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Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan has said he could be interested in being part of a takeover consortium for Coventry City after previously considering buying the club.

The Surrey-born millionaire says he pondered bidding for the Sky Blues three years ago, but felt CCFC owners Sisu could not be persuaded to alter its plans for the club at the time.

He says he has always had a soft spot for Coventry because The Specials are his favourite band - he was instrumental in the reformation of the group back in 2008.

Mr Jordan became the youngest ever owner of a professional football club in 2000 when he secured Crystal Palace shortly after his mobile phone business, Pocket Phone Shop, was sold for an estimated £73million. He later became the youngest owner in the Premier League when the club was promoted.

He immediately appointed himself chairman and remained at the London club for almost 10 years before the 2009 banking crisis caused a cash flow problem which led to the end of his ownership.

Mr Jordan wrote about his experiences of his time as a football club owner in his award-winning autobiography 'Be careful what you wish for'.

Read Part One of the Telegraph’s interview with the former Palace man below.

What prompted your previous interest in CCFC?

Speaking exclusively to the Telegraph, the 49-year-old said he didn’t think it would take much to turn Coventry City around, and that it was a club with great promise.

He said: “I became interested about three years ago because I thought it was a shocking waste of a football club that seemed to have disenfranchised fans, yet seemed to have fans with plenty of energy for their club.

“There’s no prosthetic for an amputated spirit, but I felt that amputation wasn’t quite there - although it seems to have gone on since then.

“I also looked at Portsmouth and there were similarities. I thought here’s a club that could generate enough revenue to pay players a decent wage, to compete at the top and give itself a decent chance.

“I thought if I put some money in alongside it, it wouldn’t take an awful lot to get this going.

“When I looked at Coventry I felt that the hedge fund had some industry sector gaps in their knowledge, they needed some proper football management in there, and maybe there was a deal to be done with someone that understood the mechanics of football better than this hedge fund appeared to.

“Someone that understood the boot room to the board room and could galvanise the fan base in the same way I galvanised Palace’s fan base.

“It was easier for me to do that there because I was a Palace man and my father had played for them. But football fans want to hear the truth and they want to see people giving their best and I don’t think Coventry fans can say they’ve had that from anybody over the last 10 years.”

Why no bid?

Asked why he had decided against launching a takeover bid at the time, he said: “My interest waned because I wondered if I wanted to be involved with a football club that doesn’t motivate me in the same way that the club I owned did.

“Looking at the time, I thought Sisu had their own thinking and weren’t going to be dissuaded from that.

“They had a huge loss and my perception was they were being intransigent about it. There’s a contradiction there because the fans want to compound that loss and make it even greater to force them out the door.

“I just felt this was too much like hard work - at that particular time.

“Looking at it now, I still believe that’s a football club that can be turned around and it wouldn’t take a lot.

“But it might need some new people to do that.”

Consortium?

Mr Jordan said he wasn’t interested in launching a takeover bid alone, but might be persuaded to assist others.

He said: “I wouldn’t write a cheque for Coventry.

“I would get involved, possibly, in helping them rebuild the football club. If other people were involved that might want to write cheques, and needed some help, I might be interested in writing some cheques alongside them.

“I would possibly be interested in being part of a bigger consortium.

“But I’ve paid my dues, I’ve given £50m to the club I loved.

“I might be interested in getting involved in a consortium because I think Coventry, if it’s properly managed, can get back in the Premier League. There’s no two ways about it.

“If it’s given a proper wake up call, and put back on track, I don’t think it would take much to do that.

“There’s no doubt in my mind, if they had people who knew what they were doing and proper structures, they could be back in the Premier League in five years.”

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What would you do in Sisu’s position?

Asked what he would do if he were in Sisu’s shoes today, he said: “I wouldn’t be in their shoes. I wouldn’t have spent £70m and got relegated down the pyramid.

“I would have had a better relationship with an important aspect of the club - the supporters.

“You can’t please all the fans. But you can’t alienate the fans in the manner they seem to have done.

“I would be focusing all my energies on ensuring my youth development system was working properly, that my football management was working properly, that my relationship with fans was working properly so that I had a galvanised club that could punch its weight.

“I’d be looking at better relationships with the stadium owners so that I could have a base to build from.

“And I’d move my stadium concerns further down the line until I had a team capable of being successful.

“If Coventry are in the bottom tier of English football, that will be a wonderful stadium that nobody goes to.

“The hedge fund is not running that business in any way reflective of what a football business should be.”

Is a profit-making club always a good thing?

CCFC chairman Tim Fisher has recently forecast the club is on course to make £1m this financial year. But Mr Jordan questioned the wisdom of focusing on profit, if it was at the expense of the playing side.

He said: “The £1m profit that they will make, that’s at the cost of the football club. That’s short term gain for long term loss.

“Are they citing this as a platform to build back from, as a launch pad for the club to go forward?

“That doesn’t seem to be the case because they’ve made a £1m profit and the club has gone backwards.

“They’ve gone from a club losing money to a club making money but dropping down the league. The money they have made will become a loss again if they drop out of the league.

“They won’t be able to get out for anything like what they want because they’re further down the pyramid. Something has to change.”

He added: “If the club is going to make £1m this year, that’s great to hear. But why isn’t the club moving in the right direction? Why is there a massive groundswell of disapproval?

“It’s because the team isn’t achieving. That would seem to me to be because you have a conflict of interest.

“A hedge fund driven by profit in a business that can only really achieve if you’re in the upper echelons of the pyramid.

“They’re operating at a lower level which is systematically strangling the club, but making a profit. In the long term, you’ll get nowhere.”

What do you make of the estimated £70m investment?

Mr Jordan said he struggled to see how Sisu had invested £70m in the time it had been at the club.

He said: “Looking at the dynamics of this football club, I cannot understand how Coventry City can have £70m worth of inherent liabilities, whether it be to the existing owners or whoever.

“To me, that would mean these guys have stuck in £8m to £9m a year.

“I’m looking at it as someone who was involved in football and spent £50m at Palace in ten years, and my ambitions were far greater than it would seem Coventry’s are.

“I had Palace knocking on the door of the Premier League every season and we didn’t own our stadium and I didn’t spend £70m.

“They would have done their due diligence, they would have known what they were buying into.

“The main liabilities of a football club are the player wages. I’m struggling to see what players they would have had on their books, after being relegated in 2001, to rack up these sorts of losses.

“They’re in a stadium they didn’t fund, OK they were paying £1m a year rent and I know what that is like because I paid £1.3m at Crystal Palace, but I’m struggling to see how they were carrying these sorts of losses.”