Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
Forum index | Previous Thread | Next thread
coventry woes mount 16:07 - Apr 16 with 5837 viewsthemodfather

ok, not a fave club of mine but, looks like they have no ground (yet) for next season and face a vote from other efl clubs to expel them or not......the dream of a new ground can become a nightmare!
i'm assuming they ground share with someone.
0
coventry woes mount on 19:13 - Apr 16 with 5579 viewscolinallcars

Yes, I read that other EFL clubs may vote on expulsion but can't for the life of me see why they would do so. There but for the grace of God etc.
0
coventry woes mount on 10:20 - Apr 17 with 5270 viewsYorkRanger

Very good piece by Oliver Kay in The Times last Saturday on this topic

Friday, September 5, 2014. The matrix signs on the M6 warned of a “Major Event”. The tailbacks around the Ricoh Arena confirmed as much. There was elation in the air as Coventry City and their fans made their way back after 503 days in exile. Kick-off had to be put back 15 minutes as a crowd of 27,306 filtered into the stadium. Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town blared out as the players took the field. They beat Gillingham 1-0 and the jubilant front page of the next day’s Coventry Telegraph read, simply, “Home at last!”
It was not just a homecoming. It was a vindication of Coventry’s supporters who, through the strength and solidarity of their protests, had practically forced the club’s reviled owners and Coventry city council to bring some kind of resolution to the fierce, acrimonious, dunderheaded rent dispute that had led to the team being exiled an hour away in Northampton the previous season. As Shaun Harvey, the Football League chief executive, said that night, the fans “have been campaigning hard, properly and effectively. The return here is, to a certain extent, down to their persistence.”
The most powerful words came from Steven Pressley, Coventry’s manager at the time. “What has been evident over the past 14 months,” he said, “is that every person in the city has been affected by us not playing here. Our supporters have shown that ultimately, football is about the people and they should be proud of themselves. The club can’t survive without the supporters. We have so much hard work ahead of us, but we’ve given people hope. Let’s hope it’s not a false dawn.”
Well it was. So was winning the Checkatrade Trophy two years ago and promotion back to Sky Bet League One last season under Mark Robins. All of it has proven to be a false dawn because, barring an unlikely end to the impasse between the warring factions, Coventry and their supporters are about to find themselves homeless again – or even expelled from the Football League altogether.
A brief recap: Coventry fell into severe financial difficulty after relegation from the Premier League in 2001, following a 34-year stay in the top flight, with serious errors made by successive ownership regimes. The move to the new 32,609-capacity Ricoh Arena four years later was seen as the answer to all the club’s prayers, but the terms of their 49-year rental agreement from Arena Coventry Limited (ACL) were deemed to be unfavourable by Sisu, a Mayfair-based hedge fund which bought the club in 2007.
As results suffered and relegation to League One loomed in 2012, Sisu went to war with the council, defaulting on rent payments in an attempt to secure a new deal. The dispute got so nasty and, frankly, so stupid that Coventry spent the entire 2013-14 season and the first weeks of the following campaign playing in Northampton while the Ricoh remained empty. Attendances at Sixfields barely got above 2,000, with many fans boycotting in protest while others watched, forlornly, from a hill overlooking the ground. Eventually, with all parties suffering, common sense took over – but only briefly.
Four and a half years on from that homecoming, Coventry’s supporters are in despair once more, their hopes, dreams and loyalties again treated as collateral in the dispute between a hedge fund, city council and, now, a successful but nomadic rugby union club who call themselves Wasps but are, as far as this story is concerned, cuckoos in the Ricoh nest.
Barely had Coventry moved back to the city in 2014 when ACL, owned jointly by Coventry city council and the Alan Edwards Higgs Charity, was sold to Wasps Holdings.
Wasps (or London Wasps as they had been known for the previous 15 years) wanted to relocate to the Midlands and found Coventry city council only too amenable to their plans.
