So based on your criteria, and your own words (to which I agree actually), no owner has met this obligations for 20 years?
That is correct. I was looking at and trying to analyse (along with much smarter, better qualified people than I at the time) the club's accounts in 1998 because there were a number of apparent discrepancies. I know how chequered our financial management has been for quite some time, though not to any great detail.
We were on the brink before SISU, we were on the brink, pre-RICOH, so tell me this, why are people now considering building a new club with no history, in BSP N, with no prospects, when their obligations haven't been met by the club for 20 odd years!? These same people blame SISU, yet place no blame on Elliott's and McGinnity's lot, Richardson (some do blame Richardson but largely leave Elliott's lot alone), so what gives!?
I think the reasons are really complex, but in my view, these are some of the most likely:
They see their club being torn to pieces and reduced to a laughing stock by our current owners....and they feel/know they are largely powerless. Many of them have followed the club longer that you and I have been alive combined. They have seen the club in lower league positions than this but have never seen the club at this low an ebb. This threatens the very existence of an entity that has been a constant in their lives for so many years. When they see this and feel powerless, they get desperate. Many of them wish for a return to a simpler time (which can and will probably never happen in modern football)...and/or they look for a new club, one without the baggage and the crap. Most importantly they have a club free of those they blame for destroying their club.
Others on here have said they no longer feel a connection with the club. Years and years of crap have built up, and the last few months are the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were. They no longer see the club as theirs because the club isn't the same one they grew to love.
There is of course also the issue that even though previous regimes were perhaps equally incompetent, none of them threatened to take the club away from its home. Whether you or I view that as an empty threat or not is irrelevant. These supporters do not. When you threaten such an action, of course people are going to get upset especially when it is not, in their view, in the best interests of the club.
I'm sorry but I can't see much difference between SISU and the other lot, both have left massive debt, both have failed to pay debt that was obligated to other parties, both failed to communicate with the fans, both failed on a unprecedented scale to appoint competent managers, both have left us in a worse position than when they first got us (although I'd say had it not been for SISU, we would've got relegated that year, basic maths people) so where's the real fundamental difference(s)!?
The fundamental difference between the two is, in my opinion, as I have already stated, none of them threatened to take the club away from its home city. Nor did any of those others allow the relationship between club and fan to completely break down. We've always bitched and moaned (often rightly) at club management about their decisions, but at the end of the day there was always the sense (rightly or wrongly) that those owners were like us, that they were Coventry people (even when they weren't) and so would always look to have the best interests of the club at heart.
In terms of their ability to run the football club well, I would agree somewhat that they aren't very different at all. But SISU have had six years to try and turn the club around. You don't get to make cockup after cockup for six years, then turn around and claim it's all somebody else's fault. The Ricoh situation is the perfect example. It took them five years basically before they decided the rent was too much and we needed more revenue. If it's always been a problem (and it has, let's face it) then they should have done something from day 1.
That, in my opinion, is why many people treat the two parties differently. I also think Hoffman, Elliott and Ranson escape criticism because they are seen, as many were in the past, as Coventry/football people so they were 'one of us'. I would never question Hoffman and Elliott's passion and loyalty to the Sky Blues -
never - but I do question how much influence and power they had in the boardroom while they were there.
(Sorry everyone, this turned into a bit of a PSGM/PGSM/whatever-style epic)
