Coventry - the team we should have been

C

Chishandfips

Well-known member
Fair play to Coventry after all their recent troubles. When Sadler took over I think the two clubs had a lot in common. Both had been through the mill, supporters had helped token the club going and a decent Championship side.
After that first season in the Championship, which in fairness to Critchley he helped us breeze through, I thought we'd become a Coventry. Knocking on the door of the Championship Play Offs but unlikely to get there whilst pulling off a shock in the cup competitions. I always thought (before Critchley went) that would be our second or maybe third season in the Championship.
Feels we are quite a long way back from achieving that again.
 
Yes , I remember some quotes from their fans saying we were like them , the first season promoted to the Championship, we were easily out muscled & light weight. Although we did quite well .
I think that was where the likeness finished , unfortunately .
 
Seasider1953 said:
Yes , I remember some quotes from their fans saying we were like them , the first season promoted to the Championship, we were easily out muscled & light weight. Although we did quite well .
I think that was where the likeness finished , unfortunately .
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We are still very very light weight and out muscled whoever we play.

We have no steel, no backbone, no "bottle" in this team whatsoever ☹️

This seems to be a characteristic of our manager and dare I say it, our owner.
 
Yeah Coventry is a pretty large city , hence it's ruthless targeting by the Luftwaffe, around 400k I believe (I'm a bit of a population nerd).

I'm struck by the comparison to Hull, promoted the same season, first season back we finished above them with very similar attendances. They're now knocking on the PL door and averaging 20'000 after being bought by yet another mega rich consortium.

Though Hull is also around 420'000 population, 7th biggest city in England.

End of the day it all comes down to having owners willing to lose 15-20 million a season to speculate on a PL windfall unless you hit on some magic with recruitment a la Luton.
 
I stated all along that prior to our first Championship season under Neil Critchley, Simon Sadler should've pushed the boat out to sign Ellis Simms and Dan Ballard. I honestly thought that we might have a very good chance of successive promotions. Even without them, we got ourselves into a handy league position after our usual dismal start of 5 pts from 7 games, but had 24 pts from 15 and were 6th in the table. As it is now, we will more than likely not even make the League One playoffs this season.
🧡UTMP🧡
 
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Henshman said:
I stated all along that prior to our first Championship season under Neil Critchley, Simon Sadler should've pushed the boat out to sign Ellis Simms and Dan Ballard. I honestly thought that we might have a very good chance of successive promotions. Even without them, we got ourselves into a handy league position after our usual dismal start of 5 pts from 7 games, but had 24 pts from 15 and were 6th in the table. As it is now, we will more than likely not even make the League One playoffs this season.
🧡UTMP🧡
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Agree with all of that .. but fundamentally the problem still came down to the fact he employed Crappleton!
 
GaryMadineGoalMachine said:
Agree with all of that .. but fundamentally the problem still came down to the fact he employed Crappleton!
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Neil Critchley finished the 2021/22 Championship season, then got offered a job as No.2 at Aston Villa leaving Pool without even thinking of issuing an explanation or message to the fans. Because of that, if I had been Simon Sadler, I'd never have considered re-employing him, especially considering his performances as No.2 at Aston Villa, and manager at QPR.
🧡UTMP🧡
 
PdxTangerine said:
Yeah Coventry is a pretty large city , hence it's ruthless targeting by the Luftwaffe, around 400k I believe (I'm a bit of a population nerd).

I'm struck by the comparison to Hull, promoted the same season, first season back we finished above them with very similar attendances. They're now knocking on the PL door and averaging 20'000 after being bought by yet another mega rich consortium.

Though Hull is also around 420'000 population, 7th biggest city in England.

End of the day it all comes down to having owners willing to lose 15-20 million a season to speculate on a PL windfall unless you hit on some magic with recruitment a la Luton.
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However, I went to the Hull away game last season and feel sorry for their supporters. What a sh@thole. That massive carpark and the equally expansive working mens' club that tries to charge you £5 to get in and hounds you to buy numbers on the football card.... not just once but about 5 times when you've already told them you don't have cash.
Give me the good old Armfield any day, whatever the division.
U.T.M..P.
 
Wizaard said:
Coventry average around 25,000 a game. That adds up to a lot of gate money.
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Thats 14000 extra, at nett, probably £10 a pop. Again after deductions it's possibly £100k per game, or £2.3m pa extra income over and above us, which if we were in the c/ship equates to 2 decent signings better off than us.
 
I'm not sure they are a good comparator, beyond the fact that they are recovering from awful ownership. I was delighted for them on Saturday.
 
