Coventry City FC (The Bantams, Sky Blues)

I heard they could not introduce new evidence at the appeal.

I believe that's true, but it may provide ammunition to back-up their previous claims of underhand tactics.

RIP Peter, you where one of Coventry's best. It certainly gave me many hours of pleasure watching you weave your magic.

Hi all on such a sad state of affairs. Whilst I know next to nothing about the game of football, what should be obvious is what Mr Pressley & the playing team have had to cope that just beggars belief. Coventry City owners Sisu found to have 'seriously mismanaged' club (The Guardian)

The situation at CCFC with the appalling owners is a matter of record and the downward slide has been happening for years. The situation with Pressley is, to some degree, a different issue. Coventry now lie 21st, in the relegation positions. The players have been performing badly for a long time and have not won at home for 4 months. Pressley's tactics, team selections, recruitment policy and delusionary post-match interviews claiming we are playing well have dumped us in this position. Seven wins all season and an FA Cup exit to a team from the sixth tier are unacceptable, given the resources at his disposal. Whoever takes over will have the same problems to contend with, just as Pressley's predecessors did. That does not excuse the manager's failings this season. It has been said that constantly changing the manager is at the root of the problem. The truth is that they have constantly appointed the wrong people for the job. The only decent appointment during Sisu's tenure was Mark Robins, and they drove him away. I have grave doubts that this basket-case club can attract the calibre of man we need to dig us out of this hole as long as Sisu remain.

I cannot agree on Pressley's sacking. Not allowed to buy a single player, his best players sold against his wishes, other higher earning players released so that more lower quality players could be bought in to bolster squad numbers, forced to play youth team players to make up a team. In my view he was sold up the river without a paddle, I just hope the next incumbent has broad shoulders and can cope with a load of other teams' cast offs. If not it's relegation here we come.

I totally agree, artful. They slipped into the relegation zone because a creditable draw away to an in form club coincided with a series of good results by the teams around and just below them, against their previous patterns. Curiously, if Sheffield had gone two goals up and City had fought back to get a draw, the media would have been full of positives about 'plucky City salvage a point' or similar. An away draw before the match would have been considered a good result. Given his uphill struggle against a points deduction, loss of the home venue for a whole season, loss of top players and lack of financial support, the man worked miracles. I believe that we were on the verge of a recovery with a half-decent team reassembled by Pressley. Waggott said that nobody could have worked harder nor shown more commitment to the club than Pressley, so any successor can only equal that or fall short of it. How will changing the manager push us further up the table if Waggott is right?

I have to take issue with the last two posts. I wonder if either poster actually goes to watch City these days. It is absolutely true that the running of the club has been shambolic. But Pressley has been the one mainly responsible for recruiting the players within his allotted budget which is at the top end of those in League One. He has recruited many poor players during his tenure. In addition he is responsible for coaching them, preparing them for matches, and tactics and substitutions during the game. Much as I despise Sisu for what they have done to the club, the current precarious league position is largely down to the manager's failings. The fact that he works hard and is a nice chap is all irrelevant. We may still survive in this woeful division if a new man can get more out of these fairly ordinary players. I believe that, had Pressley stayed, we were certs for League Two next season.

While I haven't been to a game since the 1990s, I certainly got up at 2am to watch the FA Cup win. It looks like the Club will go full circle. When I was a kid, they were assigned to the new Fourth Division, made up of the bottom halves of the Third Division North and the Third Division South. No matter what ridiculous names they give the Divisions these days, it looks like it will be back to the Fourth Division again. So sad, and a disgrace to the "owners" of the Club.

