Pressley Speaks (2 Viewers)

Apparently, upon hearing the news on Friday, he just tutted and said that was 'the Coventry way'!

To save clicks to buggy CET site :

Steven Pressley has spoken of his sadness at hearing of Coventry City’s move away from the Ricoh Arena for a second time in the space of six years.

The former Sky Blues boss was in charge of the team when the club took the decision to move to Northampton Town’s Sixfields Stadium for the 2013/14 campaign – a period he says was one of the most testing in his managerial career.
Pressley , who is still held in high regard by many fans for the way he faced the adversity of a groundshare, feels for the fans who, he says, are the ones that will again suffer after the club last week decided to move 22 miles from the Ricoh to Birmingham City’s St Andrew’s Stadium.

And the 45-year-old, who is currently manager at League Two Carlisle United, believes City risk losing fans, who opt to stay away from Birmingham, on a long-term basis.

“Of course it’s far from ideal but the big question is, will there be the same resistance from supporters to go to Birmingham as there was to go to Northampton?” he said.

“Because there was obviously real resistance and I suppose when you’re playing in a stadium of the size of St Andrew’s and you don’t get terrific support then you can’t create the same intensity to the game.”

Just 1,697 fans turned up to Sixfields to watch the win over Stevenage in March 2014, and the ten lowest home league attendances ever in the history of the club all came in 2013/14 as supporters boycotted the hugely unpopular move.

He added: “It’s not so much Mark (Robins) and the players who suffer. Of course it’s not ideal that you’re not playing on your home pitch but the people who suffer the most are the supporters.

“That’s the bottom line.

“They’re whole Saturday afternoon is affected in a different manner; how they travel to the games, not going to their local pub before they go to the games – all of those things they do in their own community before they go to the game changes.

“And that’s the biggest impact, in my opinion, not so much the game preparation and all of those football aspects because Mark will keep those as normal as possible.

“The ones who are suffering are the supporters. That’s the reality of the situation.”

Asked if he feels for them, he said: “Of course, it’s very sad.

“We’re all creatures of habit and once you stop going to games on a Saturday afternoon and find something else to do that becomes your habit.

“And sometimes you are never able to entice those supporters back on a regular basis.

“It’s the supporters who have suffered the most in these situations because we, as managers and the players, can adapt and try to find the solution.”

Asked if he can believe history is repeating itself with another groundshare season, Pressley admitted: “Truthfully, yes I can believe it because I think there are outstanding issues that have never truly been resolved in the owner’s mind, so there doesn’t appear to be any closure on that so it’s still outstanding, which makes this latest situation inevitable.”

As to how he thinks Robins will cope and deal with the situation, he said: “It’s a difficult situation because Mark, I feel, has done a terrific job since going in.

“He’s really brought in a good structure to the club and recruited extremely well and progressed the club in a really good manner.

“I just hope for him that this isn’t a real stumbling block to all the work that he’s done.”

So how difficult will it be?

“To be honest with you, the early months were the easiest months because the pitch was in a good condition, the sun was shining and in that respect it was the easiest moments.

“But Northampton during the winter months when the wind was blowing, the conditions weren’t ideal and when we were playing in front of literally a thousand supporters it is far from the ideal environment to play in.

“That was the problem. It’s just not ideal and it’s a situation that you never wanted to happen again, of course, but it’s a situation that Mark will have to manage.

“He’ll try to keep everything as normal as possible because he cannot affect all the other issues. All he can affect is the preparation of the team and the performance, and that’s what he must focus on.

“When it happened to us as a management team we didn’t focus on it initially or make a huge deal about it within the club because we didn’t want to bring in a negative factor to the players, or give an excuse for the players.

“We tried to create a ‘no excuse’ culture, so we didn’t dwell on it. We tried to keep it as normal as possible so for the ‘home’ games at Northampton the players would report in their own cars as they would do for home games at the Ricoh. So we tried to keep a degree of normality to it.

“Every manager is different so I don’t know how Mark will go about it but I’m sure he will concentrate on the things that he can influence.

“And I think that’s the most important thing because Mark can’t do anything about the circumstance. All he can do is manage the situation, and that’s the way we tried to do it.

“We tried not to dwell on the fact that we weren’t playing at home, trying to eliminate the excuses.”

Unpopular opinion but Pressley did a great job here considering the horrific circumstances.

pusbccfc said:

Unpopular opinion but Pressley did a great job here considering the horrific circumstances.

Click to expand...

I think that’s pretty standard opinion. He just lost his mind when we came back.

