Blackburn Rovers have rubbished a survey which claimed they are bottom of the league when it comes to attracting Asian supporters.

Officials at Ewood Park have labelled the survey put together by academics as "misleading and inaccurate" and have also won an apology from the authors of the report.

The controversial survey was put together by John Williams who is based at the Sir Norman Chester Centre based at Leicester University.

Rovers have slammed the claim they have no Asian season ticket holders despite having a large ethnic minority population in the town.

On Saturday, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph revealed that Lord Patel of Blackburn, the town's first Asian peer, had a season ticket.

Today stadium manager Mel Highmore said: "We have around 60 season ticket holders of Asian origin - about 0.5 per cent of our total.

"Far from putting us at the bottom of the table, as headlined in the national press this figure actually has us in the top half."

Mr Highmore has been in charge of a drive to get more Asian supporters at Ewood and claims the survey completely ignores all the hard work that has been done in recent years. He added: "This club works tirelessly within the region's Asian population to encourage football among Asians and attract them to Ewood as supporters.

"In the past two years our football in the community scheme has trained 3,000 Asian youngsters at local schools.

"We distribute free tickets throughout the community for every home game and there has been a significant increase in the number of Asians attending professional football at Ewood Park.

"We would also like to point out that more than a third, 100 plus, of our matchday stewards are Asian."

John Williams said: "We regret the problem and the negative press coverage Blackburn has received. It is clear the club attracts a number of Asian followers.

"When we look at the data on fans from ethnic minority backgrounds we are looking at very small numbers indeed in some cases and the margin for error is clear.

"After discussions with Blackburn Rovers and having returned to look at the questionnaires very closely it is now clear that a number of Blackburn fans have probably been misallocated by ethnicity.

"We also acknowledge that Blackburn Rovers is one of those clubs working very hard to eradicate racism."

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