See that I'm not sure I agree with. The motivation, and one connecting thread, for CCC, ACL & Higgs is the city of Coventry and by extension Coventry City. The motivation for Joy is cash, pure and simple. You can be as cynical as you like, but almost every player on the non-Sisu side was a CCFC fan before this started. So I'm not sure both sides do hold the club in such little regard.
But I suppose that makes me a council fanboy.
The use of 'sideshow' was deliberate, in that those were the exact words one of the councillors used not so long ago. "My frustration is that the whole project up at the Ricoh was never just about the football club. It's a regeneration project and the club is, for me, a bit of a sideshow." Am sure that's not the same for all of them, am sure that for some the club is indeed central... but it's not hard to imagine a prevailing trend where councillors just don't care about the football club, as it's not going to get you elected in Binley, say, as easily as pointing to all the nice projects achieved under their watch, that will be coming to a place near you soon.
To get the whole project through in the first place it had to be skewed away from the club, and towards other considerations. Incidentally, it's why I'd always had big big concerns about a US property developer being feted as next owner; not necessarily best for the club, but good for the wider objectives... I'll see your council fanboyism and raise you my SISU plant:facepalm:
And sure, that may be what a council is constrained to do, I understand that it's harder in the current idological climate to subsidise things that maybe, in a civilised society, need subsidising (I work for one myself that sees its subsidy slashed year by year, and asked to turn a profit on something that, intrinsically,
can't turn a profit!) but that climate don't help us!
And the problem is, as soon as it becomes about the cash rather than the culture, it becomes harder to then suggest that SISU shouldn't be about cash, either. They shouldn't be, incidentally, a football club's about more than cash.
The quote about Seppala threatening to stop funding the club, for example, could easily be taken from another perspective. If you've funded a loss making club for a number of years while you see your landlords move into profit, isn't it reasonable to empathise with the thought that goes 'look, we really have to agree a deal for this, because I can't do it on my own?' The fact ACL baulked at the thought of subsidising the club and taking over demonstrates clearly that it really doesn't work. It
needs radical change.
Unfortunately, it then became ideological, with Mutton's crazed statements, followed by equally OTT backing up in return from SISU.
Doubly unfortunately, Mutton has been (thankfully) removed, but there's been little in the way of the olive branch in return. There's been some kind of prisoner exchange with Fisher going silent, but Labovitch coming to the forefront... although tbh he's making me wish Fisher had stayed in the forefront(!)
It depends what you call 'city fan' too. Some, undoubtedly. Some, such as Anne Lucas, spent a lot of time being derided by city fans, in fact, for sticking to her principles.
There are some others who the thought remains they became city fan due to circumstance... and it suits them to play that particular tune. That's not the likes of Lucas or, for that matter, Mutton - who I can gladly accept maybe allowed his professionalism to slip
because he was a city fan.
But it sure as hell ain't all the decision makers, it just suits the rhetoric to present that.
Good old Robinson was a city fan, incidentally...
