Leaving the fact that without the investment the club itself may have ceased to exist, how well qualified is Ray Ranson to be in charge of the club?

Ranson was a professional footballer for nearly 20 years before making a fortune from funding football transfers and developing Prozone, an analytical tool used in the game. Unlike most owners, he knows the industry. Who would you prefer as a football club chairman, someone who spent their career beating Man United or one who’d spent it beating eggs?

It’s been argued that he’s a businessman who’s joined up with a bunch of venture capitalists solely on the lookout to make money. That may well be true, but the only way he and his consortium can achieve that is to make the club more successful and therefore attractive to buyers.

He has made redundancies, which no-one wants to see, and shut one of the club shops, but with the club still losing £80k a week, having been unable to acquire part of the stadium yet, hard decisions have had to be made and he’s shown he’s willing to make them if necessary.

Some are already questioning the amount of investment, saying “He promised £20m to spend, so where is it?” We may have some money to spend, but probably nowhere near that much solely for transfer fees. Even if he did, should he just go on a shopping spree, spending the lot on the first players that become available? Or take his time picking and choosing the right ones to compliment and improve the squad?

£2m has been spent on transfer fees already with the signings of Fox, Dann, Gunnarsson and Westwood. On top of that the training ground is having a much needed upgrade, talks to acquire part of the stadium are ongoing and the academy has been retained, at least for the time being.

Of course, rather than investing in a number of young players hungry to improve, we could spend the entire budget on a couple of big names on massive wages, but we’ve been down that road before and it’s one of the reasons we got into the financial pickle SISU had to save us from in the first place.

A few of the young players might not be able to make the step up, but if they don’t the club aren’t as reliant on them being a success and we won’t have lost as much money. We may lose those that do succeed to bigger clubs as well, but at least we’ll have money to re-invest. It may take a while, and Coventry fans are getting impatient after so many years without anything to properly cheer about, but unfortunately that is what it’ll take to progress.

We may have missed out on the odd signing by being outbid, because it seems Ranson won’t be forced into stupid bidding wars or paying vastly over-inflated amounts for average players like we have in the past.

One weakness RR definitely does have though is that he doesn’t come across terribly well at times. He lacks the charisma and personality of previous chairmen, but his quiet, confident demeanour will earn the respect of his peers.

The way the club tried to get the shareholders to give up their shares could have been handled much better and the timing of Iain Dowie’s departure also wasn’t ideal, but once again it showed he’s willing to take difficult, potentially unpopular, decisions rather than fiddle while Rome burns.

Ranson may never win a Mr Popularity contest, but neither will the likes of Bernie Ecclestone, Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, but that hasn’t stopped them being incredibly successful at what they do.

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