Revision Of Thinking

Last updated : 09 July 2012 By Nimbus

I have been reading the opinions of Coventry City fans on a variety of message boards and forums, the one on here, the various pages on facebook, the comments on Coventry Telegraph articles etc. etc.

The messages are of three main types. 1/ Anti Sisu, Sisu out, boycott the club while Sisu are in charge etc.2/ The repetitive stuff like, same old City, what do you expect etc. 3/ Comments saying the club needs investment, the club needs to spend money on new players, the club should try harder to keep existing players etc.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion and their right to express them, I agree with some of the comments and disagree with others, but it seems to me that quite a few fans haven't quite grasped the reality of the situation the club is in. The club has no money and it is in League One. To read the comments of some City fans, it sounds as if they think we are still in either Premier League or the Championship.

The point I want to make is that many fans on the message boards are calling for the club to pay existing players, Keogh for example, what he demands to keep him at the club, many are complaining or commenting negatively about the sale or departure of players, Cranie and Bigirimana for example, but many more are bemoaning the lack of new players being brought in.

The sad fact is the club has no money to spend, it has no assets other than players to sell to raise cash and it has very few revenue streams. Many other clubs own their ground and make money from it, the Ricoh is a liability in that it costs the club money rather than making money, but that is another argument. The club has also lost revenue following relegation so it now has even less income than it had before, so where is the money going to come from to fund the recruitment of new players?

To put it simply, as unpalatable as it is to us fans, the club has to find players who are willing to work for wages the club can afford. A point to consider is just because a club can, at the moment, afford to pay higher wages doesn't mean that is the going rate for every other player in the league, but the wage structure of footballer, particularly in the lower leagues is the subject for another debate. The club can't afford to pay transfer fees either, or at least not substantial fees and that means free transfers.

Free transfers and a strict wage policy reduces the pool of players available to a club in the situation of Coventry City. It is not easy for the likes of Thorn and Waggott to recruit players of sufficient quality, but they are doing OK for a start. Kilbane will be quality in League One and Elliott and Fleck should be more than good enough for the division.

If the money raised from the sale of Bigirimana, as promised by Fisher, is given to Thorn and Waggott for player recruitment, then the pair should be able to find more players capable of competing in League One.

We, the fans are expecting people we don't know to fund out club, in effect to subsidise "our team". I don't think we have the right to expect someone to fund our enjoyment of football, but I do think we have the right to have "our club" run efficiently. We now know the the owners made a mistake in buying "our" club, they tried to do it on the cheap and failed now they can't afford to invest the money that is required, but they still have an obligation to try to make the club as successful as possible.