Coventry City's recently installed interim managing director Tim Fisher has spoken to the Coventry Telegraph's sports editor Keith Perry about his role and vision for the future of the club.
The club is currently without a chairman as Ken Dulieu resigned last week and following the resignation of former chief executive Paul Clouting, Tim Fisher finds himself holding the senior post at the club.
Keith Perry asked the questions.
KP. Firstly, would you like to tell the fans who you are, give us a bit of background. How long have you been on the board, have you worked in football before, do you go to matches?
TF. Starting with the important stuff, I go to most if not all home and away games, so I did the long trips to Pompey and Brighton and I’ll be here for the Hull game.
I joined the board in the summer and my job was investment adviser, so sourcing co-investment, and providing help with the financial turnaround.
KP. Have you got a background in football?
TF. My family are all Sheffield Wednesday fans, so some might say I don’t know anything about football.
One of my first memorable away games was the third round of the FA Cup, Coventry City away and Wednesday got beat 3-1 and Hateley and Hunt got the goals. It was my first visit to an all-seater stadium.
That was Third Division versus First Division and Coventry were the glamour team – they had a great kit and they didn’t play with a Mitre football, they used a Tango ball from the World Cup. It was 1981-82 season.
I know the football sector quite well. I worked with Charlton where we sourced a long-term investment and Charlton is a great turnaround story.
Charlton proves turnarounds can work and that is exactly what we are aiming for here.
KP. This is a short-term appointment for you as interim MD, what are your priorities?
KP. Can I just pick you up on co-investment. You are looking for a partner?
TF. Co-investment is exactly that. Sisu are not looking for an exit. They are in this for the long term.
KP. There is now an emphasis on local involvement, why is that? You can obviously see what I am getting at given we’ve had directors from Canada and Portugal.
You have to look at the history of Sisu’s involvement. They bought Coventry City when it was about to go bust, the very bottom financially. They restructured the finances and the company.
We then moved onto another phase and had Ken who was experienced in working with football clubs and with businesses that had even gone into administration so he was experienced at turnaround.
We are now in the next phase which is hopefully an upturn, so it is now time to hand over to local management. If you look at Sisu’s other investments, they have firms in France, Germany and China.
Sisu come in and do the heavy lifting and put in place all the financial cornerstones and then they bring in local management.
If you look at those businesses now, in France they are all French managers and from the area, same in Germany and same in China but you have to have horses for courses.
Ken came in and started the turnaround process, I am carrying on with that but there is a stage we must move to with a locally based MD and chairman because we have to build local relationships and I want somebody local to do that.
TF. The vast majority of Football League clubs are rumoured to be in financial meltdown or teetering on the edge.
I suspect the last thing fans want to hear about are the rules of financial fair play that will be voted on by the Football League in the next three months but they will provide the framework for clubs to become healthy, growing businesses.
We have an incredibly supportive owner and the last thing on their mind is administration. Administration does not make sense from the owners’ standpoint and from a business standpoint we lose ten points!
KP. What needs to happen off the pitch to stabilise the club?
TF. The financial turnaround has to continue. This is about managing the cost base and trying to grow revenues.
In terms of increasing revenues, we are having success. Thanks to the retro kit, shirt sales have topped 10,000 and are up 40 per cent on the previous year already.
KP. Are you confident we can get out of the relegation zone?
TF. Yes. This is a marathon not a sprint. The changes you saw last Friday show we are entirely focused on the football and winning games.
KP. Do you think the club could communicate better with the fans?
It is very important and I have already sat round the table and chatted to some of the fans who have chanting ‘Sisu out’. It was very constructive and we hope to build on it.