Brody says... (1 Viewer)

same as most of the board then never here when it matters

Are any of you emploeed in a company with a board?
If so - how often are the board assembled?
Do any of the board members ever comes to your part of the business and observe how you are doing?
If you're in a business with foreign owners or international trade - are there any foreigners on your board living abroad?

As ever, he comes across well, but I don't buy all of it. Do you think he was pushed? As he admits, he's no where near completed the tasks he was signed up to do. We know that SISU are ruthless and maybe set unrealistic targets and deadlines so they lost patience with him?

Another thing, surely its bad practice to group the fans in with the pool of blame for not being able to find investment.

people will say its sisu making ecuses but there is no doubt the council are making lige hard for ccfc aswell

WillieStanley said:

As ever, he comes across well, but I don't buy all of it. Do you think he was pushed? As he admits, he's no where near completed the tasks he was signed up to do. We know that SISU are ruthless and maybe set unrealistic targets and deadlines so they lost patience with him?

Another thing, surely its bad practice to group the fans in with the pool of blame for not being able to find investment.

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I think Brody actually resigned due to lack of time to be involved in the way he wants.
Recently his company in Canada started a campaign to get many new entrepreneurs to startup their own businesses providing them with funding and facillities. This is a massive task and as he seems to a man who likes to get deep involved with anything he does I can understand if he find it hard to concentrate on board work at this club. Especially as the fans are seeing him (and the rest of the board and owners as enimies).

For those of you with some knowledge about business angels - Brody provided the entrepreneurs with 100% funding and is only taking 10% of the shares. That is very very fair to the entrepreneurs!

So the ills of the club are all the fault of the council via ACL for not tearing up a legally binding contract and willingly depriving the citizens of Coventry of £750k the city of Coventry desperately needs and its the fans fault for not turning up in their tens of thousands to watch a second rate side decimated by a policy of non recruitment and selling of key players and then having the temerity to actually protest about the owners failure to run the club properly. We should all hang our heads in shame - we are the cause of the problem - terribly sorry Mr Brody I for one apologise on behalf of the citizens of Coventry and the supporters of your franchise for our shocking behaviour towards our benevolent masters.

Another 'supporter' who doesn't go to the games lol.

Far point on the rent but no point bitching about it now should have been one of the first things when Sisu took over.

covcity4life said:

people will say its sisu making ecuses but there is no doubt the council are making lige hard for ccfc aswell

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All well and true but the Council invested tax money to built the Arena - as far as they're concerned, they want their investment back on it. As someone rightly stated though, that should have been SISU's first priority... or maybe that was going to be their first topic at that meeting that never happened

Lets get a few things clear

The rent is what the club agreed with ACL willingly when they expected average crowds of 21K or £2.5m more in income - but it would have seen set based on market value not the size of the crowds. In fact from memory didnt ACL renegotiate terms down because CCFC couldnt keep up with the rent. The stadium hasnt changed, it still has the same facilities, it is recognised as one of the best stadiums for events in the country. But because the club has been mismanaged for a decade and crowds have fallen ACL should take a hit on the rent ? Why ? On what basis ?

The council according to the 2010 accounts do not take the £1.2m rent ACL do. The rental income received from CCFC does not form even 50% of the total income of ACL

What the council take are rates and operating expenses (guess these are refuse collection charges etc) which totalled £320K in 2010. But why should the average coventry rate payer subsidise a minority of coventry citizens (and rate payers from elsewhere) by not accepting market value?

Stadium build and equipment costs to 31/05/10 were £32.5m. Assume we had to finance by loans at say 5% interest. That would be over £1.6m in interest alone per year (ignoring repayment). Hardly a cheaper option ! Or in repayments over 10 years over £4m per year. How the hell would/could we afford that ! Fairy godfather who puts £32.5m into the company for no return perhaps - but investors dont do something for nothing and it would still be debt to be repaid !

Totally disingenuous to blame the council or ACL for the losses and financial woes of CCFC - even take out 2/3rds of the rent and we would still be making multi million pound losses

As for blaming the fans - beggars belief:facepalm:. Simple market forces that even Brody SISU etc should easily grasp - if the product isnt good enough people vote with their feet and find a better product elsewhere. It isnt rocket science. If you dont invest in, provide and communicate a good product then the result is pretty straight forward - loss!

