DOUG King cited the reason he sacked former Coventry City manager Mark Robins was due to the latter ‘dismantling the coaching staff’ which stemmed from a fall out with his former assistant manager Adi Viveash.
The Coventry owner and chairman, speaking at a fans forum event hosted live by BBC CWR at the Coventry Building Society Arena, addressed supporters’ concerns directly following the sacking of Robins who led the club to two promotions and an FA Cup semi-final.
Robins and Viveash masterminded the club’s rise from League Two to the brink of promotion to the Premier League only for the latter to suddenly depart the club at the start of pre-season. King insists the club hoped to replace Viveash but were unable to fill the role.
Despite Coventry’s underwhelming start to the season, which sees City 17th in the Championship table and just one point above the relegation zone, King ultimately cited the ‘dismantling of the coaching staff’ as the reason behind his decision to sack Robins.
Neither Robins or Viveash were present at the fans forum to respond to King’s answers.
King said: “In two years we had some great experiences together, I enjoyed working with him immensely, Mark did a huge job in getting us back up the leagues on a shoestring and he overachieved in that way, huge respect from all of us as a club.
“I fully understand this is a difficult situation and fully understand what he has done for this city but I made the decision to change the leadership at this point because he has dismantled the coaching staff at this football club.
“I haven’t dismantled it, he has done that and that’s the thing people don’t realise, they think I’m doing lots of things with my spider’s web and it’s strictly not true.
“Mark and Adi Viveash were the heart and soul of this football club, they dragged us up through the leagues but then it just seemed that something went down in March/April this year.
“It was maybe something as simple as an article by Andy Turner in the Coventry Telegraph about a difficult marriage, the guys have been together a long time and it provoked something. Adi gave another big interview and he wasn’t authorised to do that interview.
“The fall off after the Wolves game was pretty startling, the reality was it looked like something was wrong.
“I had a meeting with both of them individually at the end of the season and I said: ‘I came in here and gave you four-year contracts, I want you together, you have shown me as a team you make it happen here, I’m going to get you the deck and you are going to be able to outperform as you have outperformed with this deck’.
“I had a phone call from Mark two weeks later where he said, effectively, he could no longer work with Adi Viveash.
“I was very upset about that because that was the team that had done what we wanted to get done for the football club. It was a huge risk of am I going to get a better coaching set-up at the football club to take us forward with the money I’ve invested and the dreams of where we want to take the football club.
“I was particularly angry about that because I did not want to break that up. Adi Viveash is a hugely skillful coach who develops players which is my model and the model of the football club.
“Weirdly, I was trying to keep it together whereas Mark had made the call that after seven years a divorce was what was needed. Adi left the football club and we tried to replace that with a head of first team coaching.
“We interviewed some great candidates but we could not get any over the line and I never had a deal in front of me to get one over the line, without getting a head of first team coaching we went into pre-season with a limited amount of coaches.
“We come to this point where we start [the season] badly, it’s a little unclear exactly how it’s working, I’ve got employees who we’re chatting about who are fantastic coaches and I respect very much.
“I had a meeting with Mark on September 30th, I shot him a memo and said you’ve got a few options, the options are we either keep it as it is or we look to put some hierarchy in or look to bring in a head of first team coaching. We couldn’t get anybody through the door.
“The senior team of the football club, Dean Austin (head of recruitment), myself, Claire-Marie Roberts (performance director) and Mark met for a first quarter review of the situation on October 30th. We went through all the aspects of the football club.
“It became clear that, for me, everything at this football club performance wise, recruitment wise has gone as well as can be expected but at this level, with this deck of players, we are lacking an elite coach and tactician to support the manager.
“I wish we could have got one in for the manager but the reality is I can’t get one in and I’m not going to go and sit through another 10 games, trending at one point a game, putting at risk this football club with respect to relegation.
“If you get to Christmas with 26 points, the pressure will be triple, the players will be thinking about the summer, the season’s gone and it will get way worse for the football club and put it at risk and that’s why I acted as I did.”