“We’re all creatures of habit and once you stop going to games on a Saturday afternoon and find something else to do that becomes your habit.

“And sometimes you are never able to entice those supporters back on aregular basis.”


Spot on !!!

Amazing how he still managed to squeeze in his favourite word: “inteeeensity”

Tommo1993 said:

Amazing how he still managed to squeeze in his favourite word: “inteeeensity”

Click to expand...

Banished would have been better

pusbccfc said:

Unpopular opinion but Pressley did a great job here considering the horrific circumstances.

Click to expand...

Best football for years!

I still have nightmares about his post match interviews, with DNA this and DNA that. Most of the time he didn't appear to be watching the same game as everyone else either. I can only think that he was blinded by the brightness of Reda's piss.

He took over a very decent team from Robins first time round.
He talks a good story but it all soon becomes white noise.

He's got a terrible managerial record, typically starts OK before going in to freefall.

Really don't give a stuff about anything this man has to say

SBchimp said:

He took over a very decent team from Robins first time round.
He talks a good story but it all soon becomes white noise.

He's got a terrible managerial record, typically starts OK before going in to freefall.

Really don't give a stuff about anything this man has to say

Click to expand...

Bit harsh. Yeah, he did have a good crop of players to work with - Wilson, Fleck, Leon Clarke, Baker, Cyrus Christie, Moussa etc. but it was a difficult situation and he handled himself well. Decent bloke. Didn't work out and he had to go, but not bitter towards him in the slightest.

SBchimp said:

He took over a very decent team from Robins first time round.
He talks a good story but it all soon becomes white noise.

He's got a terrible managerial record, typically starts OK before going in to freefall.

Really don't give a stuff about anything this man has to say

Click to expand...

Same could be said for Mowbray tbh

Let’s get him back on the grass

THAT THEY WENT DOWN WETH A WHEMPER

I for one was disappointed when Robins didn’t do his speech in a gladiator-style Steven Presley!

robbiekeane said:

THAT THEY WENT DOWN WETH A WHEMPER

Click to expand...

(3:00)

pusbccfc said:

Unpopular opinion but Pressley did a great job here considering the horrific circumstances.

Click to expand...

we would have won the league if we had 10 more points

TTG said:

we would have won the league if we had 10 more points

Click to expand...

We wouldn’t have even made the play offs with the 10 points...

Lemme check

We would have been 9th. My memory decives me

A high scoring season. Think 6th place finished on like 75 points or something

We had 51 so 61 would be just in front of port vale on goal difference

TTG said:

We had 51 so 61 would be just in front of port vale on goal difference

Click to expand...

Our form until Leon Clarke was sold was play offs, after that relegation form. The tale off was worse than the Mowbray season

Yes we sold Clarke, then Wilson did his shoulder and was out for 10-12 weeks. Goals dried up and it was freefall. I think we would of made the playoffs/gone up if we had kept Clarke.

robbiekeane said:

THAT THEY WENT DOWN WETH A WHEMPER

Click to expand...

Really interesting watching that back. At the time my sympathies were with Pressley (it was after the FA Cup defeat to Worcester) but looking at it now it’s easy to see he was a dead man walking after this.

I spoke to him about this and he was talking about Reda Johnson. Really Pressley should have been shown the door after that debacle and he didn’t really stop the rot and ran out of ideas. I have no axe to grind with him and undoubtedly he gave it his best under extreme circumstances. Hope he does well at Carlisle.

Adge said:

I spoke to him about this and he was talking about Reda Johnson. Really Pressley should have been shown the door after that debacle and he didn’t really stop the rot and ran out of ideas. I have no axe to grind with him and undoubtedly he gave it his best under extreme circumstances. Hope he does well at Carlisle.

Click to expand...

What actually happened again? Was it Reda laughing and joking after the game or something?

Dimi_Konstantflapalot said:

What actually happened again? Was it Reda laughing and joking after the game or something?

Click to expand...

Yeah, said it wasn’t the first time either.

Coventry 1 Tranmere 5
"I thought the players today were absolutely outstanding. It just didn't go for us ".....or words to that effect, weekly.

Adge said:

I spoke to him about this and he was talking about Reda Johnson. Really Pressley should have been shown the door after that debacle and he didn’t really stop the rot and ran out of ideas. I have no axe to grind with him and undoubtedly he gave it his best under extreme circumstances. Hope he does well at Carlisle.

Click to expand...

That should’ve been the day Burge was shown the door too :happy:

skybluepm2 said:

That should’ve been the day Burge was shown the door too :happy:

Click to expand...

Well it was definitely a sign of things to come!

Awful manager full stop