The Chinaman Has Not Disappeared (21 Viewers)

[Colonel Mustard]

Do get pee'd off though when we sell a player and then don't replace them at all. That happens again this season and League 2 surely awaits.

It's not a popular opinion, but I think the players we lost were replaced: Murphy for Westwood, McDonald for King, Gardner/Bigi/Thomas/Nimely/Norwood for Gunnarsson, and there was a surplus of decent centre-backs (Wood, McPake, Keogh, Cranie) to cover Turner.

Lesser quality all-around, sure, but it's not easy to have a like-for-like swap when it comes to exceptional players like Westwood and King.

 

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[Otis]

But if McDonald came in for King, who came in for Juke?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Intrigued that CM counts Nimely as a swap for Gunnar-you'd assume he'd be Juke's replacement.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

But if McDonald came in for King, who came in for Juke?

Either/or. They already had Eastwood, Jutkiewicz and Platt. You shouldn't need more than three strikers. Nimely can be added in there, too.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

Intrigued that CM counts Nimely as a swap for Gunnar-you'd assume he'd be Juke's replacement.

It's not so much about the positioning as it is the bodies. I'd prefer to have seen McSheffrey played upfront; I'm as happy to count him as a potential striker as Nimely as a potential winger.

 

[Otis]

But Eastwood was deadweight. They must have known and been made aware that Eastwood wasn't going to feature hardly, if at all. It was also a well known fact that Platt could only play 1 game a week. So, that just leaves McDonald.

As I say, you have to be sensible.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

But Eastwood was deadweight. They must have known and been made aware that Eastwood wasn't going to feature hardly, if at all. It was also a well known fact that Platt could only play 1 game a week. So, that just leaves McDonald.

Eastwood was a seven-figure signing on a hefty wage with unquestionable ability. Few of us would speak for his character, but for a team in CCFC's circumstances you have to hope that the manager will make the most out of a weapon such as that - you can't stockpile them. And I agree that mixing it up would have been beneficial; it's not that it wasn't possible with the personnel available, but simply that it wasn't really done.

 

[Wrenstreetcarpark]

Perry: right on the button. All Sisu and Joy Seppala are concerned with is MONEY. Nothing else. One game in five years doesn't tell me that Seppala cares about CCFC or Coventry for that matter. All she cares about is her money and how she can get more.

 

[SkyBlue_Bear83]

It's not a popular opinion, but I think the players we lost were replaced: Murphy for Westwood, McDonald for King, Gardner/Bigi/Thomas/Nimely/Norwood for Gunnarsson, and there was a surplus of decent centre-backs (Wood, McPake, Keogh, Cranie) to cover Turner.

Lesser quality all-around, sure, but it's not easy to have a like-for-like swap when it comes to exceptional players like Westwood and King.

Gunnarason wasn't really replaced though was he, we had Gardner for 4 games and Norwood didn't come in till the last day of the january window. So Gunnarson was replaced by Thomas/Gael for 2/3 thirds of the season which wasn't good enough.
I think some of last season was self inflicted like persisting with Christie at RB just not to break up Keogh and Cranie and I also don't really understand why Deegan was overlooked so much last season, some of it was due to being unfit an unlucky with injuries with Eastwood and then Clarke, Wood, Mcdonald, Baker, Cameron all missed good chunks of the season and some of it was just our squad was poor and thin.


In striking positions we lost King, Juke and effectively Eastwood who were replaced my Mcdonald who was out for a while and Nimely who was only here for less than half of the games.

In midfield we lost Carsley, Doyle, Gunnarson which we never replaced any really until Norwood.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

Gunnarason wasn't really replaced though was he, we had Gardner for 4 games and Norwood didn't come in till the last day of the january window. So Gunnarson was replaced by Thomas/Gael for 2/3 thirds of the season which wasn't good enough.

Gunnarsson wasn't exactly a fan favourite by the time he left, but people lost their minds when Thomas looked like he was being sold to Liverpool. Between Thomas, Bigi, Norwood and Gardner, yes, that spot next to Clingan was aptly replaced.

In striking positions we lost King, Juke and effectively Eastwood who were replaced my Mcdonald who was out for a while and Nimely who was only here for less than half of the games.

You have to take the rough with the smooth. This is about personnel and talent ceilings, not what they did or didn't do over the course of a season. Even if you wanted to do that, it's easy to argue that Juke was only lost in the new year when it looked like we were as good as relegated, that he needed to be sold as his value was at a premium and was bound to decline, and that the club actually improved results with his sale and subsequent replacements.

