Wrong to get rid of Ince, says Blackburn Rovers captain

3:11pm Monday 8th December 2008

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By Gary York »

RYAN Nelsen believes it would be wrong for Blackburn Rovers to change manager now as he insists the players must shoulder more of the flak being thrown at Paul Ince.

The Rovers captain has moved quickly to support under-fire Ince in the wake of a miserable nine-game winless streak in the Premier League.

After seeing his side sink to 19th place ahead of today’s fixture against league leaders Liverpool at Ewood Park, the Rovers boss has come under increasing pressure and a section of the club’s supporters have begun to voice their disquiet.

It is a situation that has upset skipper Nelsen, who believes his team-mates must accept more responisbility for the club’s poor start to the season.

Asked whether a change of manager at this stage of the campaign would do more harm than good, Nelsen said: “Exactly. Everybody knows that Paul Ince is going be a success as manager. It’s just the environment these young managers are in these days.

“I feel bad for him at the moment. He’s taken a lot of flak when the players should have.

“As players, we’ve got to come out and take a lot of the responsibility. We haven’t helped him out with the results.

“We are the ones not winning the games, we are the ones conceding the goals.

“All the players have made mistakes we weren’t making under (Mark) Hughes, so I feel bad for the manager.

“The players have got to FROM BACK PAGE stand up and be counted a lot more than what we have. We all know that, we understand that and we want to do it.”

Rovers face Rafa Benitez’s table-toppers striving for their first clean sheet in 10 attempts.

But keeping it tight at the back has proved a step too far of late, with Rovers shipping 11 goals in their last four games.

Nelsen, 31, admits that Blackburn’s defensive woes is a massive cause for concern, and the New Zealand centre-back is struggling to explain why it has gone wrong.

He said: “It’s been horrible. It’s the worst I’ve ever had in my career, to tell you the truth. We haven’t conceded this many goals.

“In a lot of the games, it’s been individual mistakes that have cost us, it’s been nothing to do with tactics, it’s just blatant individual errors.

“The players must hold their hands up to it. You can’t blame the manager for things like that.

“But I’d be extremely worried if the work-ethic from the players and the enthusiasm to remedy the situation wasn’t there.

“All the guys and the staff are committed to getting this right. We are trying hard each day to get better.

“We’ve shown glimpses of it - and we know we can do it, becasue we've been doing it for the last four or five seasons at Blackburn. We’ve just got to get back to it.”

And Nelsen has issued a plea to discontented Rovers supporters, adding: “If the fans aren't happy - we're feeling it even more.

“I can totally understand where they are coming from. The Blackburn fans have enjoyed having great success over the last four years, they’ve had a good ride and they are not used to this.

“But we are not used to this either. It hurts a lot.”