Another good article by Oliver Kay in The Times today highlighting the plight and resolution of the supporters and the culpability of the Football League:
Fourth-round tie at the Emirates is just another road trip for long-suffering fans, reports Oliver Kay
In happier, more innocent times, they would have been mocked as tourists, day-trippers or glory-hunters. After all, the vast majority of the 5,200 Coventry City supporters in the away sections at the Emirates Stadium this evening have not been to a home game all season in Sky Bet League One.
These, though, are not happy or innocent times for Coventry. They are desperate times. If it sounds like those supporters are crawling out of the woodwork for a glamorous FA Cup fourth-round tie away to Arsenal, that is because away days have become the only opportunity to do so. They will travel far and wide to watch their team — to Crawley Town in the south, to Carlisle United in the north, 6,781 of them to Milton Keynes in November — but their home fixtures, to most, are off-limits.
That is because they are not really home games at all. For the foreseeable future, Coventry are playing home fixtures 35 miles away at Sixfields Stadium, home of Northampton Town, while the Ricoh Arena, the 32,609-capacity stadium that was to herald a bright future, lies empty because of a dispute between SISU/Otium, the club’s owners, and Arena Coventry Limited (ACL), which is part owned by Coventry City Council. Confused? Welcome to the worst example of the political, financial and legal minefield that is a huge ugly blot on the landscape of English football as we once knew it.
A potted modern history: in 2001, Coventry’s 34-year stay in the top flight ended with relegation from the Premier League after they over-stretched financially; in 2005 they left Highfield Road for a new start at the Ricoh; in 2007 they were taken over by SISU, a Mayfair-based hedge fund; in 2012, the year that brought relegation to League One, SISU declared that the rental arrangements at the Ricoh were untenable; last summer the club went into administration and the original company was liquidated but was permitted, after the holding company was passed into the ownership of Otium, an offshoot of SISU, to remain in League One, albeit with a ten-point deduction, and to play its home games in Northampton while purportedly looking for a new home in Coventry as the Ricoh stands empty.
“It’s just sad,” Gary Stubbs, of the Sky Blue Trust supporters group, said. “No club should go through this. The away games prove that we are still following the team — and we’ve had some great days this season — but personally I will not go to that place [Northampton] and neither will the vast majority of others.”
Why not? “Because I will not support what they [SISU/Otium] are doing,” Stubbs said. “I can understand the reasoning of the few who do go, but the vast majority are disgusted at the way the club has been run and the contempt shown to supporters.”
Tim Fisher, the Coventry chief executive, has blamed Coventry City Council for the stadium debacle, suggesting that the nuclear option of relocation was taken because of ACL’s intransigence over rent at the Ricoh. He said last summer: “I believe the council made a decision that they did not want a hedge fund running Coventry City. This is a socialist council. They couldn’t come to terms that there was an über-capitalist — ie, a hedge fund — running the club.”
That poses the question as to why any council — or indeed why the English football authorities — should be happy to allow a hedge fund to own a club and, in Coventry’s case, to jeopardise that essential bond between club and community. Fisher has maintained that the club will deliver a new stadium “in the Coventry area”, but the feeling persists throughout football that SISU/Otium are determined to claim ultimate victory over ACL by winning the freehold to the Ricoh.
Against this extremely damaging backdrop, Coventry have somehow found stability on the pitch under Steven Pressley’s highly impressive management. They are eleventh in League One and would be in firm contention for a play-off place had it not been for the ten-point deduction.
“He has been fantastic,” Stubbs said of the manager. “A lot of us go to away games and we get totally behind the team. As far as the team and the manager go, I can’t fault them. But I will not go to Northampton. I won’t go and nor will the majority of others.”
Not even if there is a replay against Arsenal? “No. Not until we are playing back in Coventry, where we belong.”
To that end, Coventry’s supporters will hold up signs saying “When?” this evening in the 61st minute — to mark 1961, the year when Jimmy Hill became manager. Earlier in the evening, in the 35th minute — 35 signifying the 35 miles that they refuse to travel to watch home games — they will hold up signs saying “Why?”
Why or indeed how a club end up in this sort of predicament is a difficult question to answer. Even on the night that brings them 90 minutes of respite, Coventry fans cannot ignore it. Neither should the football authorities.
