Blackburn Rovers may have survived but John Eustace still has a long road ahead of him

Saturday’s celebrations were, at best, situational for Blackburn Rovers supporters, and in many ways rather short-lived. Their side’s surprising 2-0 win away to Championship title winners Leicester City ensured their survival, but once the initial surge of relief wore off it was hard to feel too much jubilation at the end of a chaotic and largely dismal season.

Manager John Eustace, who took over from Jon Dahl Tomasson in February after the Dane’s tenure collapsed under the weight of backroom tensions and wilting performances through the winter, tried to be positive but some of the platitudes felt a little thin and failed to answer the question foremost in the mind of many Blackburn fans – was Eustace really the man to take the club forward again?

“Everyone should be very proud of themselves because it gives us a platform to build,” Eustace told the media after the game at the King Power Stadium. “Overall, we’ve been really competitive and had we been more clinical in the final third we’d have had more points than we’ve ended with.”

Ahead of the match, he claimed that Blackburn had made “positive steps” and that “50 points is a good tally,” adding that “we came in three months ago now and the place was very low on confidence, we'd have a lot of defeats in a row. We've turned things around.” That latter claim rang a little hollow, given that Eustace has overseen just three wins in 17 matches.

He certainly wasn’t wide of the mark when it came to the need to be more clinical in the final third. Under Tomasson, Blackburn had been potent going forward even if they lacked discipline at the back – under Eustace, they struggled to string passes together in the final third and became desperately static and unimaginative up front. In the end, they were utterly reliant on the individual brilliance of Sammie Szmodics, who scored all three goals in the crucial wins over Leeds United and Leicester and whose final tally of 27 represented almost half of the team’s 60 league goals.

In those two wins over Leeds and Leicester – the other win of Eustace’s reign to date, a 5-1 drubbing of Sunderland, proved to be an anomaly – Blackburn enjoyed just 25% of the possession and were patently outgunned throughout, reliant on some smart saves from goalkeeper Aynsley Pears, a lot of last-ditch defending and, of course, Szmodics’ extraordinary finishing skills to take points back to Ewood Park that were, perhaps, not entirely deserved. At least there were some to take home, a mercy given that Eustace has yet to earn a win in front of his home support.

Where Blackburn had been impressive and inventive in possession, they became blunt and dulled under Eustace – but, to his credit, they were much more tightly-drilled in defence in most of the matches he has taken charge of. There have been some distinct slip-ups there, too, not least a dreadful 5-0 defeat by Bristol City, but most of their worst moments at the back were due to individual errors rather than systemic failures.

With confidence at a low ebb, several players who have performed admirably in the past made uncharacteristic and costly mistakes, but Blackburn weren’t leaving excessive amounts of space open to their opponents as they often had under Tomasson. Since Eustace took over, it’s felt like on-pitch problems have been operating under a one in, one out system.

The long and short of it is that Blackburn tightened up a little at the cost of attacking threat, and that it would be a rather generous reading of the situation to suggest that Eustace had “turned it around.” Instead, he dabbed the brakes just hard enough to survive. But none of that really answers the question – is he the man to take Blackburn forward?

It seems that he will be given the chance to prove that he is. A post-season statement from owners Venky’s mentioned “what we hope will be an exciting and successful first full season under our head coach John Eustace,” clearly hinting that there is no appetite for change in the dugout.

His short track record in management offers only a handful of clues as to his likelihood of success. He managed Birmingham City for a little over a year before he was replaced, foolishly as it transpired, by Wayne Rooney, a decision made not because of results but because the new American owners wanted a starry name that would resonate with the US market.

Immediately prior to his dismissal, Birmingham – who have since been relegated to League One – were fifth in the table and had just put together highly impressive back-to-back wins over Huddersfield Town and West Bromwich Albion, the latter of which was perhaps the best result of Eustace’s tenure. The timing was simply absurd, but his overall track record at Birmingham was a little less bright than their start to the season implied.

Birmingham finished 17th at the end of his one full campaign in charge, winning 14 out of 46 games and scoring fewer goals than all but four other teams in the Championship. Overall, he went at 1.25 points per game at Birmingham, which is lower mid-table form. In Eustace’s defence, few would have expected much more from a mediocre squad, but there is still very little evidence that he knows how to marshal an attack – and that’s the thing he sorely needs to figure out, especially given the probability that Szmodics will leave Ewood Park this summer. There is talent and ability in the form of players like Sam Gallagher and Tyrhys Dolan, but they have become peripheral figures since Eustace arrived.

And to make it all a little harder, there is no real clarity on whether he will have the funding to build a team in his own image this summer, despite the recent club record sale of Adam Wharton and a likely fee of around £15m from Szmodics. Venky’s are currently embroiled in a legal dispute over their financial affairs back in India, and have had to go through the Delhi High Court to release funds to support the club already. The latest hearing, initially scheduled for January, has been pushed back twice and will now take place in August.

If that hearing goes badly, there will be huge uncertainty over Blackburn’s financial viability. Like many Championship clubs, they have considerable debts to service and funding from the owners is essential to improve the squad. The sales of Wharton and Szmodics could fund a spending spree if Venky’s are free and willing to prop the club’s running costs up – but that money could also end up being needed to keep the lights on.

There is a good chance that necessity forces transfer business to be done after the season starts, which is hardly ideal. There will likely be some loans and perhaps the occasional Bosman, but the purse strings may well be held very tightly indeed. It’s unlikely we’ll find out how this summer will pan out in advance.

So Eustace badly needs to figure out how to get his team scoring, and he will badly need some offensive reinforcements that he may or may not be able to buy. This is a huge challenge, and he is probably going to have to play it on hard mode – and it’s also a hurdle which he hasn’t demonstrated, over his brief career as a manager in the professional game, that he is capable of clearing. This could be a long summer in Lancashire, and it’s down to Eustace to find a way to lift the gloom by the time the winter rolls around. The odds are not stacked in his favour.