The other thing that surprises me, with respect, is that people slag SISU, Brody KD etc off but as soon as those characters issue a comment like "the rent is too much" people jump in with both feet and agree with them. Think about it folks might just be a tool to put pressure on the council/higgs doesnt mean it is true ! Might just deflect focus from the real issues at the club maybe ?:thinking about:

No surprise that Brody has done this. Is he still a director of Otium? Anyway rent to ACL is less than 10% of CCFC costs. SISU just don't like being in the firing line. We need to keep up the pressure.

Agreed OSB. It's more deflection and diversion. Yes the rent is too high for a club on our gates, but that certainly isn't ACL or the councils fault. If we were a top flight team it would be reasonably priced..SISU knew the break-even amount, and I assumed were factoring this in to their initial plan, i.e. investment will reap rewards in terms of greater crowds/TV money/ability to attract sponsors. Once they abandoned ambition for the "cut all investment and make the club entirely self-sufficient" approach, did they consider how plummetting gates would make paying that rent even tougher? Apparantly not; they were going to just have a whinge and moan about how it's "not fair".

House analogies are all the rage these days...so this scenario is like me moving into an expensive rented property, falling on financial hard times, and then moaning that the property is too expensive for me. I don't think in the real world my landlord would be cutting the rent so I could stay, do you?! I'd either have to get extra work to pay the rent, make other sacrifices in terms of cutting back in other areas, or move into a smaller, more affordable property (Butts Park Arena here we come?!).

Thanks for your contribution, Len. Absolute claptrap once again :wave:

Don't think we'll ever go to the butts park, it's far too small for even our feeble fan base.

stupot07 said:

Don't think we'll ever go to the butts park, it's far too small for even our feeble fan base.

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I know, just illustrating that this is where Lens flawed logic leads. It's just a bit of a whinge that he's having, really.

Just another point ...... Brody talks of the average Championship lease ...... I thought most clubs owned their stadiums so wouldnt have a lease. If they have to lease from a holding company (but same owners) then the rent can be artificially low.

Good post above "nonleagueherewecome".
Sisu are typical of foreign investors.
The problematic issue here is contained in the word "foreign".
How on earth can people on the other side of the planet understand how a football club ticks? All clubs depend on the community that spawned them. This isn't news but it seems that it has slowly dawned on Brody. God help us.

dadgad said:

The problematic issue here is contained in the word "foreign". How on earth can people on the other side of the planet understand how a football club ticks?

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Xenophobic tosh. Richardson, Ridsdale, Bates et al. hardly set a fine example for domestic stewardship.

The rent is less than 10% of their costs. They must be paying HMRC £450,000 per month paye and NI...
Brody is just a smokescreen. What is Iggy up to?

Doesn't iggy do swift cover car insurance commercials now.

Colonel Mustard said:

Xenophobic tosh. Richardson, Ridsdale, Bates et al. hardly set a fine example for domestic stewardship.

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Not xenophobic at all.
Just a simple observation that to run a football club the first rule is: "do not alienate the fanbase".
Having broken this rule Sisu will find it impossible to win back any trust. They are clueless. And to help you out I will repeat what I said, they cannot do this because they do not understand our culture, the way it is. Would you know how to run an Italian restaurant in Palermo? No.
Nothing to do with xenophobia you plank.

But insists he’s not going away, stressing that he will continue on actively in his role as a shareholder of Sky Blue Sport and Leisure Limited, the ultimate parent company of the club.

No longer on the board so how can he play an active part?

Still a shareholder because he can't sell them as they are worthless so he might as well hold onto them in the hope that some one will actually buy the club for more than a £1

this may have been asked before but did Brody pay for his shares or were they gifted by SISU, and if he paid for them what was his financial investment and what did want out of it? for a succesful entrprenure it seems a strange course of action just to walk away?

as for saying the protests dont help obtain inward investment, then I totally agree. However had there been meaningful accurate communication with the fans, had the fans been made to feel involved in the club they love, had there been a little less secrecy and a bit more openness then there would not have been the protests.

Personally had the Board/SISU laid the financial info properly on the line, not spouted off the cuff estimates,not filed accounts late, got to grips with the finances from the start, given some leadership, spelt out the way forward then I could have gone with that.

Had they said from the start - we have little money, we will invest what we have in our academy, make modest purchases/loans etc if we can, the ride might be tough to begin with but we need to get the finances right, the team may struggle for a while but we will come back from a strong financial base that will let us buy the stadium back and improve the team to really challenge in this league then I could have understood and bought into that.

