The Jason Whalley column

DESPITE other issues around the club at this time - as there appear to be every week when I come to write this piece - I am going to concentrate on the football.

At the moment Blackburn Rovers Football Club are in a perilous position.

Bottom of the league with only one win in fourteen but the most significant statistic is slap bang in the middle of the goals against column.

There have been 29 goals conceded at an average of over two per game - that is diabolical.

Teams that concede two a game don't win very often and teams that don't win very often don't get many points and teams that don't get many points get relegated.

Nightmare scenario? Yes, but the sooner the club get their heads around the enormity of the situation the better.

So where do we find the root cause of the problem?

Well, it doesn't take a genius to work out that our defending is abysmal.

Now, there are the schools of thought that subscribe to the theory of 'defending as a team' and that's fine but in the wider scheme of things the quality of our defenders has to be seriously questioned.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have too many at the club who are 'nearly' good enough.

They have generally been brought in from other clubs where they have performed adequately or they are young players with potential.

Unfortunately, the players in both categories are not proving good enough to get us the clean sheets and consequently the points that we are desperate for.

The obvious solution is to go out and spend to bring the necessary player (or players) in to address the problem but it is worth bearing in mind that we already have nine defenders on the payroll and it's safe to say they'll be paid a healthy chunk of cash for their 'talents'.

The fact is any permutaion of four from this nine look unlikely to keep out the opposition on any given day and to be honest it's doubtful we'd keep a clean sheet if we played all nine at the same time!

It's not like we're being undone by any sophisticated attacking either, it's generally a case of the opposition getting bodies in the box and getting the ball in there.

We tend to do the rest with our poor organisation and communication. It's crying out for a player to take charge and lead from the back.

So the solution has to be to buy. The one type of player we need is a Colin Hendry type - a leader.

It's plainly obvious to look at the players we have to realise that not one of them is a strong enough character with the leadership qualities to help those around lift their game above the general mediocrity.

I'm pretty sure that the manager knows what he needs to do and if he can sort our shoddy defending we could well be climbing that table sooner rather than later as he has instilled a tremendous work ethic in players who looked disinterested under the previous regime.

The one thing we don't want to be saying come May is that we were 'nearly' good enough to stay up.