In midfield we lost Carsley, Doyle, Gunnarson which we never replaced any really until Norwood.

All three of whom were regular targets for criticism! Centre midfield had Clingan and any one of Gardner/Bigi/Thomas/Norwood/Deegan. That really should have been sufficient to replace the majority - perhaps even better - the production of the departed Gunnarsson.

 

[valiant15]

Cm,you dont half talk some bollox. We had a piss poor thin squad managed by a piss poor manager,all down to piss poor owners.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

Cm,you dont half talk some bollox. We had a piss poor thin squad managed by a piss poor manager,all down to piss poor owners.

Wow. You've convinced me.

 

[wingy]

Gunnarsson wasn't exactly a fan favourite by the time he left, but people lost their minds when Thomas looked like he was being sold to Liverpool. Between Thomas, Bigi, Norwood and Gardner, yes, that spot next to Clingan was aptly replaced.



You have to take the rough with the smooth. This is about personnel and talent ceilings, not what they did or didn't do over the course of a season. Even if you wanted to do that, it's easy to argue that Juke was only lost in the new year when it looked like we were as good as relegated, that he needed to be sold as his value was at a premium and was bound to decline, and that the club actually improved results with his sale and subsequent replacements.



All three of whom were regular targets for criticism! Centre midfield had Clingan and any one of Gardner/Bigi/Thomas/Norwood/Deegan. That really should have been sufficient to replace the majority - perhaps even better - the production of the departed Gunnarsson.[/QUOTE
CM by your reckoning in this thread SISU must be masochists to have born the blame for our relegation,When clearly it was none of their doing !!

 

[Colonel Mustard]

CM by your reckoning in this thread SISU must be masochists to have born the blame for our relegation,When clearly it was none of their doing !!

That's not what I'm suggesting at all.

 

[Grendel]

Cm,you dont half talk some bollox. We had a piss poor thin squad managed by a piss poor manager,all down to piss poor owners.

You forgot to mention another piss poor ingredient - the supporters. Contrary to some of your previous postings which suggest I would enjoy being sodomized by sisu this is not true I have no time for them. They are poor owners and the lack of involvement in key strategic decisions early on proved fatal.
However, the club will never be a registered charity and by screaming "investment" this implies a degree of return for the investor. The notion that sisu are pocketing money is laughable. They have lost significant sums and our investment pedigree is up there with the now defunct Drachma.

We are bust, we are not an attractive prospect and the attitude of the stay away fans had 2 effects - to make sisu tighten the purse strings even more and make us less investable to anyone interested in a football club.

 

[skybluedan]

they are all cunts the lot of em including hoffman

 

[ccfcway]

We are bust, we are not an attractive prospect and the attitude of the stay away fans had 2 effects - to make sisu tighten the purse strings even more and make us less investable to anyone interested in a football club.

fans fault as always

sorry, NO, its not the fans fault. Look at rangers, fans fault ?, how come no-one is buying pompy, fans fault. Situation at Blackburn, fans fault ?

 

[Nonleagueherewecome]

NLHWC, I'm up for the 14th, you've convinced me.

Was it all the Kraftwerk references? I've just added them to my PC's dictionary

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

You forgot to mention another piss poor ingredient - the supporters. Contrary to some of your previous postings which suggest I would enjoy being sodomized by sisu this is not true I have no time for them. They are poor owners and the lack of involvement in key strategic decisions early on proved fatal.
However, the club will never be a registered charity and by screaming "investment" this implies a degree of return for the investor. The notion that sisu are pocketing money is laughable. They have lost significant sums and our investment pedigree is up there with the now defunct Drachma.

We are bust, we are not an attractive prospect and the attitude of the stay away fans had 2 effects - to make sisu tighten the purse strings even more and make us less investable to anyone interested in a football club.

The core of 12-13,000 has always been there, from when we were doing nothing in the top flight to when we were doing nothing in the Championship. Why few others come is because our club have been perennial non achievers for over 40 years and countless boards and managers have failed to deliver. That is not chiefly the fans' fault and for us to retain the core we do speaks volumes about them.