Getting the finances right was always going to be a bitter pill from the fans but they had a glorious opportunity to do it when they took over and totally fluffed it. The key to all this has always been the finances and to deal with it was always going to break eggs with the fans - but it is how you break the eggs that is important

Fact is they didnt get it right, they stumbled from one crisis to another, did not control the business they acquired from the start (the most important and vulnerable time in any takeover), their PR has been contradictory at best, their strategy shrouded in secrecy with no great efforts to empower and include the fans - Is it any wonder some fans are moved to protest.

Think Mr Brody would have to admit that the protests are a direct result of failings by the Board and SISU

dadgad said:

How on earth can people on the other side of the planet understand how a football club ticks?

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It's got nothing to do with that, otherwise all foreign or non-local owners would fail.

So we are paying too much rent now we are getting lower gates?

Who's fault is the lower gates/ lack of sucess?

Ranson told Sisu that the problem we had was low gates due to our lack of sucess and that something needed to be done. He suggested higher spending and SISU rejected that. So their solution was to spend as little as possible, hope that the gates remained constant and we would make money. Well it didn't work.

Time for the Ranson plan or a SISU exit!

Iggy Oggy said in his September video interview

• that SISU would "work together with the fans",
• that "there was a good bunch of people running the club",
• that he was "was willing to talk with new investors",
• that "the Premiership was the goal, but first the club needed stable foundations",
• that SISU needed to tell the fans "what we are doing, how we are doing it and where we want to take the football club"

(These are not all word for word quotes, but reflect what he said accurately as I understood it)

A lot of words but the only one of these statements they seem to be working towards is the "stable foundations" bit, which I understand means cutting costs till the club is no longer making a loss. Although I remain to be convinced by just words & I'm waiting to see the accounts which should be publically available at the end of Feburary before I believe anything the man says.

As for Brody's statement, he basically said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, isn't that an admission his own misjudgement? However he does seem to have understood the club is a child of the community and not a transferable franchise operation, I'll give him that. On the other hand he talks about a 20,000 fan base, Coventry have not had that since the late 60's and early 70's and that was only when the club was successful in getting promoted to the top tier and staying there and the City had practically full employment, a radically different situation than we have today.

Its crap about us paying 3 times what other teams do - as far as I am aware in the Championship, apart from us, only Leeds and Hull don't own their grounds and pay real rent. Leeds I think pay even more than we do and Hull pay less but they share the ground with the Rugby team. There may be other teams so please add to list if there are. If other teams are paying a nominal rent it will be to a parent company therefore at an artificial rate for the benefit of the total business so as ever its more bullshit and smoke and mirrors from our inglorious leaders. Its all just a pathetic attempt to put pressure on the council to sell the ground - god help the citizens of Coventry and the fans of the club if these people ever got hold of the ground. I think we should start a counter campaign and make sure that all the councillors are made aware of the feelings of the supporters (well most I would guess - sure some blinkered ones still think Kens tan comes from the sunshine from the arse he talks out off) that the council must not sell to these people.

Doncaster, Swansea, Palace all c £1m

Anyone with an ounce of knowledge should know that success of any form on the pitch will bring the fans through the turnstiles.
I appreciate that we could not go down the same road as we did in the past and I should think any reasonable fan appreciates that, however not strengthening an already weak team is not going to bring fans through the turnstiles but only start fans leaving in droves.

Not being picky but Donny - yes owned by council but Swansea are now in the Premiership and Crystal Palace I think bought back their ground last year.

wokinghamskyblue said:

this may have been asked before but did Brody pay for his shares or were they gifted by SISU, and if he paid for them what was his financial investment and what did want out of it? for a succesful entrprenure it seems a strange course of action just to walk away?

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I'm assuming he took over Ransons 16% stake ,making him the only identifiable owner/shareholder with the football league

If sisu had bought the stadium four years ago like they promised we wouldn't be paying a lease...

gary_ccfcforever said:

If sisu had bought the stadium four years ago like they promised we wouldn't be paying a lease...

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But we would most likely have been paying interest on a large loan ..... there would have been some cost that quite likely matched the present rental charge.

the biggest downside would have been SISU would have had their hands on the stadium!

SISU can not and should never own the Ricoh if they do i will be game over for CCFC:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm: