A look from the outside?
The excellent Les Reid of the Coventry Evening Telegraph has published an article after an interview with Greg Clarke (Chairman of the Football League). It is jaw-dropping in demonstrating Clarke's complacency. Highlights include:
Football League chairman Greg Clarke insists Sky Blues’ owners have the money to continue running the football club “for years to come”. Ever heard of your Salary Costs Management Protocol Greg?
He re-iterated he did not know if the club’s owners Otium/Sisu will ever build a new stadium in the Coventry area within five years – a supposed League condition of groundshare approval. Nuff said...
Challenged over precisely what evidence of Otium’s “proof of funds” the League’s board was satisfied with when sanctioning the Northampton groundshare, he said he would have to ask the League’s financial team Loving the grasp of detail shown by Greg here.
Grilled over the evidence the club had provided, Mr Clarke said: “Sisu Capital have the assets to run this football club for as long as they want to. They are not short of money.” Challenged to be more specific about the proof, he said: “I don’t know. It’s not my job to check the evidence.” See no evil, hear no evil...
Pressed further over the level of funds proven for a stadium, Mr Clarke accepted: “I don’t know, because I don’t how anyone could know how a hypothetical stadium could be funded. You would have to get specific proposals in place for the Football League to evaluate them.” Because nobody has ever built a stadium before...
The Football League’s chairman admitted he did not know if Sky Blues players were sanctioned by the League in CCFC Holdings – when the crucial “golden share” had been in another company, CCFC Ltd. De'nial isn't just a river in Africa...
“I spend most of my efforts trying to keep Coventry alive