Today in a Midlands location sees the fourth meeting between Coventry City Chairman Ken Dulieu and the investors whom Gary Hoffman wants to introduce to the club.
The meeting comes at a time when the club is at its lowest ebb for many years, if not ever and comes at the end of a week where owners SISU have been hit by peaceful and well thought out supporter objections to their handling of the club
The problems SISU are having are of their own making and it is them who have to take the rightful blame. One only has to look back to their March press conference to launch the new board and see the mess they made of that with no mention about the long term future of the club, in fact that day, many City supporters were not even sure that we would be around to start this season.
SISU might have persuaded their bank to fund the wages and cover the losses and they did save the club three years ago but using smokescreens such as this Financial Fair Play scheme which may or may not come in for next season or even the season afterwards, demonstrates that they have not grasped the fundamental that Coventry City Football Club’s product is on the pitch.
That product needs constant investing in order to get it into the right product that will not only get results on the pitch but will attract supporters back into the Ricoh Arena stands, sell more merchandise in the club shop etc thus reducing the losses.
Their failure to provide Andy Thorn with the players he needed on July 1st has manifested itself in the results so far and if things cannot be turned around in a very difficult league where the relegated clubs from the Premier League got £16m parachute payment before a ball is kicked and teams like Leicester have money to burn thanks to their board seeking out and finding proper investment then dropping into League One may be unavoidable.
That cannot be allowed to happen and whilst Andy Thorn, who has the backing of every City supporter, along with all his backroom staff will work his socks to try and prevent it, one has to wonder if the current owners have the same kind of concern that employees and supporters do in preventing the club from going into a division which will see the club lose even more money.
Ken Dulieu and Paul Clouting have said that the board is willing to speak to investors and today they have that opportunity. SISU need to realise that investing in football is a massive gamble and they are not likely to get back monies invested. Millions of people who have invested in football clubs over the years have not got their money back so why should some loss making Hedge Fund from London think they are any different?
If they can get over this thinking, then maybe the slow process of having proper investment to get the club back on a decent footing with a future we can all share in, will finally happen.