League Championship club Blackburn Rovers admitted in court that they are a football club "out of control" and being run by "a renegade managing director whom they claim they are powerless to suspend," according to Ian Herbert of the London INDEPENDENT. The club’s lawyers conceded that the latest chapter in their efforts to avoid paying their sacked manager Henning Berg £2.25M ($3.5M) in wages was a "shambles." However, lawyers pleaded that their Indian owners "were struggling to wrest control" from India and at the mercy of Managing Dir Derek Shaw, who is "in de facto control of the club and continuing to act without authority and his self-interest." However, Blackburn, which is "trying to prove that Shaw was acting without authority by agreeing a contract which entitles Berg to payment of his three-year contract in full, and not just 12 months, were pilloried in another day of deeply damaging High Court evidence." The court heard that the Venky’s empire’s Rao family "were perfectly entitled to suspend Shaw, under the terms of his contract, and that claims to the contrary were a facade." Judge Mark Pilling was "deeply sceptical of their case" -- and particularly the fact that no members of the controlling family "had provided any evidence to back up their claims about Shaw or the Berg contract" (INDEPENDENT, 4/27).
