Sky Blues Relegated without a Whimper............

AND so the battle ends, the fight is over the and the Fat Lady, who has been warming up for months, finally got to sing after the towel was finally thrown in, at home in front of 15,000 Sky Blues fans at the Ricoh Arena.

In the end we went out with a whimper, which I suppose was always going to be the case, from a team that has been pretty pathetic for the greater part of the season, but who showed a bit of a turnaround after Christmas, to give the long suffering fans something to cling on to. It was sort of a twisting of the knife really, as we had been the bookies favourites to go down at the start of the season, and the fact that we had been in the bottom three since October, really tells its own story.

There can be no big surprise here either, we have been in 17th position or worse for the past 6 seasons now, so the drop was an inevitability, given the lack of forward planning from SISU and the board, with the obvious lack of funding, being a major, if not unexpected, player in our demise. The fact that SISU decided against selling the club, was also a mitigating factor, as they have no experience in running a football club and have a seemingly flawed battle plan.

The bare fact are, that once Ray Ranson left the board, there has been no-one with any real footballing knowledge bought in to replace him. Ranson had a plan, to buy players cheap and sell them on for a profit, to stabilise the club and see us into the future. Once he realised that he wouldn't be allowed to plough any money from transfers back into the playing staff, he headed for the hills, taking our hopes and dreams with him into the sunset.

There has been no real plan to move forward, n the contrary, we have been in steady decline wince we entered the Championship and, even though we are the longest serving team in the league, we are now suffering for the mistakes of past, self serving, regimes. We can look back upon the sale of Highfield Road as being an intrinsic part of the problem, because it truly is, but there is more to it than that. Chairmen have come and gone, as have managers and players, the only real asset the club has, is the fans and we have been treated appallingly.

So where does that leave us - The fans - the true stakeholders of Coventry City?

There are unlikely to be major changes behind the scenes, Harry Houdini would do well to make a case for buying a team with no assets in Division 1, let alone Gary Hoffman, so I would expect to see the management team remain the same, some players will inevitably be sold, it's what SISU do! Which will probably leave us with a very small, inexperienced squad, to compete against the likes of Scunthorpe, Oldham and Yeovil next season.

I think we will be OK at the start of the season and the crowds will stay at around the 12/13k mark, and if we get a decent start and win a few games, we could be in for a decent season, but (and it's a big BUT) if we have a bad start, and if we only sell assets and don't replace them with even free transfers, we are in for another very long, hard season.

On a positive note, George Curtis was made a life president of the club on Friday night at the 1987 reunion dinner.

Keep the faith - PUSB