GORDON Strachan has urged Coventry City to ‘budget for going down’ from the Premier League next season.
Strachan managed the club in the Premier League from 1996 to 2001 and made 33 appearances for the Sky Blues at the end of his playing career.
The former Scotland international managed the Sky Blues in Coventry’s most recent Premier League campaign back in 2000/01.
And Strachan believes Coventry would be wise to budget for the possibility of relegation and cited the club’s previous financial struggles as reason for caution.
Speaking to OLBG, Strachan said: “Coventry City need to strengthen but the question in, how much do you strengthen? We’ve seen it before when clubs spend £100 million, £200 million.
“Maybe I’d compare it to where they put a lot of money into it, and it didn’t work out. Then, if you go back to the Championship and you don’t get up right away, you put the club at risk.
“But there are clubs who have been going up and down, like Burnley, Wolves, Norwich for a bit, West Brom for a bit, and they did it.
“If I was Coventry I’d budget for going down, I would. It would be the third-lowest budget in the league to make sure that the club stays safe, especially that club who have had a torrid time over the last 20 years.
“The responsibility of the owners of the club is to make sure of this for the community, because you can see what it’s doing to the community just now. The place is full. 10 years ago, they were at Northampton playing home games, Birmingham. You can’t do that again.
“So I would say, let’s go with what we have, maybe add two or three, that’s it. And if you go and get two or three good players, really good players who want to come along, then the rest, let’s see how we go.
“I wouldn’t have put the club at risk. Absolutely not. I’ve seen it before with clubs getting destroyed because they tried to go to this mythical next level, which they don’t really go to anyway.
“The level for Coventry has been the Championship, being steady, they should look at Sunderland right now. If they can do a Sunderland, that’s what they should be looking at.”
