DOUG King has revealed Coventry City turned down ‘significant offers’ for a number of the club’s key players during the summer transfer window.
Coventry owner and chairman King addressed the club’s supporters in a video interview, answering a series of questions sent in by Sky Blues fans.
Some of the topics covered included the club’s recent purchase of the Coventry Building Society Arena, the summer transfer window and potential improvements to the ground.
Reflecting on the club’s summer transfer business, King felt City enjoyed a ‘pretty good’ window which saw the club sign four new players and allow five senior players to depart.
King also revealed Coventry turned down a number of bids for the club’s key players with the chairman intent on keeping the core of the squad together.
King said: “The critical thing we needed to do this summer was to retain our quality and that was difficult.
“There were a lot of suitors for our top talent and the club turned down significant offers for several players.
“We wanted those players for this season. Myself, the head of recruitment Dean Austin and Frank Lampard worked extremely closely together.
“The head coach picks the team so ultimately he has to have the sign off on every player coming to the football club. Otherwise it doesn’t work.
“We believe, from the momentum we got from when the head coach came in in November, if we kept the core together and enhanced the first team that would not cause too much disruption to stop the momentum.
“By and large I think we did a pretty good deal. We achieved a lot of what we wanted to do. The stadium purchase didn’t affect that.
“The one thing I like, and this is a personal preference, I like a squad to be quite lean because it brings togetherness and everybody has to be on it every day.
“If your squad is a little bit too big, it can distract from that pure focus we need to get out of the league.”
The club completed the purchase of the CBS Arena last month in a landmark deal for the Sky Blues.
However, King refused to be drawn on the financial details of the deal which saw City buy the ground from previous owners Frasers Group.
King added: “Running a Championship football club is a challenge for a lot of reasons.
“The main one being that the Championship itself is an unfair playing field with the parachute payment clubs coming down and having more to spend.
“We’re running an operating loss of around £7 to 8million a year which is a huge undertaking.
“The stadium coming in will help us for sure and it can help us a lot if we drive the revenues to where we hope we might be able to get to.
“The acquisition price – I won’t go into the details of that. Traditionally, when you’re buying a property, there’ll be some equity and some debt.
“That tends to be how you finance assets and you wouldn’t be too far wrong if you think that’s probably how this was structured.”
Club owner King admits any changes to the ground will take time and stressed the need to make sure the club make the right changes when they happen.
He also acknolwedged the need to improve certain aspects of the ground including access to free Wi-Fi within the stadium bowl.
And King also hinted at future improvements to the fan experience.
He said: “It was a complicated deal. Frasers owned the stadium for nearly three years.
“As part of the arrangement, the Frasers branding will stay for a period of time.
“There will be some changes. The seats in the east stand will change.
“Gradually, we need to make it feel like home and personalise it.
“We need to do it properly though. We’ve got to take our time, it’s our home now.
“The stadium is 20-years-old and it suffers from not being modernised at all in terms how telecommunications have gone on and what people expect today.
“In the bowl the Wi-Fi has been lost and looking at the numbers it sounds like a pretty big project.
“We have to improve it and the whole stadium needs to be modernised and brought up to date.
“It will be a huge part in us growing our revenues moving forward with other customers coming in.
“There’s a lot of other things we want to improve and enhance and get the experience of coming to the ground right.
“The fan experience is critical and now we’re in control of it for the first time ever.”
