I’ve had a few 20+ and even one around the 40 mark but today I got my first ever 50+ retweets tweet. Not important and of no consequence but it’s always good to feel the twitter love….

Thought I’d give some quick thoughts on our current situation, in truth I’ve wanted to forget all about the club since relegation but I will be back there next season (of course) so it’s only proper to engage my brain and keyboard.

To my mind the club faces it’s most important few months, months which will set in place a course of events which will see us become a fixture in League One or claim what – realistically – is our place in English football, a playoff challenging Championship team.

As I predicted the team was relegated in one of the most frustrating, lacklustre series of games I can remember as a fan – but this was only compounded by the fact we had clawed our way back and got out of the relegation zone, only to then throw it away in a spectacular fashion. The first question to answer is therefore whether Thorn should now be in charge next season, still my answer would be no. A nice guy, yes, a decent manager, yes, a victim of our ownership structure and the carnage that came before him, absolutely – the right man to take us forwards, no.  I don’t blame Thorn for relegation any more than the iceberg can be blamed  for sinking the Titanic, the incompetence of those around him (both players and owners) did for us. However, I still think that fundamental mistakes cost us points which could have seen us get out of the scrape. An insistence on the diamond formation, an inability to make substitutions and the fact he couldn’t motivate some of the senior players suggests to me that if we stick with Thorn then what is a crucial season could peter out, we’ll make a change in November and any potential promotion challenge will be lost. So on issue one – Thorn out, somebody (Carsley?) in.

Now on to the more prickly situation with our owners. We are caught between a rock and a hard place in my opinion.  I am discounting the Hoffman ‘bid’ entirely as an option, we cannot continue to hold on for a white knight who clearly can’t quite manage to find his horse. I’m sure he is well intentioned and extremely passionate about the club but the ‘noise’ which surrounds his ongoing ‘bid’ clouds the fundamental issues here.  Unfortunately we have a choice between allowing our club to go out of existence by SISU continuing to own only the club (and no stake in the Ricoh) or we accept that they take the Higgs share of the arena and risk further incompetence.  Our only option is to accept the second one, however unpalatable or incompetent these guys have been at running a football club, the fact is you do have to accept that even competent owners would struggle with the club’s current structure – the only way we would be a profitable business is if we were bankrolled by somebody who had no interest in seeing their money again.  Therefore allowing SISU ownership of at least 50% of the Ricoh alongside complete ownership of the club at least partially removes one of the millstones around our neck. If the Higgs Charity are happy with the offer on the table then they should do the deal. The medium-term view here is that once we have brought the club and stadium together this will then encourage a more reasonable level of interest in the club from other investors, Coventry City is not a rational investment decision, Coventry City + 50% of the stadium is – even with SISU as the current owners.

In terms of players then it’s obvious to me that Cranie will leave, even though I rate him extremely highly, of course we all hope Keogh stays but staving off cash bids will be hard. So  we are resigned to another summer of free transfers and wheeling and dealing. However one thing which does frustrate me is that we will have another season of David Bell and Carl Baker, two wretched players at a Championship level, I have never been so frustrated by two professional footballers in all my time as a Coventry fan.

So in short, I’d replace the manager, accept our owners are going to stay our owners, support SISU in buying a stake in the Ricoh and then get behind the lads (and many of them will literally be ‘lads’) when they take the field next season.  I’ll be there in the cavernous stadium backing them all the way knowing that one day, one blessed day, we will turn the corner and begin the climb back to having a club we can be proud of. #PUSB

I’ve been using this site for a while now but it just keeps getting better and better:

www.wearehunted.com

A great site which aggregates blogs, embeds and ‘sentiment’ (there’s a 21st century word) to show the top emerging and popular music.  It’s fantastic for finding new bands and tunes, and is stunning from a design and usability perspective.

In the last week I’ve found three great bands I’d never heard before:

1) Silversun Pickups

2) Zulu Winter

3) Passion Pit

And even though it’s a small detail, the free-text search functionality is a joy to use!!

I’ve just opened a Path account after seeing it featured on the BBC’s Click this weekend.  For those who haven’t heard of it, Path is basically the ability to log / record your ‘path’ through life with quick updates and photos.  So it’s really designed for the ‘I’m at Starbucks with Joe and here’s a quick pic’ type stuff – so it rolls in Twitter and Foursquare alongside the increasing mobile use of Facebook check-ins and shorter status updates.

