[12 SEP 01]

It’s a week we’ll never forget. Thousands dead in events too awful to have been foreseen, with consequences for peace on our planet that could be more frightening than anyone dare consider.

The shock of the incredible attacks by hijacked planes in America make all concerns about the future of Coventry City football club seem entirely inconsequential.

However, as the saying goes, life goes on and this week will also be remembered by Sky Blues fans as the week we said “goodbye” to Gordon Strachan as the club’s manager.

I have commented before that I regard Gordon as an excellent coach and, although there are many who regard him as “the worst manager City’s ever had” and point to the statistics of his time in charge to support their case, I will state unequivocally that I do not agree. Rather, I believe Gordon was the right man at the wrong time.

Few managers would have done better running a team regularly and consistently stripped of its best players. In different circumstances, with a more settled squad and the opportunity to build round the talents of people like Robbie Keane, Gary McAllister, Dion Dublin, George Boateng, Moustapha Hadji and Chris Kirkland, I have no doubt that Gordon would have succeeded in taking Coventry City into Europe.

As it was, good players came and went, particularly during the last three years of his time in charge, with increasing and alarming regularity.

Many other managers would have walked away in such circumstances, but that is not Gordon’s way. His career in football has built on his passion for the game and a remarkable self-belief. He is not the sort to ever lie down and give up. No matter what the adversity, his natural attitude is to breathe deeply and fight on.

Sometimes, indeed often, that attitude has been misunderstood or has got him into hot water. His touchline contretemps with match officials are an example of the latter and some of his media quotes, particularly about supporters, underscore the former. Too often Gordon’s words were taken too literally, though there were instances when it was hard to decide whether he meant them to be.

I wish Gordon well. He will succeed as a manager, but obviously not here and not now.

GORDON STRACHAN AND BRYAN RICHARDSON
COVENTRY CITY v LEICESTER CITY 10 DEC 00 [photo empics]

His departure, however, is just one chapter in the unfolding story of a club fallen on hard times. Supporters continue to call for the resignation of the Chairman, Bryan Richardson and the President, Geoffrey Robinson MP.

Mr Richardson, in turn, has launched a remarkable attack on the Coventry Evening Telegraph newspaper, accusing it of orchestrating the protests. He also claims that he is the victim of a personal crusade by the CET editor Alan Kirby.

Relations between the club and its local ‘paper have been strained, to say the least, for some time but they have clearly now reached an all-time low.

While all this is going on, former City vice-Chairman Ted Stocker is busy securing the support he needs from shareholders for an Extraordinary General Meeting, which he claims will take place “within weeks”.

Quite what such a meeting can achieve, when Messrs Richardson and Robinson between them control 60% of the shares, is not clear. Add a further 10% holding owned by director Derek Higgs, and the board – or at least three members of it – have total control.

Then there is a business consortium, apparently forged round a sports investment company, said to be interested in buying out the Chairman, if not his fellow directors. Advising this group is Coventry-born businessman John Clarke, who lost out to Bryan Richardson in a previous attempt to take control of the club.

This group may have lost some momentum because their existence was leaked to the Coventry Evening Telegraph before they were ready to go public.

Whatever the status of their interest, or that of Mr Stocker, one has to ask: who, in their right mind, would want to take on a business said to be between £30-million and £50-million in debt?

Like the vast majority of English football clubs, Coventry City has deep financial troubles. Forget all the talk of the “millions swilling around inside the game”. Most of those millions are, in fact, in the pockets of the top players and their agents with no more than a handful of clubs operating on anything approaching an even keel, financially.

The Sky Blues troubles may be eased by new blood in the boardroom. There again, if those proposing to take it over do not understand the complexity of a modern football club, it might just be better off under its present control.

Against this backdrop, acting manager Roland Nilsson and acting head coach Richard Money are working to improve the team’s fortunes on the pitch, with the inevitable and entirely unfair comparisons between Nilsson and fellow Swede Sven Goran-Eriksson already made by sections of the press.

Then again, there are thousands of people in America who will never see their loved ones again and one of the world’s most famous landmarks has been viciously reduced to a pile of rubble.

Football? It’s just a game.