Coventry City chairman needs to regain fans' trust

By Ian Palmer on Oct 20, 11 08:46 PM in Fans

If one thing is clear from his candid interview in the Daily Mail, it's that Ken Dulieu has a difficult job at Coventry City.

At the same time as trying to convince Sisu that the club are still worth investing in, Dulieu is trying to convince potential investors to come aboard.

The more Sisu invests, the more attractive a proposition the club becomes. But the progress on both accounts must be agonisingly slow.

At the same time, convivial Ken has to try and make friends with people at the council and the Higgs Trust, so that one day we might be able to talk to them about buying bits of the stadium we rent.

The council in particular seem to habour a distrust of Coventry City and anyone who represents them, and perhaps rightly so given our history of boardroom disasters.

Therefore, it's Ken's job to convince them that funding from an elusive hedge fund is real and reliable. As I say, it's not easy.

But the funny thing is, the walls of distrust that Dulieu is trying to knock down are made of the same bricks that you'll find in the wall that he built between himself and the fans.

City fans don't trust Ken Dulieu, because they think he's been untruthful to them. There was the meeting-that-never-was with the council; then the Premiership loan players that were on their way in September.

Then there was the whole Hoffman takeover saga, the collapse of which seemed to coincide with Dulieu name-dropping potential investors on the radio.

It's unfortunate because the most important factor in this whole vicious circle is the relationship between the club and fans. Without that, trust breaks down all over the place.

Dulieu seems to be working hard to rebuild that trust, but he needs to start with the people who buy the tickets.