Their previous ownership still invested the best part of £2m on Gyokeres, Hamer & O'Hare which helped keep them up and establish in the championship. Put 10k on their attendances. And helped to attract a new owner. Retain the manager and his staff. Then got them as far as penalty kicks to get into the Prem and made the club a profit which you can see has been reinvested in a new squad to try to build again. And currently has them in an FA Cup semi final and pushing for a play off place again.

They're functioning as a football club now and not just playing at pretending to be one. They're getting back to somewhere where you'd expect them to be. Robins obviously knows what he's doing and they've worked the loan market well along the way with Adi Viveash and his Prem U21 contacts/Chelsea coming in very handy.
 
Wizaard said:
Coventry average around 25,000 a game. That adds up to a lot of gate money.
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We could average 20000 in the division above with a ground developed for the future. Admittedly it would have to include facilities for double the amount of away fans allowed in now
 
My golfing mate Callum Austin, his dad Dean took over at Coventry as head of recruitment when the guys from there came to Blackpool. Seems to be doing a good job.
He’s contemplating suing some Watford fans who took photos of his What’s App messages and put them on social media when he was watching Watford v Swansea. He was at the match as they were Coventry’s next opponents and he was messaging Mark Robbins.
 
CAGU said:
My golfing mate Callum Austin, his dad Dean took over at Coventry as head of recruitment when the guys from there came to Blackpool. Seems to be doing a good job.
He’s contemplating suing some Watford fans who took photos of his What’s App messages and put them on social media when he was watching Watford v Swansea. He was at the match as they were Coventry’s next opponents and he was messaging Mark Robbins.
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Sueing fans never ends up well mate 😂😂
 
Sadly ,,in my honest opinion ,,,nPool are never going to get anywhere , while they keep on relying on loanees season after season ,,,what is required, is players signed on contracts to team , get a stabilised team together ,,,stop loaning out youngsters,,,bleed them into the first team ,,,and the future will be bright ,,,
 
poolfc said:
Their previous ownership still invested the best part of £2m on Gyokeres, Hamer & O'Hare which helped keep them up and establish in the championship. Put 10k on their attendances. And helped to attract a new owner. Retain the manager and his staff. Then got them as far as penalty kicks to get into the Prem and made the club a profit which you can see has been reinvested in a new squad to try to build again. And currently has them in an FA Cup semi final and pushing for a play off place again.

They're functioning as a football club now and not just playing at pretending to be one. They're getting back to somewhere where you'd expect them to be. Robins obviously knows what he's doing and they've worked the loan market well along the way with Adi Viveash and his Prem U21 contacts/Chelsea coming in very handy.
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This ⬆️ is spot on and it certainly puts them in a very good place, their recruitment has been very clever and their attendance figures won't do their income any harm at all. How much did they spend on Simms? We can only look on in envy at that sort of financial clout, that's not to decry the amount of money we must be costing Simon Sadler, but we need to improve how/where we find players that will improve our first eleven, not the "development" squad.
 
Yarmouth Seasider said:
This ⬆️ is spot on and it certainly puts them in a very good place, their recruitment has been very clever and their attendance figures won't do their income any harm at all. How much did they spend on Simms? We can only look on in envy at that sort of financial clout, that's not to decry the amount of money we must be costing Simon Sadler, but we need to improve how/where we find players that will improve our first eleven, not the "development" squad.
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You never know with undisclosed fees unless you've access to the paperwork but £20.5m back off a £900k investment in Gyokeres after a season loan won't be far off as a best guess.

£15m in after £1m out for Gus Hamer

Then £4m for Simms with add ons as Everton wanted a HGP sale on their balance sheet
And their other business

Totally different world to us
 
Martonmosser said:
We could average 20000 in the division above with a ground developed for the future. Admittedly it would have to include facilities for double the amount of away fans allowed in now
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Finding an extra 8 K home fans won’t be so easy mate. Maybe we could push up to around 15K. That is more realistic imo.
Either way it’s about time we saw spades in the ground. We could wait forever but I doubt prices of materials will come down significantly enough to make much difference.
We need to ‘get on with it’.!
 
Cov will be raking in a few million quid for their FA cup run alone with a Wembley appearance to comen TV cash etc. That will probs be reinvested too.
Good luck to them n I hope they reach the final.
 
I'm really happy for them. My old bowling mate, rest his soul, although he'd been up here since he was a teenager and always took a keen interest in how we were doing, he was Coventry born and Sky Blue through and through.

He was at Wembley in '87, and would have been at all these games too. I hope they go all the way for him.
 
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