From Blackburn to Wolves - disinterest from owners is killing dreams in women's footballFrom Blackburn to Wolves - disinterest from owners is killing dreams in women's football
From Blackburn to Wolves - disinterest from owners is killing dreams in women's football | Getty Images
Blackburn Women may be relegated and Wolves Women denied promotion - all because of the disinterest and greed of their owners.
There have always been some football clubs at which the owners treat their women’s team as more of an inconvenience than a source of pride, or as a side worthy of investment – now two more clubs, Blackburn Rovers and Wolverhampton Wanderers, can perhaps be added to the unduly long list.
Both Blackburn and Wolves Women could have been playing in the renamed WSL2 next season, the competition currently known as the Women’s Championship. Blackburn avoided relegation from the second tier after a tough season, while Wolves came within an inch of earning promotion, missing out on the last day after finishing second to Nottingham Forest. As it transpired, however, neither sides’ results may even have been relevant.
Even as the women’s game grows and looks for new ways to attract fans and sponsors, two tiers are forming between the teams – those who are being funded and nurtured, and those whose owners are paying them lip service at best. It’s a divide that can’t be ignored.
Why Blackburn Rovers Women may be relegated – despite staying up
Blackburn Rovers Women have been among the least well-funded sides in the women’s second tier for the past six seasons now, but their obdurate capacity to stay up, season after season, in a tough division has become a source of considerable pride to their fans.
Promoted to the Women’s Championship in 2019, they finished as high as sixth in the table during the 2023/24 campaign despite a minimal budget, with the gulf between the finances of the Blackburn team and some of their peers perhaps best exemplified by the decision made by 29-year-old forward Saffron Jordan, arguably the club’s most important player, to quit football in order to work in the NHS before the start of the season.
It’s hard to imagine a player in the second tier of the men’s game making that call, but still the team pressed on, survived, and made many people in East Lancashire very proud. Now, all of that grit and graft over the course of years may have been for nothing.
The BBC are among outlets reporting that Blackburn may withdraw from the WSL2 next season as the already unpopular owners, Venky’s, are unwilling to meet the increased requirements set for facilities, staffing and player welfare that are being introduced from next season.
Players have reportedly been told that there is a “99% chance” that the owners “will not be financially supporting the team next season”. The club that produced Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway and Ella Toone, all future England stars, may sink back down into the depths of the amateur game, neglected by owners unwilling to put their hands into their pockets.
The future of the players, who received salaries of £9,000 on a semi-professional basis last season, is no more certain than that of the club as a whole. Defender Niamh Murphy, writing on social media, saying that “the only consistency there has been is the lack of financial support from the club.”
“This group has worked relentlessly hard all season for so little reward. We all earn less than a liveable wage, with many players having to live away from home whilst also having to work other jobs to survive, and this is what we get in return.”
Rovers’ owners, represented in the day-to-day running of the club by COO Suhail Pasha and CEO Steve Waggott, may point to continuing financial losses sustained by the running of the men’s club as being behind a need to tighten belts, while a difficult economic situation has been worsened by an endlessly-delayed case running through the Delhi High Court. As it stands, any investment made by Venky’s into Blackburn effectively costs them double, as the courts require that they pay a surety of equal value to the money put in.
Still, the Rao family – the people behind Venky’s – have an estimated net worth of £2bn. The funding required to keep the women’s team up to code and fully staffed next season, even without paying the players are more substantial and liveable wage, would amount to a tiny fraction of their immense wealth. The broader financial situation at Blackburn Rovers is more of an excuse than a valid reason for letting the club drop down the divisions and dwindle after so much hard work was put in by players and staff alike for so long.
From Wolves to Everton, an effort gap is emerging in women’s football
Blackburn are not alone in receiving shoddy treatment from their owners. Wolves’ players found out before the end of their Women’s Northern Division Premier League campaign that even had they won a dramatic title on the final day of the season, they would not be promoted – as their owners, too, were not willing to foot the bill for improved staffing and facilities.
“As a group of staff and players we have been fighting all season and still achieved what some people at the club thought was impossible,” defender Lily Simkin said on social media. "We took it to the last day to find out it would have all been for nothing anyway. We deserve better."
The BBC quoted unspecified players as saying that felt they had been “lied to” and shown “a lack of respect” by the club’s ownership over a decision not to apply for a WSL2 license despite their potential promotion.
Following a fan backlash, Wolves chairman Jeff Shi (another billionaire) released a statement which “reaffirmed” the ownership’s commitment to the women’s team and pledged to apply for a Tier 2 license across future seasons while providing the funds to provide the necessary upgrades – a victory, in the end, although one that came after a betrayal and without a public apology.
There is a grim irony that Blackburn and Wolves Women are being treated so shoddily at a time in which the spotlight on the women’s game grows ever brighter, and when other teams are demonstrating their supposed commitment to their women’s sections in much more tangible ways.
On Tuesday, Everton announced that instead of bulldozing Goodison Park after the men’s team move to their new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock, the old ground would be turned over to the women’s team, which finished eight in the 12-team WSL this season.
A club statement said that “the ambition is to create a team capable of challenging for honours - backed by high-quality facilities and a world-renowned home” and it’s a claim backed up by a decision which probably doesn’t make much short-term financial sense but which does lay a foundation upon which the club’s women’s team can grow.
Everton Women were among the best teams in the country under previous ownership, winning a league title in 1998 and the FA Women’s Cup in 2010, but were less successful during Farhad Moshiri’s tenure, spending two seasons in the second tier following relegation in 2015. It’s a reminder of the difference that the backing of an invested and interested board can make.
As the women’s game grows and more funding, investment and fans are flocking to the game, the gap between the clubs who care about their women’s teams and those who don’t is not only growing, but becoming ever more evident.
That’s not only a problem for the ambitions of individual teams like Blackburn and Wolves who find themselves forced to compete with limited backing, but a problem for women’s football as a whole. Unless The FA and supporters pressurise teams to invest and prove that they care, only a small number of teams will thrive – or even survive – and a deep pool of competitive teams and talent could be essential for the game’s continued growth.
Right now, Blackburn Rovers Women probably aren’t thinking too hard about the long-term health of the sport or the knock-on effects of a decision would could see them relegated and marginalised. They are perhaps more concerned about whether they will have a job or a team to play for next season. Theirs is a story of hard work being repaid by a middle finger – and it’s not unique.
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