The relocation is working out wonderfully for Wasps, who have found and, it must be said, engaged impressively with, a new fanbase. To put it mildly, though, their arrival has done the local football club no favours. Their refusal to discuss a new rental arrangement with Coventry – unless Sisu agrees to drop its legal challenge over Wasps’ acquisition of the stadium from the council – is not one that will earn them too many friends across their adopted city. The anti-Sisu statement is one that every Coventry fan will understand and relate to, but Sisu, whose ownership of the club has been catastrophic on every level, is not the victim of this impasse. Coventry and their supporters are
The EFL has given Coventry a deadline of April 25 to clarify where they will play their home games next season or face the threat of expulsion from the League. On Thursday, the club confirmed their options have been reduced to two possible groundshares, which will mean leaving the city again. And whether that involves playing at the stadiums of Birmingham City, Leicester City, Walsall, Burton Albion, Northampton Town or anywhere else, there are serious doubts among Coventry’s supporters about whether the club could survive a second spell in exile. This one would potentially be much longer, since the Ricoh is now being used by Wasps and since progress on a new stadium, which again would require some level of cordiality between club and stadium, has been slow, bordering on non-existentrters are.
“It should never have been allowed to come to this,” Moz Baker, chairman of the Sky Blue Trust, says. “A community football club, with Coventry’s history and heritage, having to move out of its own city? For that to happen once was careless for it to happen again is pure negligence on everyone’s part.
“You look at the statements coming out from all parties and they only seem to be interested in playing the blame game. In the meantime, it feels like the club is suffering a slow, lingering death.”
Alarmist? No, this impasse really is in danger of killing Coventry City. In the club’s accounts for the year up to May 31, 2018, in which they made an operating loss of £1.56 million, the auditors warned that uncertainty over the stadium “may cast significant doubt on the company’s and the group’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
The auditors are looking at the potential cashflow difficulties if Coventry are forced to groundshare and if attendances plummet as they did during that year at Northampton (average league attendance 2,287). Supporters worry about the long-term consequences of exile. It is hard enough for a club outside the Premier League’s elite to appeal to young fans. How do you urge your kids to support their local team if that team is no longer local?
Coventry’s average league attendance of 12,337 is the fifth-highest in League One but, in 2005-06, their first season at the Ricoh, it was 21,302, the tenth-highest in the Championship. The Sisu effect has already damaged Coventry severely even without the threat of another period in exile, this time indefinite.
There will be some who suggest that this is just market forces, the harsh reality of life outside the Premier League, but that is not the case with Coventry. The problem has been dire, intransigent and, seemingly, vindictive ownership, facilitated by the weakness of English football’s authorities and aggravated by a council who have sought to fight fire with fire.
An unwelcome complication has been the arrival of a rugby union franchise which presumably imagines that if Wasps are able to make a new start elsewhere, so too can the football club that was formed in 1883 by workers at the Singer bicycle factory, half a mile from Coventry’s previous home at Highfield Road.
What a mess. What a disgrace. What a travesty – certainly for Robins, his players and the club’s staff but above all for those supporters who, having welcomed the club back to their city in 2014, having enjoyed victory at Wembley in the past two seasons, having dared to believe that Coventry City may be on the up again after years of turmoil, now find themselves fearing for the club’s existence once more.
They will pray for all parties to come to their senses over the next 13 days but the worry is that it has gone far beyond that point. One day, they hope, there will be another homecoming to celebrate. But how much more damage can the club take before that happens?
1
coventry woes mount on 10:24 - Apr 17 with 5265 viewsJJB