 

[TheSnoz]

Brighton Sky Blue, with respect, various boards over the past few years/decades have failed to deliver because we have such poor support considering the size of the city. When City won the cup 12,000 something turned up for the game against Bolton. Loads of other examples. What do you expect the various board to deliver with? No fans = no money.
Do you think we would have sold Willie Carr, Dennis Mortimer, Terry Gibson, Phil Babb, Robbie Keane over the years etc etc, if we'd had proper support. They would have stayed and we would have got better. Robbie Keane signed and it was a massive scoop for the club and made his debut & scored twice and there were thousands of empty seats.
'Fans' don't like to hear it. All the posters on here with their 'Citythis/Skyblue that' and a lot of them don't go and still they expect the team to perform. It beggars belief. So yes, the lukewarm fans are part of the problem. The hardcore are brilliant. The others are just sicknotes.

 

[Astute]

Do you think we would have sold Willie Carr, Dennis Mortimer, Terry Gibson, Phil Babb, Robbie Keane over the years etc etc, if we'd had proper support. They would have stayed and we would have got better. Robbie Keane signed and it was a massive scoop for the club and made his debut & scored twice and there were thousands of empty seats.

They would still have been sold. Always have been, always will be.

There is no single reason we are where we are now. Poor attendances? Poor seasons without a top 6 finish for over 40 years will not help this. Thousands of Cov kids have grown up following Liverpool, Manure and other teams. How many people living in Cov were not born there? We have a higher than average ethnic minorities population. A lot of them don't like football or do not feel as they would feel safe or would feel welcome by other fans. A lot of Cov fans have moved away(myself included) A lot of fans have been alienated by different people that have ran our club. It is hard to get the fans back once they stop going to games. Lack of spare money these days?

There are many more reasons why. It is hard to say which reason has cost us the most.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Snoz, 3rd round cup ties against lower league crap invariably draw small crowds compared to the glamour ties-that's just how it is. Especially in this day and age, few others than the hardcore will fork out hundreds or thousands of pounds to watch crap end product year after year. We are the ultimate non achievers, and if there were a whiff of success about the place crowds would surge up. Myself, I had a season ticket from when I was 11 up till when I went off to uni. This year I've forked out hundreds to just make it to 6 away games despite being a student-it's bloody expensive and to criticise supporters over those paid to perform is something I don't understand.

 

[Glaziers green top]

Nice one BSB. Nail on head. I live in Bournemouth stopped going just can't justify it any more. 300 mile round trip added cost of taking my son with me, he's eleven, would love him to be a big City fan but he just supports them for me , bless him. It's a difficult sell is CCFC toa young lad.

 

[blueflint]

bsb your right fans can only pay what they can afford why scrimp and save to watch shite until we improve i wont be there wont give sisu any of my hard earned

 

[Grendel]

bsb your right fans can only pay what they can afford why scrimp and save to watch shite until we improve i wont be there wont give sisu any of my hard earned

But the point is nothing to do with who can afford to go and who can't. Over half a century the club has spent 35 years in the top tier and 14 of the other 15 in the second. For a club of modest means this is still punching above our weight.

We do not have the resources of villa, forest, Leicester etc. as we no longer have a fan base.

The majority of revenue at this level is through home attendances. So how can a club with poor revenue retain better players and also sign better wants. It cannot without further piling into debt. People go on about going into admin and a clean start. This is delusion. We would go down again and investors would have a high risk project to take on. How would an investor view this project as a worthy venture?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Duffy, Leicester are bankrolled by filthy rich Thais, Forest mooch off the Doughty estate, and Villa have been funded through their American owner for a while now. Clubs cannot achieve big success without someone prepared to take the hit at the top to fund it-the English game is not sustainable full stop and there are loads of us priced out of going up. We are skint, have achieved nothing for an eternity, and see zero sign of progress-no other Midlands club fits all those criteria which gives their fans more justification to fork out for it.

 

[RegTheDonk]

.... The hardcore are brilliant. The others are just sicknotes.

When you get a sicknote, you generally have a reason from the doctor.

I only went to 4/5 games last year, because my doctor said I had a choice: CCFC or paying the bills and feeding the family. So the best I could afford was a few games when I was semi-flush, and £4 a month to listen on Sky Blues Player.

I went to a few games, but listened to every one I couldn't get to. I guess I'm a poor supporter because I didn't put the City first.

Should CWR/Mercia be stopped from doing the commentaries. Would the money the club makes from the broadcasters be less that making those people attend the games?

