Coventry City manager Mark Robins has urged City supporters staying away to come back and support the team.
The Sky Blues are a club which has as many if not more supporters staying away from matches, than those who go to games, especially home matches.
The reasons why supporters are staying away are many and varied but Joy Seppala, Tim Fisher and David Boddy having nothing to do with the Sky Blues is widely seen as one way to get supporters back buying season and match tickets, plus merchandise etc as is making the cost of watching the Sky Blues including getting to the game more affordable, in the sort of numbers that Robins is hoping for.
Robins, who is doing his best to try and give himself the best possible budget to get in players, who can ensure that the Sky Blues get out of League Two at the first opportunity, told the Coventry Observer: : “There are two sides to every argument.
“We’re asking people to look past that and see past that, and come and support the team and what we do, because those things are separate. We’ve separated those things.
“Any extra revenue that we get will come into running the football club and making sure we’re as strong as we possibly can be on the pitch.
“We can’t do it without them. Simple. We’ve had to sell players to make sure we’ve got a budget this year.
“We’ve got to make sure we’ve got all our ducks in a row. We’ve got to make sure everybody is working flat out and giving everything they possibly can, on a skeleton staff.
“There’s teams in this division that are spending far more than we have done on salaries and other things, on running the club in general.
“This is a really big club and we desperately want it to get back to where it needs to be.
“And for that we need everybody to stick together and need everybody to support our efforts.
“That’s by no means taking anything for granted. Every supporter that comes through the turnstile to watch us is valued, without a shadow of doubt.
“I think the atmosphere generated during the cup game - you can’t buy that. You look back to the Checkatrade Final and the amount of people we took (43,000).
“If we’re going to build a successful Coventry City, we need as many of those stay-away people, alongside those people who watch us every week, as we possibly can. Then we can take it forward quicker.
“We need to galvanise everybody and try and let bygones be bygones.
“It’s very, very difficult, and it’s easy for me to say. It’s very difficult for people to look past that.
“There will be difficulties. There are difficulties at every football club.
“You look at Brighton, for years when there were a lot of problems, with the move to the Withdean. It took 10 years to get the planning permission through and make sure there was a stadium built. Look at them now and the way they built that football club.
“We have to use those experiences of other football teams to build a successful and sustainable future for Coventry City.”