Sill, lets sell Loftus Road and rent the running track up the road whilst Uncle Phoney does a runner into the west london distance.

Remember The White City Fighting?
Poll: Would you like to see the return of Mr Warnock?

1
coventry woes mount on 10:36 - Apr 17 with 5248 viewsloftus77

coventry woes mount on 10:20 - Apr 17 by YorkRanger

Very good piece by Oliver Kay in The Times last Saturday on this topic

Friday, September 5, 2014. The matrix signs on the M6 warned of a “Major Event”. The tailbacks around the Ricoh Arena confirmed as much. There was elation in the air as Coventry City and their fans made their way back after 503 days in exile. Kick-off had to be put back 15 minutes as a crowd of 27,306 filtered into the stadium. Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town blared out as the players took the field. They beat Gillingham 1-0 and the jubilant front page of the next day’s Coventry Telegraph read, simply, “Home at last!”
It was not just a homecoming. It was a vindication of Coventry’s supporters who, through the strength and solidarity of their protests, had practically forced the club’s reviled owners and Coventry city council to bring some kind of resolution to the fierce, acrimonious, dunderheaded rent dispute that had led to the team being exiled an hour away in Northampton the previous season. As Shaun Harvey, the Football League chief executive, said that night, the fans “have been campaigning hard, properly and effectively. The return here is, to a certain extent, down to their persistence.”
The most powerful words came from Steven Pressley, Coventry’s manager at the time. “What has been evident over the past 14 months,” he said, “is that every person in the city has been affected by us not playing here. Our supporters have shown that ultimately, football is about the people and they should be proud of themselves. The club can’t survive without the supporters. We have so much hard work ahead of us, but we’ve given people hope. Let’s hope it’s not a false dawn.”
Well it was. So was winning the Checkatrade Trophy two years ago and promotion back to Sky Bet League One last season under Mark Robins. All of it has proven to be a false dawn because, barring an unlikely end to the impasse between the warring factions, Coventry and their supporters are about to find themselves homeless again – or even expelled from the Football League altogether.
A brief recap: Coventry fell into severe financial difficulty after relegation from the Premier League in 2001, following a 34-year stay in the top flight, with serious errors made by successive ownership regimes. The move to the new 32,609-capacity Ricoh Arena four years later was seen as the answer to all the club’s prayers, but the terms of their 49-year rental agreement from Arena Coventry Limited (ACL) were deemed to be unfavourable by Sisu, a Mayfair-based hedge fund which bought the club in 2007.
As results suffered and relegation to League One loomed in 2012, Sisu went to war with the council, defaulting on rent payments in an attempt to secure a new deal. The dispute got so nasty and, frankly, so stupid that Coventry spent the entire 2013-14 season and the first weeks of the following campaign playing in Northampton while the Ricoh remained empty. Attendances at Sixfields barely got above 2,000, with many fans boycotting in protest while others watched, forlornly, from a hill overlooking the ground. Eventually, with all parties suffering, common sense took over – but only briefly.
Four and a half years on from that homecoming, Coventry’s supporters are in despair once more, their hopes, dreams and loyalties again treated as collateral in the dispute between a hedge fund, city council and, now, a successful but nomadic rugby union club who call themselves Wasps but are, as far as this story is concerned, cuckoos in the Ricoh nest.
Barely had Coventry moved back to the city in 2014 when ACL, owned jointly by Coventry city council and the Alan Edwards Higgs Charity, was sold to Wasps Holdings.
Wasps (or London Wasps as they had been known for the previous 15 years) wanted to relocate to the Midlands and found Coventry city council only too amenable to their plans.
The relocation is working out wonderfully for Wasps, who have found and, it must be said, engaged impressively with, a new fanbase. To put it mildly, though, their arrival has done the local football club no favours. Their refusal to discuss a new rental arrangement with Coventry – unless Sisu agrees to drop its legal challenge over Wasps’ acquisition of the stadium from the council – is not one that will earn them too many friends across their adopted city. The anti-Sisu statement is one that every Coventry fan will understand and relate to, but Sisu, whose ownership of the club has been catastrophic on every level, is not the victim of this impasse. Coventry and their supporters are
The EFL has given Coventry a deadline of April 25 to clarify where they will play their home games next season or face the threat of expulsion from the League. On Thursday, the club confirmed their options have been reduced to two possible groundshares, which will mean leaving the city again. And whether that involves playing at the stadiums of Birmingham City, Leicester City, Walsall, Burton Albion, Northampton Town or anywhere else, there are serious doubts among Coventry’s supporters about whether the club could survive a second spell in exile. This one would potentially be much longer, since the Ricoh is now being used by Wasps and since progress on a new stadium, which again would require some level of cordiality between club and stadium, has been slow, bordering on non-existentrters are.
“It should never have been allowed to come to this,” Moz Baker, chairman of the Sky Blue Trust, says. “A community football club, with Coventry’s history and heritage, having to move out of its own city? For that to happen once was careless for it to happen again is pure negligence on everyone’s part.
“You look at the statements coming out from all parties and they only seem to be interested in playing the blame game. In the meantime, it feels like the club is suffering a slow, lingering death.”
Alarmist? No, this impasse really is in danger of killing Coventry City. In the club’s accounts for the year up to May 31, 2018, in which they made an operating loss of £1.56 million, the auditors warned that uncertainty over the stadium “may cast significant doubt on the company’s and the group’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
The auditors are looking at the potential cashflow difficulties if Coventry are forced to groundshare and if attendances plummet as they did during that year at Northampton (average league attendance 2,287). Supporters worry about the long-term consequences of exile. It is hard enough for a club outside the Premier League’s elite to appeal to young fans. How do you urge your kids to support their local team if that team is no longer local?
Coventry’s average league attendance of 12,337 is the fifth-highest in League One but, in 2005-06, their first season at the Ricoh, it was 21,302, the tenth-highest in the Championship. The Sisu effect has already damaged Coventry severely even without the threat of another period in exile, this time indefinite.
There will be some who suggest that this is just market forces, the harsh reality of life outside the Premier League, but that is not the case with Coventry. The problem has been dire, intransigent and, seemingly, vindictive ownership, facilitated by the weakness of English football’s authorities and aggravated by a council who have sought to fight fire with fire.
An unwelcome complication has been the arrival of a rugby union franchise which presumably imagines that if Wasps are able to make a new start elsewhere, so too can the football club that was formed in 1883 by workers at the Singer bicycle factory, half a mile from Coventry’s previous home at Highfield Road.
What a mess. What a disgrace. What a travesty – certainly for Robins, his players and the club’s staff but above all for those supporters who, having welcomed the club back to their city in 2014, having enjoyed victory at Wembley in the past two seasons, having dared to believe that Coventry City may be on the up again after years of turmoil, now find themselves fearing for the club’s existence once more.
They will pray for all parties to come to their senses over the next 13 days but the worry is that it has gone far beyond that point. One day, they hope, there will be another homecoming to celebrate. But how much more damage can the club take before that happens?


