Coventry City fans fear for the club’s future after a series of cost-cutting measures.
SISU Capital, a London-based hedge-fund who own the Championship's bottom club, admitted they are aiming to cut £9million off the budget.
To disbelief and embarrassment, the club’s new ‘Head of Football Operations’ Ken Delieu sat on the bench with manager Andy Thorn for Saturday’s home defeat by Hull.
Now, supporters fear Coventry, thought to be losing £80,000 per month, are close to going under for good.
“We’re going to be the next Portsmouth or Luton, without a doubt,” predicted Gary Stubbs, leader of the protest group set up to denounce SISU.
"The mood among the fans is the worst I’ve ever known but they don’t want to listen to us.
“They don’t care about the club at all and now it’s dying a death. Unless something is done soon, there won’t be a Coventry City.”
The club was humiliated last month when Canadian former director Leonard Brody admitted he thought supporters at the Ricoh should help decide substitutions during matches by texting a premium-rate number.
Thorn lost 14 players in the summer and only brought in three – two of whom were goalkeepers – while boardroom promises of “franchise players” to lead the club back to the Premier League as well as a clutch of loan signings evaporated into nothing.
The owner of SISU, Finnish-American City big-hitter Joy Seppala, has never been to a game, while her representative on a revolving door of a board, Onye Igwe, has given just one interview this season.
Coventry Council chief John Mutton, owners of the Ricoh Arena where Coventry play their home games, has announced he will not consider selling a share of the ground to the club while SISU are in charge.
On Wednesday night, a club spokesman confirmed ownership of the club had been transferred to another company, Sconset Capital - thought to be based in the Cayman Islands.
He insisted: “Sconset is 100 per cent controlled by SISU Capital Limited, and it is SISU that has full management control of the parent company, and of the football club.”
Fans are vowing to boycott next month’s FA Cup tie against Southampton.
Another leading protester, Martin Sutton, added: “We keep on asking who they are – and they won’t tell us. Nobody knows. And we’re going to be left with no club the way things are going.”
Local MP, former Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, added: “There are enormous worries in the city of Coventry over what is happening because what we all want to see is a successful football club.
“We are all desperate to see the club turned around but wonder whether or not the present owners are really the right people to be able to do this.”
The fears seem genuine, shared among senior circles within the Championship, with Delieu’s appearance on the bench a few feet from Thorn the symbol of a club that has lost its sense of bearings.
Pressed in the aftermath of the defeat, former Wimbledon, Newcastle and Crystal Palace defender Thorn did not try to hide his feelings.
“Ken wanted to come onto the bench. He’s the head of football operations, so he was down there,” he said. “He’s head of football. He can do whatever he wants.”
Delieu’s qualifications for such a role are unclear, although he was chairman of Southampton during their negotiations with SISU four years ago, before the hedge-fund bought the ailing club from another former Labour MP, Geoffrey Robinson.
Attempts to contact Delieu, who lives in Portugal, received no response.
A club spokesman said: “Ken and the manager had spoken about it in advance and were generally surprised by the reaction it has had. If the team had won then nobody would be talking about this.”
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