My initial thoughts are good but I do think it is basically an improved interface / layer to sit on top of your existing networks.  I say this becasue it  basically adds a layer of templates for quicker Twitter and Facebook updates.  I remember a time when mobile phones (particularly Nokias) came with a set of templated messages with statements devoid of all emotion like ‘I am late’ ‘Happy Birthday’ or my personal favourite ‘I’ve done something really bad to a close personal friend, can I confide in you?’  I did use them on a couple of occasions and generally they were pretty useful if you didn’t have the time to fire a unique message off.

In short, Path strikes me as doing much the same but for social interaction – giving you templates which allow you to quickly make a statement / update without necessarily having to think about it.  So for example we have the ‘I am asleep’ ‘I am awake’ option which for me will replace my no doubt infuriating ‘Morning all’ ‘Evening all’ tweets.  In addition you have the ability to add thoughts and pictures easily and of course then seed this content out on to multiple networks (Twitter being the predominant one for me).  On top of this you have a simply gorgeous UI on the iPhone app, meaning it works seamlessly in the palm and could almost have been designed by Apple themselves.

So all in all I don’t think it will necessarily take off as a bespoke social network itself (do we have room for anymore?) given the only thing it really adds in terms of unique content creation is some photo filters – but I do think it will be useful for people like me who would like to tweet or update their Facebook status more regularly with (yes I admit it) a ‘lower level’ of interaction.  Of course that begs the question of when Twitter will buy it or just replicate it….

If you’re on Path feel free to add / follow me.

My first Coventry City post, one of many more to come!

So there is currently a clear divide between City fans as to whether Andy Thorn should be replaced as manager.  Without going into the gory back story of how the club arrived at this painful point, it’s fair to say that most clubs that are bottom of the league with such a poor record would have replaced the manager a long time ago with very limited disagreement from the fans.  We are of course a club in crisis and the sheer volume of extenuating factors make this a far from clear-cut subject and represents the key dilemma, why blame a man who has to work in such an awful situation?

Up until Saturday I was broadly in the Thorn should stay category.  He is someone who has had to deal with what can only realistically be described as a ‘shit-storm’ of circumstances which would have tested the patience of any football manager and seen many men walk out in disgust.  Thorn has kept his dignity and also attempted to maintain a relatively (although not as  ‘Brazil-like’ as many would have you believe) entertaining style of football, considering he has had extremely limited funds to work with and seen the infrastructure of the club and it’s hierarchy lurch from crisis he has shown admirable restraint.

But the facts do not lie; our record is atrocious, we have failed to score enough goals and have consistently conceded goals and points in the final third of games.  The defeat against Ipswich in the final minute was the final-straw for me, not because I was particularly angry with Thorn or the players, but because in my view it confirmed us as ‘down’.  The test of a truly effective manager is to be able to push players that little bit further and compensate for a lack of quality with honesty, work-rate and fitness – the last few games have shown that Thorn is incapable of deilvering that.  I do not advocate that for one minute with ANY other manager we would have been able to survive in this division, from day one it was clear that our lack of depth and the impending departure of any effective players would stimie any possible momentum.  However, I do maintain that another manager would have seen us compete more effectively, concede less silly goals and ultimately grind out points where Thorn has failed – we would have still gone down but at least have been within touching distance.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, we cannot change the past, we are where we are.  Therefore by accepting relegation and given the wider situation the club is in I would advocate what some have been calling for in that we replace Thorn with Lee Carsley.  The laughable suggestions by some deluded fans that we should ‘get Warnock’ or ‘Steve Bruce would do a job’ are comical and still surprise me – the concept of us being bankrupt in all but name seems to be too hard to fathom for some!  Carsley seems to have an appetite for the job, an affinity with the club and the area and also a crucial relationship with the youth players which we will need next season.  Needsless to say he would also be a low-cost option with only a modest increase from his current package (I imagine).  If we do follow this course and replace Thorn with Carsley I would still not expect us to do anything other than be relegated, but this is one of my primary points – building for next season to allow us to have a solid League One campaign is vital.  Given how battle-scarred and weary Thorn already appears with the job I don’t think there are many fans who would have the confidence in him being able to deliver a succesful season next year – and I even think Thorn would agree with us.

Make the change now, give Carsley the time and experience ahead of what should be the club’s true focus – aside from the ownership of the club which I have deliberately not brought into this – next season and League One.  I will always be grateful to Thorn for the way he grasped the nettle last season and would like to think he could be offered his previous scouting role in a new management structure, where in the main he seemed to be pretty effective, whether he would accept would be another matter.

Thanks Andy, I’ve never booed you or your players, but circumstances have conspired against us all and the time for us to change is now.