Jesus, you are so, so wrong! I'm really amazed that fans exist who think Richardson is some kind of innocent party. While Geoffrey Robinson wasn't my most favourite of people, at least he did put something into the club. Richardson was take, take, take.
Otis, let's see why "tis Richardson who gets all the blame", shall we?
In our first season in the Nationwide (Championship) our wage bill was £18.2M, which equated to 111% of our turnover.
- Bryan Richardson earned £184,523 in the year he was booted off the board, compared to £633,193 the season before.
- Backed by Bryan Richardson, at a time when the Sky Blues were cutting back; making redundancies, players taking wage deferrals, Gordon Strachan sued the Club for £300,000.
- Bob Ainsworth on the end of the Bryan Richardson tenure: "Over a relatively short period they've come to a position where they don't own the ground, they don't own the contaminated land on which they hope somebody is going to be able to build a stadium and they don't own all their footballers.
- The club used to contribute £45000 a year towards his pension.
- In this last three years at the Club, despite his massive earnings he still borrowed the following amounts from the Club: £88,223, £79,214; and £59,418.
- Accounts also reveal that chairman Bryan Richardson's total remuneration package rose to £588,045 in 2000 from £217,432 the previous year - an increase of 170 per cent. Richardson's remuneration included a bonus for his work in selling the shopping development on the Foleshill [/SIZE]site where the club hopes to build a new stadium.
- At one time City owned their own stadium AND the land that the Ricoh was built on.
- The club was also paying £415,000 a year to lease back its Highfield Road ground which was sold to Maclean Homes. The club has extended its option to lease the ground beyond the end of 2002.
If SISU did even half of what Richardson did then I would be wearing a SISU out t-shirt myself. While they've undoubtedly made mistakes they (and we) are still paying the price for Richardson's greed. It's a shame that fans like you have forgotten how BAD things could be.
My point was that people seem to somehow see Robinson in some sort of positive light and I am absolutely astounded and astonished by that. Geoffrey was the puppet master behind our downfall and it should be he that we fear above all others.
The thing that worries me is that I think any takeover of the club (unless it is a deep pocketed sugar daddy) is likely to end up as unpopular as the current regime. Look at what a new owner who needs to be frugal will do.
1/ Be stingey in the transfer market
2/ Keep wages low therefore struggle to attract players
3/ Sell anybody who becomes good (because that always has and always will be the case)
The only person who will be popular is someone that can afford to continually absorb losses and perhaps even increase them to push for success. Then its premiership or financial ruin, a big gamble.
I would rather have Sisu than Geoffrey Robinson any day of the week!!!
Just suppose .....
1. A backer comes along.
2. They will put in £50m into the club.
3. They will only takeover if the fans are in favour and do so by a majority vote.
4. The backer is Geoffrey Robinson.
Would you .....
a) Not care who takes over and vote in favour anyway.
b) Vote in favour but do so reluctantly.
c) Vote against it.
d) Protest.
Any other options?
Mr Gaddaffi come out of hiding with your millions, all is forgiven and welcome to Coventry. Anything rather than SISU I think at the moment.
Apologies if I got it wrong, but your post did seem to suggest that you couldn't understand why Richardson got all the blame.
However, I still think you are way off mark saying that GR was some kind of puppet master. Personally, don't like the bloke, don't trust him, glad to see the back of him, but in no way was he controlling Richardson. It was the other way round. Richardson did so many dodgy dealing that we will never know about due to confidentially clauses, etc.
The Club were going to sue him for financial irregularities after he was ousted; bascially because from being in a position of owning our own ground, owning the gas work site and having the money to build the new stadium, it suddenly became clear that all this money was gone.
Anyway, back to Robinson. On more than one occasion he pumped in £5 to enable us to buy all those players that people go on about: Keane, Hadji, Hughes, etc. No, he didn't do out of the goodness of his heart, it was a loan, but he still gave something to the club, something Richardson never did. The reason Richardson was ousted was because he kept things in the dark from the rest of the board including Robinson, McGinnity and Elliot (sorry, "Mr Coventry").
I suppose this is why I don't have the hate towards SISU that many seem to have. We have problems because of what Richardson started over a decade ago. Yes, at the time it was nice to have all these players, but fans didn't realise what the price was for that "entertaining" side.
SISU refuse to do that and good on 'em, I say. No, it may not be as much fun, but it's the right course. If someone comes along and buys them out and pumps loads of money into the club, then great, but chances are that won't happen, so whether fans like it or not SISU are here to stay.
I would welcome anyone into the club providing they had the funds to help us turn the corner and finally make a challenge for the play offs.
I'm fed up of this bloody league and always finishing in the bottom half!
SISU OUT
I thought my post quite clearly suggested that Richardson shouldn't get all the blame because Robinson was there behind the scenes pulling all the strings and is probably more culpable than Richardson. Richardson is definitely very cuplable though.
It is my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that at the time of the take over, Geoff Robinson was out of pocket to the tune of £20 million in loan guarantees he had made to the club.
The takeover was a cashless transaction, and the shares had to be surrendered to sisu, or the deal was dead in the water.
Maybe Richardson shouldn't get all the blame as I find it hard to believe that Robinson, McGinnity and Mr Coventry knew nothing of what Richardson was up to. Didn't they stop and think "Mmm...I wonder where the money has gone". Particularly Robinson who must have put over £20M into the club over the years. As I keep saying, while he's not my favourite person, he's certainlty no "puppet master". That was Richardson who manipulated, wasted and took money from the club. For example, his nice fat multi-six figure bonus for selling retail space to Tesco, Volume One and M&S. The other dodgy one who hasn't been mentioned so far is Graham Hover.
As for culpability and who was most culpable, we'll have to agree to disagree. You only need to take a look at who put money in and who took money out to realise though.
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