Football

Coventry City FC

There will be about 8 of my twitter followers that will care about this. To everyone else I’m sorry, go to my other blog and look at pictures of Reykjavik.

I’m a Coventry City supporter and former regular at Highfield Road. No idea how I ended up looking for CCFCs results first when they start rolling in on a Saturday morning, but I do. I lived in Coventry for a few years and strongly believe your football club chooses you, not the other way round.

Coventry City Football Clubs current “issues” are well publicized, one thing I know is there is plenty of blame on both sides. The problems go back to the former chairman Bryan Richardson leaving the club close to 60 million in debt when he moved on after relegation from the Premier League at the end of the 2001 season. Since then they have been on the brink of administration. 15 managers in 25 years shows the problems run deep at this club.

It all came to a head last winter when they owners of Ricoh Arena, their “current” ground, requested the administrators were brought in. There are plenty of sources that cover this better than I can, and if you care you know all about this already.

During my 20 years as a Coventry fan there has been little to celebrate. There have been plenty of decisions, players, managers and owners I’ve not agreed with, but I’m no different from any other football fan.

While Sundays “home opener” sounds like great game that ended with a 5-4 win for Coventry, but it should have been played in Coventry, not 35 miles away in Northampton. I’m not sure why the league caved to the owners, Sisu, and allowed it to happen, but they did.

As I said there is plenty of blame to go around, a significant part lies at Sisu feet. The owners of Ricoh Arena is ACL, and their decision to initiate the administration process when investors who were interested in buying the club were in Coventry is inexplicable.

I believe the team has an appreciation for the situation the supporters are in. The Coventry captain Carl Baker said he understands the position that the fans have been put in, and added that the players don’t want to see the club move away from Coventry.

If ACL and Sisu had come to their senses a bit earlier, we wouldn’t be in this mess and significantly more than 2200 people would have seen a classic 5-4 win against Bristol yesterday. Played where it should have been, in Coventry.

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