A sobering, sad tale for all of us to read and absorb.
This means I really should stop hating them for Eoin Jess now.
0
coventry woes mount on 11:45 - Apr 17 with 5187 viewsozranger

"facilitated by the weakness of English football’s authorities"

That is so true and possibly a bigger problem than what is happening in Coventry.
2
coventry woes mount on 14:39 - Apr 17 with 5077 viewsozranger

Looks like the Ricoh is now definitely no longer an option..

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/live-coventry-city-supreme-
0
coventry woes mount on 14:57 - Apr 17 with 5058 viewsToast_R

I don't see why you'd want to travel an hour to go and watch your local club because the club upped and left. Their fans should just turn it in.
[Post edited 17 Apr 2019 14:58]
0
coventry woes mount on 08:14 - Apr 18 with 4865 viewsterryb

coventry woes mount on 14:39 - Apr 17 by ozranger

Looks like the Ricoh is now definitely no longer an option..

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/live-coventry-city-supreme-


It was never an option with Wasps as their landlords!

Mind you, I can understand that they wouldn't negoiate with Coventry when the football club owners were attempting to make Wasps pay £27 million more for ownership of the stadium!
0
Login to get fewer ads

coventry woes mount on 12:43 - Apr 18 with 4768 viewshoopdog

This talk of us leasing the Linford Christy dangerous we could end up in an unwellcome situation further down the line
[Post edited 18 Apr 2019 12:51]
0
coventry woes mount on 13:23 - Apr 18 with 4694 viewsDavieQPR

Hedge Funds are normally only known for short term profit and asset stripping.
0
coventry woes mount on 13:52 - Apr 18 with 4649 viewsTonto

coventry woes mount on 12:43 - Apr 18 by hoopdog

This talk of us leasing the Linford Christy dangerous we could end up in an unwellcome situation further down the line
[Post edited 18 Apr 2019 12:51]


depends on both the terms and length of the lease. There are many buildings across the UK that are built as a leasehold not a freehold - that is not unusual. IN the case of Coventry it was a lease of the stadium not the land, so don't jump to the conclusion its the same thing - it may not be. (equally of course it may be I acknowledge)

Why stop now, just when I'm hating it
Poll: Is it essential that QPR stay in the Borough of H&F?

0
coventry woes mount on 14:03 - Apr 18 with 4620 viewsNorthernr

coventry woes mount on 12:43 - Apr 18 by hoopdog

This talk of us leasing the Linford Christy dangerous we could end up in an unwellcome situation further down the line
[Post edited 18 Apr 2019 12:51]


It's all about lease terms, and rent. Coventry's terms on the Ricoh Arena were absolutely ridiculous. They moved out of a stadium they owned into one they didn't and agreed to pay a rent that meant they had to get 22,000 fans at every home game just to break even - an attendance they'd been nowhere near at Highfield Road for a generation. That's just bloody stupid. Your home ground and your ticket sales are meant to be your main income, to put yourself in a position where you're not getting a penny from it until 22,001 people are through the door, and if you don't get that many you actually lose money, and you've never had 22,001 come to your games before, is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I wrote a piece about this the week on the old Rivals site before we opened the place there and all the comments were from Coventry fans telling me I was just jealous because they had a new ground and we didn't so, to a certain extent, fck them.

