As with almost everything else, Sisu are the only ones who know the exact truth of the matter. Their sphinx-like identity, the sense that their intentions are somehow unintelligible, is just another reason they are so unpopular with fans. The decline in the standard of the playing squad is another huge issue, and results this season speak for themselves. Investment in the team, the club's last real asset, has been visibly inadequate, while many of Coventry's most accomplished players have departed for pastures new in recent times.
In the great gamble that is football, the club seems to have lost the vast majority of its bargaining chips. It has been relieved of its infrastructure, supplanted in its home stadium and subverted completely, leaving supporters wondering where to look next. While Sisu have previously claimed that they want to build a new stadium for the club, Simon tells me that he has seen few indications of such a development, even in its embryonic stages. "It's very difficult to buy into this vision of a new stadium, when we've seen no real evidence of it," he says.
Coventry fans are refusing to accept the situation in silence, however. They may have been left powerless as impenetrable organisations manoeuvre above them, but they have begun to organise protests and make themselves heard. Over 17,000 people have signed
The Coventry Telegraph's petition calling on Sisu to put the club up for sale, while several different fan groups have come together to organise future protests, with a boycott planned for their home game against Rochdale in late October. Coventry City is not a fashionable club, and they have struggled for national coverage. That changed with the ban on the
Telegraph, which made many media outlets sit up and take note.