Fourth-round tie at the Emirates is just another road trip for long-suffering fans, reports Oliver Kay
In happier, more innocent times, they would have been mocked as tourists, day-trippers or glory-hunters. After all, the vast majority of the 5,200 Coventry City supporters in the away sections at the Emirates Stadium this evening have not been to a home game all season in Sky Bet League One.
These, though, are not happy or innocent times for Coventry. They are desperate times. If it sounds like those supporters are crawling out of the woodwork for a glamorous FA Cup fourth-round tie away to Arsenal, that is because away days have become the only opportunity to do so. They will travel far and wide to watch their team — to Crawley Town in the south, to Carlisle United in the north, 6,781 of them to Milton Keynes in November — but their home fixtures, to most, are off-limits.
That is because they are not really home games at all. For the foreseeable future, Coventry are playing home fixtures 35 miles away at Sixfields Stadium, home of Northampton Town, while the Ricoh Arena, the 32,609-capacity stadium that was to herald a bright future, lies empty because of a dispute between SISU/Otium, the club’s owners, and Arena Coventry Limited (ACL), which is part owned by Coventry City Council. Confused? Welcome to the worst example of the political, financial and legal minefield that is a huge ugly blot on the landscape of English football as we once knew it.
A potted modern history: in 2001, Coventry’s 34-year stay in the top flight ended with relegation from the Premier League after they over-stretched financially; in 2005 they left Highfield Road for a new start at the Ricoh; in 2007 they were taken over by SISU, a Mayfair-based hedge fund; in 2012, the year that brought relegation to League One, SISU declared that the rental arrangements at the Ricoh were untenable; last summer the club went into administration and the original company was liquidated but was permitted, after the holding company was passed into the ownership of Otium, an offshoot of SISU, to remain in League One, albeit with a ten-point deduction, and to play its home games in Northampton while purportedly looking for a new home in Coventry as the Ricoh stands empty.
“It’s just sad,” Gary Stubbs, of the Sky Blue Trust supporters group, said. “No club should go through this. The away games prove that we are still following the team — and we’ve had some great days this season — but personally I will not go to that place [Northampton] and neither will the vast majority of others.”
Why not? “Because I will not support what they [SISU/Otium] are doing,” Stubbs said. “I can understand the reasoning of the few who do go, but the vast majority are disgusted at the way the club has been run and the contempt shown to supporters.”
Tim Fisher, the Coventry chief executive, has blamed Coventry City Council for the stadium debacle, suggesting that the nuclear option of relocation was taken because of ACL’s intransigence over rent at the Ricoh. He said last summer: “I believe the council made a decision that they did not want a hedge fund running Coventry City. This is a socialist council. They couldn’t come to terms that there was an über-capitalist — ie, a hedge fund — running the club.”
That poses the question as to why any council — or indeed why the English football authorities — should be happy to allow a hedge fund to own a club and, in Coventry’s case, to jeopardise that essential bond between club and community. Fisher has maintained that the club will deliver a new stadium “in the Coventry area”, but the feeling persists throughout football that SISU/Otium are determined to claim ultimate victory over ACL by winning the freehold to the Ricoh.
Against this extremely damaging backdrop, Coventry have somehow found stability on the pitch under Steven Pressley’s highly impressive management. They are eleventh in League One and would be in firm contention for a play-off place had it not been for the ten-point deduction.
“He has been fantastic,” Stubbs said of the manager. “A lot of us go to away games and we get totally behind the team. As far as the team and the manager go, I can’t fault them. But I will not go to Northampton. I won’t go and nor will the majority of others.”
Not even if there is a replay against Arsenal? “No. Not until we are playing back in Coventry, where we belong.”
To that end, Coventry’s supporters will hold up signs saying “When?” this evening in the 61st minute — to mark 1961, the year when Jimmy Hill became manager. Earlier in the evening, in the 35th minute — 35 signifying the 35 miles that they refuse to travel to watch home games — they will hold up signs saying “Why?”
Why or indeed how a club end up in this sort of predicament is a difficult question to answer. Even on the night that brings them 90 minutes of respite, Coventry fans cannot ignore it. Neither should the football authorities.