If we were to move to Linford Christie on a rental agreement that required us to get 22,000 at every game, while we're currently averaging 12,000, under some nonsense "build it and they will come" pipe dream then, yeh, that must be resisted. But Coventry's deal was uniquely stupid. It's all in the terms and shouldn't automatically be written off just because they fcked it up. Extreme caution though.

This post has been edited by an administrator
4
(No subject) (n/t) on 14:56 - Apr 18 with 4532 viewsCamberleyR

Extreme caution is the word. Of the new stadiums built in the last 25 years the overwhelming majority of the clubs own their freehold. The exceptions Man City, Swansea rent them from the council (Swansea pay a peppercorn rent), Lewisham council own the freehold of The Den and lease it to the football club, Brighton's freehold is split between the council and the university although the club own the leasehold and Huddersfield own a 40% share of their freehold with the council also owning 40% and the rugby team the other 20%.
[Post edited 18 Apr 2019 15:04]

Poll: Which is the worst QPR team?

0
coventry woes mount on 19:07 - Apr 21 with 4278 viewsTacticalR

David Conn lays into Sisu

Toxic tactics behind Coventry’s slide from FA Cup glory to brink of oblivion
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/apr/20/toxic-tactics-coventry-slide-ob

Air hostess clique

1
coventry woes mount on 22:17 - Apr 21 with 4139 viewsBazzaInTheLoft

If we end up in a situation where we are renting ANY ground and owning zero we need to drag that mob from the boardroom by bollocks.

I
0
coventry woes mount on 17:43 - May 13 with 3791 viewsterryb

Does anyone know what the result of the vote was as to whether they faced expulsion?

I can't recall seeing anything on this since early April.
0
coventry woes mount on 18:13 - May 13 with 3709 viewsGloucs_R

coventry woes mount on 22:17 - Apr 21 by BazzaInTheLoft

If we end up in a situation where we are renting ANY ground and owning zero we need to drag that mob from the boardroom by bollocks.

I


Not really. If we've a good deal, on a long term lease is not a problem. But I'm talking a LONG term

Poll: Warburton, What's next?

0
coventry woes mount on 18:31 - May 13 with 3642 viewsE17hoop

Still undecided:
https://www.ccfc.co.uk/news/2019/may/news-coventry-city-update-following-enquiri

It's always noisiest at the shallow end
Poll: When you go to QPR games, what do you think will happen?

0
coventry woes mount on 18:35 - May 13 with 3614 viewsDejR_vu

coventry woes mount on 18:13 - May 13 by Gloucs_R

Not really. If we've a good deal, on a long term lease is not a problem. But I'm talking a LONG term


There will always be a day of reckoning when you're a commercial leaseholder, it's just a question of when.

If you've got nothing and a long lease is your only option then you've nothing to lose. If you own your own land and move to a leasehold you need your head examined.

The club owned the land and the stadium when the current owners arrived, it should own it when they leave and should always own it. If we move, whoever moves us should make sure we own the new land/stadium. Otherwise, ultimately, you are at the mercy of the freeholder, who will change and so could be anyone, in any economic situation. Playing with fire.

Poll: Season tickets - who’s renewing?

1
coventry woes mount on 19:02 - May 13 with 3540 viewsdistortR

I heard the always interesting Simon Jordan talking about SISU.

He said that SISU won't sell the club because then the capital they've sunk into the club will become an irretrievable loss to their investors.
0
coventry woes mount on 19:23 - May 13 with 3481 viewssmegma

coventry woes mount on 12:43 - Apr 18 by hoopdog

This talk of us leasing the Linford Christy dangerous we could end up in an unwellcome situation further down the line
[Post edited 18 Apr 2019 12:51]


One of the reasons I don't want to move to the Scrubbs
0
coventry woes mount on 02:03 - May 14 with 3121 viewstimcocking

It's so disgusting how little the putrid Premier League care about the rest of the country. Despicable what's happening in football. Mirrors the world perhaps.
1
About Us Contact Us Terms & Conditions Privacy Cookies Advertising
© FansNetwork 2024