Former Coventry City Director Leonard Brody feels that the City Board's problems with attracting new investors have not been helped by fans not turning up in numbers for home matches and that the protests against SISU have not helped the cause.
Speaking to the CT, from San Francisco via the phone, the Canadian who stepped down as a Coventry City Director but not from his involvement with SISU said: "You have a significant number of clubs looking for investment at the same time so you have a generally bad international investment enviroment matched with a league that has a lot of people looking out for money. And in order to obtain that you need a competitive and strong base.
“It’s a weird chicken-and-egg situation because if 20-25,000 fans showed up for every game it is much easier to attract foreign investment.
"When they don’t show up and when the gate receipts are low it makes it difficult.
"And it also makes it difficult when people see the tension between fans and the owners, so all of us, the board and the fans are not helping the situation for people who want to come in.
“I am not blaming the fans because they have every reason to be disappointed."The question is not are you disappointed but how does that manifest itself and what do you do about it.
"And I think the way it played out with a lot of tension in the environment made it more difficult for investors to get involved.
“So it’s ironic that that form of tension and protest actually shied people away because it was one more thing to worry about.
“It’s nobody’s fault and I am not suggesting that fans shouldn’t be disappointed and shouldn’t have exercised a right to peacefully demonstrate.
"I just think we would be telling tales if we said it didn’t make that investment situation more difficult.
“No-one wants obstacles when they make an investment.
"But I do believe that in the next 12 months we will see some outside investment in the club to support Sisu in what they have done.
“I can’t tell you that is will be on the best terms or worst terms, but I think you will see people step up to get involved in hopefully what will be the product of a lot of work over the last 12 months.”
As for his personal targets when he first took on the role last December, he admitted: “The goal for me was two things – firstlook at the day to day operation and look at how we could bring more people into the facility and secondly how we could do a better job of communicating and involving fans.
“I don’t think we have done nearly a good enough job of that yet and there have been a bunch of reasons why.
"There is an incredible amount of work still to be done there and I am not happy at all with the result we have achieved on that front.”
Source: FOOTYMAD
