JH and Garry Thompson - 1981 (1 Viewer)

Grendel

Well-Known Member
What it shows is that the Club have been financially miss-managed over many decades and not just recently!

Bollocks.
 

CJ_covblaze

Well-Known Member
What it shows is that the Club have been financially miss-managed over many decades and not just recently!

When has anyone ever said it hasn’t?
 

NortonSkyBlue

Well-Known Member
This was known at the time and Thompson didn't want to leave but it was the slippery slope that caused others to doubt our ambition and within 18 months most of the team were gone along with Milne and Sexton after him. Even Tommy Hutchison was advised to leave.
Sky Blue Connexion was a factor also, as was not being allowed to get the sponsorship money for the name change to Coventry Talbot.
Soccer USA was a long term issue that was silently bleeding us dry.
 

Danceswithhorses

Well-Known Member
This was known at the time and Thompson didn't want to leave but it was the slippery slope that caused others to doubt our ambition and within 18 months most of the team were gone along with Milne and Sexton after him. Even Tommy Hutchison was advised to leave.
Sky Blue Connexion was a factor also, as was not being allowed to get the sponsorship money for the name change to Coventry Talbot.
Soccer USA was a long term issue that was silently bleeding us dry.
Fair enough...i was only 11 at the time and i had no memory of that Thompson story.
Soccer USA and the connexion i do remember, as well as the bizarre Coventry Talbot story...i mean advertising on football shirts - never happen lol
 

Moff

Well-Known Member
It was around that time that I got my first season ticket and we had a fantastic squad. I was gutted to see Thompson leave, and then the break up of that squad a season later. A total mismanagement of players contracts that let all the best players contracts run out at the same time and them leave for peanuts.

Still at least we got rid of Tommy English to Leicester. I still shudder when I hear that name.
 

Danceswithhorses

Well-Known Member
It was around that time that I got my first season ticket and we had a fantastic squad. I was gutted to see Thompson leave, and then the break up of that squad a season later. A total mismanagement of players contracts that let all the best players contracts run out at the same time and them leave for peanuts.

Still at least we got rid of Tommy English to Leicester. I still shudder when I hear that name.
Like Hateley via tribunal £180Kish to Portsmouth...year later sold to Milan for £1m..a large sum then
 

Legia Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
While JH had obviously been great for us in the 60's he most definitely wasn't a success when he returned as Director & Chairman. The break up of that team was very sad & his linking his business interests in the US & Saudi to the club was both questionable & harmful to the club. Despite JH's past PFA connections he was still old school & could treat players with disdain such as he did with Thompson. I seem to remember about this time Steve Hunt put in a transfer request & at the next match JH went on the tannoy as the players were warming up saying he wasn't going anywhere, completely belittling & demoralising him. He was also unprepared for freedom of contract, not bothering to negotiate contracts with Sealey, Thomas, Dyson, Gillespie, Whitton and Hateley who all followed Thompson out the door that next Summer. For all Bobby Gould's faults it was a miracle he managed to form a team that would stay up the following season.
 

wingy

Well-Known Member
Oh what might have been with that young squad.
Always found it odd with moving Milne upstairs after being half an hour from Wembley.
Yes Thompson leaving Was the catalyst for the exodus,but I'd forgotten how it all came about.
 

Johnnythespider

Well-Known Member
A terrific squad of young players that should have seen the club through the next 5 years, who knows what they would have achieved if they had been kept together. Shocking mismanagement of the situation, I wasn't around for the ride Hill took the club on in the 60s, so my views of him are more defined by his time in the 80s.
 

rupert_bear

Well-Known Member
A lot of older fans will tell we had 2 ? Jimmy Hills the football manager who I believe could have gone on to be a great one in the Cloughie, Busby, Shankly mould turned a ragamuffin club into potentially a top one and then the football chairman, here and at Fulham who had fingers in all sorts of pies except the football side of his clubs
 
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NortonSkyBlue

Well-Known Member
A terrific squad of young players that should have seen the club through the next 5 years, who knows what they would have achieved if they had been kept together. Shocking mismanagement of the situation, I wasn't around for the ride Hill took the club on in the 60s, so my views of him are more defined by his time in the 80s.
What is often forgotten in the view of Chairman Hill is that all clubs were faced with issues were killing football and all clubs were looking for external revenue.
Gates were declining, interest was waning and the government were asking clubs to foot the bill for holliganism.
One of the great strengths of Hill was his vision but it also lead the club in to some cul de sacs and we paid the price.
Also it must be noted that Coventry was not the same optimistic city it was in the sixties.
It is easy to point the finger and blame but it must be said that the club was a relatively stable in comparison with the other clubs in the west midlands.
We are in our nadir now whereas Wolves, West Brom, Birmingham and Stoke had theirs during these years and all had to claw their way back.
I don't think you can call Hill a succcess as chairman but it is not right to say he failed either.
 

RFC

Well-Known Member
Remind me what league we were in then and what league we are in now

When I started watching the Bantams were in Division 3 (South) & The FL restructured the Leagues with the bottom half of Divisions 3 (North & South) merging and we became founder members of Division 4 but were promoted as runners-up in the first season! So I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘back to the future’!
 

Broken Hearted Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
When I started watching the Bantams were in Division 3 (South) & The FL restructured the Leagues with the bottom half of Divisions 3 (North & South) merging and we became founder members of Division 4 but were promoted as runners-up in the first season! So I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘back to the future’!
so why do you always give these leeches a free pass
 

Grendel

Well-Known Member
When I started watching the Bantams were in Division 3 (South) & The FL restructured the Leagues with the bottom half of Divisions 3 (North & South) merging and we became founder members of Division 4 but were promoted as runners-up in the first season! So I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘back to the future’!

Bore off you clown.
 

COVKIDSNEVERQUIT

Well-Known Member
Bore off you clown.
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