 

[TheSnoz]

Brighton, Glazier, nothing personal. & obviously I don't expect fans who live further than 50 miles away to physically support their team week in week out. Your long distance support of your team is commendable. The 'Sicknotes' I'm having a go at are the locals, the ones who choose not to come and then moan that the club don't do this and that. & then swear blind they are loyal City fans, if only there wasn't this board, that manager, that useless striker - ad infinitum. Sicknotes all. A board, whether it was 1970s, 1980s etc, can't spend what it doesn't have. And I'd argue strongly with Astute that the players I mentioned, and plenty more, would not have been sold if we'd had thriving support to keep them here. No, the players would've seen us as a bigger club and stayed and the club would have prospered. I repeat, what magic beans do the critics want the various boards over the decades to produce? No fans= no money. Pure logic.
Ask yourselves - why are we underachievers? My take is that the fans don't turn up in sufficient numbers, therefore to pay the bills better players are sold. So we decline a little more each time. The fans absence is a significant factor in the club's downfall. No doubt about it. & I would say that fans who come up with the reasoning 'that thy're shite and I won't be going until they get better' are a key reason why we're failing.

Blueflint - you've said it all & proved my point, you aren't helping them improve.

Hey, you can watch the City for about £12 or £13 a game with a season ticket paid monthly. In this day & age I'd say that is pretty decent. Yes it should be cheaper, but then so should a lot of things.
Good support - good team.

 

[hotrod]

As with any Business the Product needs to be attractive first before the customer will start to buy,not the other way round.


Regards.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Snoz, I only agree with you on that when it comes to those who have plenty of surplus cash and live within reasonable distance. Clubs of similar size (particularly, Southampton) survived on a small budget in the top flight-back then, it was hard, but we did it. Modern football is such that those without sugar daddies are left behind forcing the rest to jack up prices and sell to keep up. The product has to justify the price and right now it simply doesn't-more so for those with families.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

And if the Pompey joke is anything to go by, spending what you don't have doesn't seem to be a problem!

 

[1nilandwe...]

I don't live very far away at all. I went to 5-10 home matches last season. Does this make my opinions any less valid or my feelings towards the clubs any less passionate? I'd say not.

The fact is, I simply can't afford to go up every week. It's not a sensible use of my money. Added to this, I don't get to spend any decent time with my other half for most of the week due to varying shifts/other commitments. She doesn't like football and so sometimes I don't go to the Ricoh in order to spend a weekend with her. I am not ashamed of this and do not expect to be treated like a second class fan because of it.

If you have a season ticket and go to all the away games and buy home and away shirts every year that's great and commendable and admirable, but blaming people who don't do that for poor performances on the pitch is borderline offensive.

I'd also like to point out that there are lots of people out there who classify themselves as Coventry fans who are nowhere near as passionate as the folk who regularly post on on-line forums. They're just not as bothered about football as we are but enjoy attending the odd match. Why should these types stump up so much money for something they're only half interested in if the standard is so poor? Why should casual fans be blamed for the clubs plight?

 

[TheSnoz]

Hotrod, Brighton, I can't see my team as a 'product.' I've got an emotional tie with them - it bothers me when we don't do well. I'm not as far gone as that character Michael Palin played in 'Ripping Yarns' who smashed his house up when his team lost mind! You see, what I'm getting at is that some fans don't have this emotional bond. It's the 'entertain me' way of thinking. To me football isn't like going to the cinema or to see a band, it means far more than that.
& I don't buy this argument that Coventry is too cosmopolitan to have big crowds. Have you been to Derby or Nottingham recently? Leicester? Even Norwich, Fulham, come on, that is a tired outdated argument.

 

[Grendel]

Once again no one is blaming anyone and of course everyone has a choice to go or not. The point is an average gate of around 13.000 gets you over a period of history an average club that will spend some time in the third tier of English football.

This is our first experience of it in 50 years do we have in the course of time over achieved.

My question is with limited revenue who will seriously invest in the club.

 

[Chipfat]

I dont think Sisu are bad people or even bad business people they are just not sports people or have the backing to be in this form of business. They came into a club that has big ambition and even bigger expectation and this carried sisu away from what they should of done first and foremost,, buy the share in the stadium.. If they would of come out and said at the start we will run the club to get the running cost correct off field and then get the money stream of the stadium im sure 100% of the fans would of been behind them. Instead they brought Fox, Dann, Westwood and others brought in big name manager and thought as crowds were up we can support the club through gates...

Reality is gates dropped,, players left and managers got sacked and compensation paid,, then they react to cutting cost to fund the club which meant relegation. Since last year they are starting what they should of done from day one,, but now its to late lies hidden companies and broken promises have meant not only the fans but the others parties that own possible revenues are now untrusting of them... I dont feel sorry for them i feel sorry for our club and fans who have suffered to see what is now the current state we are in.

I think the saying horse before the cart is very apt to describe Sisu current tenure!!!