonymous to most people.
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When he showed up last month at Anfield for Liverpool’s Europa League game against Besiktas in the company of his father, Ian, heads turned towards the double European Cup winner of a bygone era rather than the man plotting their demise in today’s FA Cup quarter-final. The younger Bowyer was unperturbed.
“In this job you don’t get much time with your family. It was great to take him back to Anfield because he won quite a few times there, as he reminded me.”
Gary Bowyer’s playing career ended at the age of 25 because of injury problems. When it is put to him that he can forge his own legacy as a manager, he does not demur, but nor does he eagerly embrace the idea either. Kilgallon, his captain at Anfield today and an accomplished pianist in his spare time, would struggle to find a lower key than his manager.
Ask Bowyer what he was doing 20 years ago, when Blackburn won the Premier League title at Anfield, and he replies that it was the year his daughter was born. When it is put to him that he was happy to sink back into the background at Blackburn after a spell as caretaker-manager rather than take the job permanently, he protests mildly at the perceived lack of ambition, but again brings in his loved ones.
“I spoke to my family about it and once they were fully supportive it was a no-brainer.”
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The softly-softly approach is understandable and devilishly clever in its own way. As a long-serving member of the backroom staff, Bowyer had watched the Indian company that bought the club, Venky’s, come in and the chaos that unfolded after Sam Allardyce was sacked in December 2010, with Rovers 13th in the Premier League.
The new owners had spoken of their top-four ambitions and plans to bring players such as David Beckham and Ronaldinho to the club. However, by the time Bowyer was offered the job, initially on a caretaker basis, in March 2013, Blackburn had been through three managers since Allardyce (Steve Kean, Henning Berg and Michael Appleton) and were 18th in the Championship.
Bowyer has steadied the ship and part of that process has clearly involved educating the owners about the realities of English football. Like one of his hapless predecessors, Kean, he has been regularly out to India, but it has not been a circus as it was before and he stresses that the trips are carefully planned around the core activities at the club.
“It is important that you sit there in front of them and make the relationship stronger,” Bowyer says.
“All I have done is be honest with them and advocate a sensible approach. Decisions made on selling players and the type of players we have brought into this club. It didn’t happen overnight. We have gradually built up the relationship and worked together on it.
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“Their financial support and backing for this club is massive. We made some sound investments and worked very hard on reinventing the squad. We have turned over 24 players since I took over and generated something like £7m in revenue from selling players, but at the same time concentrated on playing football.”
Blackburn were barred from signing players in the January transfer window under the Financial Fair Play rules. Bowyer’s past as an academy coach stood him in good stead as he brought in young players, often for them to be sold on at a profit. The club still have on their books some of the most talented players in the Championship, but a crisis in central defence meant they drafted in a loanee, 21-year-old Doneil Henry from West Ham, for the midweek game against Sheffield Wednesday. After he lost his way on the train he eventually joined his new teammates for the first time, then made an excellent debut in a win that keeps alive Rovers’ faint hopes of reaching the Championship playoffs.
Liverpool at Anfield in the FA Cup today will probably be a step too far for Blackburn, but tales of such derring-do are now more commonplace than disaster. And much of that is down to Bowyer.