As the eyes and ears of the club’s Indian owners, poultry conglomerate Venky’s, Shebby was charged with the almost impossible job of restoring the broken club to the Barclays Premier League.

Venky’s promised the world. Shebby’s motto was “promotion or die trying”. They delivered chaos.

Shebby, Venky’s director of football in all but name, was accused of presiding over the embarrassing decline of the club during the 2012/2013 season.

As Venky’s enforcer, he was thrust into the centre of the most tumultuous takeover in the history of English football.

It didn’t take long for the outspoken opinions that made Shebby, a popular pundit across Asia, to stir English football.

As Shebby himself admitted, his bluntness was “too sharp for England”.

But, as many who knew the Malaysian football legend, who died yesterday at 61 while out cycling in Johor Bahru, Shebby was at times sharp-tongued.

Most conversations, serious or light-hearted, always had a sting in the tail.

At a fans’ forum soon after he took the hot seat, someone asked him: “I’m bald, I’m Scottish, I have a drink problem and know nothing about football, can I have a job?”

Shebby replied: “That position is already filled”, a remark that was directed at Rovers’ Scottish manager Steve Kean, whom he wanted removed.

That happened barely a month after he wrote a newspaper column as a television pundit in Singapore, calling for the Scot to be sacked.

After the Scot had left the club, Shebby, pointing to a magazine’s tribute to Alex Ferguson, pinned on the noticeboard of Kean’s office, said: “What an interesting article, pity he didn’t put any of Ferguson’s methods into practice.”

Shebby’s unguarded comments, particularly about Kean and midfielder Morten Gamst Pedersen, did not go down so well inside Ewood Park.

On the eve of the Championship season, he told fans that Kean would be sacked if he lost three games in a row, and reportedly called Pedersen a pensioner.

He apologised publicly and personally to both men but controversy continued to swirl around the former Malaysia international, once regarded as Asia’s answer to Alan Hansen.

Having led the protracted recruitment process to appoint Henning Berg, Shebby sacked the former Rovers and Manchester United defender after 57 days and 10 games that produced one win.

He claimed he had spent his first six months at Blackburn “fighting enemies from the outside and inside”.

He had to put out fires, including the ridicule that was heaped on Venky’s after the players appeared in a television advert for the company’s fast food outlets, filmed eating fried chicken in the dressing room.

Shebby, who had an 18-year playing career in Malaysia, had crazy meetings with the players. A UK daily reported him saying: “Come in lads, sit down, I’m Shebby Singh, I’ve been a player, listen to me, I’m telling you how to play football.”

“I call a spade a spade,” Shebby told the press. “As a football pundit we are most loved if we say nice things but we are most hated if we don’t.

‘I’ve never been too popular and I don’t think anything will change. But I will get the job done.”

Shebby came on the radar of the Venky’s while delivering his opinions on world football alongside England legend Steve McMahon over ESPN Star Sports, which was televised across more than 20 countries, from Singapore.

Venky’s asked him to become their head of football development for Asia before he was given the title of global adviser and parachuted into Ewood to work alongside Kean.

In an interview, Shebby said before leaving a 15-year career in television to move to Lancashire, he asked his son Sonuljit for his opinion and was told: “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve walked into the most impossible job in the world!”.

‘It’s better to have tried and failed than never have tried at all, that’s always been the way I approach life. Football is my passion, my vocation, my hobby, my everything,” he was quoted as saying.

He acknowledged that it would take a long time for some people at the club to accept “they have got an in-house pundit as a global adviser. I’ve never been too popular and I don’t think anything will change. But I will get the job done”.

In his sole Championship campaign, Rovers went through three managers, finished 17th and only avoided relegation on the penultimate Saturday.

Shebby’s honesty might have been naïve and attracted controversy but certain quarters felt it was a breath of fresh air to the fans who had been desperate for better communication with their club since the Jack Walker Trust handed over control to India in 2010.

Under the ownership of steel magnate Jack Walker, former Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish signed several high-profile players, including Alan Shearer, and captured the Premier League title in 1995-96 season.

Today, Blackburn, one of the English football League’s founding members in 1888, are lying third in the Championship – something Shebby would have been proud of.

Members of the public may pay their last respects to Shebby from 4pm today at the Nirvana Memorial Centre in Skudai.

The cortège will then be leaving at 7am tomorrow for Kuala Lumpur, where a wake will be held at the Loke Yew crematorium at 2pm. The cremation will be held after that at 4pm.