Hi all John Sillett believes Sky Blues bosses let Steven Pressley down In business, it is the fundamentals of running the business that dictate the success or failure, I believe. That core has to be right, no matter what the front end people do. Look at the precarious state of Tesco, just as an example since they are next door to the Coventry stadium. Once a board has lost their grip, it then takes a mammoth task to turn any business round, with causalities in the meantime, staff in the case of Tesco, & league performance in the case of Coventry football. Finger on the pulse my mum used to call it, not thumb in their mouths as I believe is the case with the Coventry board. That last comment is just my opinion but I have not seen any board activity in the last five years to change my opinion. As said, I know nothing about football, but the problems in Coventry stem from before any ball is kicked around on grass.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. While I will freely admit I have been a NOPM subscriber for the last two years I still follow the team closely, listen to the radio, watch any games that happen to be on TV, read the reports and comments, phone-ins and feel I can get a decent jist on things. While I have clearly stuck my flag to the mast of this being almost solely the fault of the owners, the sad fact is Pressley just did not do what he was required to do. Yes, he was in a very difficult position but he failed in his remit and unfortunately he had to go. SP did actually spend nominal fees on a few players (Stuart Urquhart I remember was one) and loan players usually have small loans fees involved, especially for more experienced players. Then there are the numerous free signings he made who left almost immediately and were therefore likely due compensation to tear their contracts up. The scouting was awful and even players he took ages looking at on trial and eventually signed hung around for 5 minutes. He has been unfortunate with the likes of Johnson/Pugh etc (though even with those you could argue it was a clear risk as they had known injury issues) but you just cannot make THAT many mistakes in the transfer market. While some of the players that left he had little choice over, others, Carl Baker especially, have been shown to be monumentally poor decisions and would suggest he couldn't pick a decent player if he tried. Any success stories he had we already here upon his arrival. Most notably Clarke/Wilson - a typical big man/small man combo up front, complemented by two attacking midfielders (Moussa/Baker) running with the ball. So why has he completely ignored this style for a one up front and a midfield packed with defensive, or at least unadventerous, players? Then there are the tactics. So many changes in the way we play, and none of them making sense with the players available to him. Now I'm all for having a plan B, like having a big targetman shoved on to hoof the ball to right at the death or a speedy winger or striker to take advantage of tired legs or catching opposition teams on the break if they need to score, but game after game it was tinkered with and players didn't seem to know what to do. When he turned up I liked his attacking philosophy and high pressing game, but he shunned this for a much more negative approach that invited teams to attack us and gave us very little chance to create chances. Eg. he specifically wanted Coulibaly on loan as part of the Wilson deal, then when he got him decided to totally change the system and he wouldn't fit into it. Similarly in the last window, he brought in a plethora of strikers and two wingers, and played a 4-3-3/4-5-1 formation using the big strikers on the wings - a tactic tried repeatedly since the days of Andy Morrell with Peter Reid and has always failed. Despite defensive frailties very little was done to plug the gaps. Goalkeeper, a vital position, has been left hanging on with indecisions on whether to extend keeper loans etc. How can you drill a back four and get communication if you're not even sure who's going to be marshalling them?

So true, sadly life changes and we are told that we have to move with it. Presumably today's fans would/could not understand how we football fans might have felt in the fifties. 57/58 my friend and I went to Highfield Road, aged about 12 and 10, on our own, we would have walked from Sewall Highway, always got there very early, reckon gates opened about 1.30ish. More relevant, we would see our footballers get off the No 7 bus at the Sewall Highway terminus, Lol Harvey, Charlie Timmins, Frank Austin and a few others and we would be really excited. Made our day. On our way to school we would walk past Reg Matthews' house, we could have almost saluted. Probably the best for us though, 1 of 2, take your pick. On the corner of Clovelly Road and Torcross Avenue lived our skipper, Roy Kirk, wonderful footballer and captain. When he moved on, George Curtis moved in, he really was our hero, brilliant footballer, brilliant captain and wonderful clubman. To us he will always be Mr Coventry City. To see them out in the front garden doing the gardening etc., to us was just awesome. May have been a couple of years later, when Arthur Lightening joined the club, we would see him arrive at the Devon in his Ford Zodiac (or similar), and we didn't see many of them around Wyken. What gloriously innocent and happy days. Even when we played football over our back fields, which we did for hours on end in school holidays, we would be our heroes. I remember scoring goals and being Ken McPherson or Ray Straw.