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Part 1:
Coventry City: no home, no stopping them
By Liam Twomey and Gregg Evans 1h ago
Liverpool are not the only proud club to have an historic season halted by the coronavirus. With 10 matches left to play in League One, Coventry City sit top of the table with a five-point lead over Rotherham in the second automatic promotion spot. It is the first time they have led any division after Christmas since 1967 and Championship football looks a likely prospect again after an eight-year absence from English football’s second tier.
But the most remarkable — and slightly sad — fact about Coventry’s promotion push is that a large chunk of the club’s fanbase have not been there to see it. The decision to play this season’s “home” matches at St Andrew’s, home of Birmingham City and 23 miles from Coventry, has created a hard divide between those prepared to follow the team everywhere and those determined to boycott until the club returns to the city that bears its name.
Coventry drew an attendance of 6,534 fans for their season-opener against Southend at St Andrew’s in August — less than half the 13,549 who turned up for their final home match of the 2018-19 campaign against Shrewsbury Town at the Ricoh Arena in April. The numbers have grown steadily since, with the visit of Sunderland earlier this month watched by a crowd of 10,055, but a large chunk of the club’s support have been following the team’s success from afar.
“I refuse to go,” says Dave Eyles, chair of the Sky Blue Trust. “Coventry City should be playing in Coventry — it’s that simple.
“I’d estimate there are about 10,000 people who aren’t attending. We all want to be associated with a promotion push. The football on the pitch has been fantastic. Mark Robins has brought together a very good team and got them performing extraordinarily well, and hopefully we can get ourselves over the line (in League One). But the big thing for the fans is to make sure that, at some point in the very near future, we get ourselves back to Coventry and playing back in the city.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When they ended their 106-year stay at Highfield Road to move into the shiny new Ricoh Arena in the summer of 2005, Coventry hoped they were setting themselves up for a bright future. Capacity rose from just over 23,000 to a little under 32,000 but the seeds of their current predicament had already been sown. Relegation after 34 years in English football’s top flight in 2001 hit the club’s finances and jeopardised construction of the new stadium.
The city council stepped in to fund the project and Coventry eventually moved in as tenants rather than owners. Terms of the lease included a £1.3 million annual rent payment to the council while Coventry’s match-day revenues were limited to ticket and merchandising sales. The club’s brush with administration in 2007 brought in new owners, London-based hedge fund Sisu, but the on-field decline continued with relegation to League One in 2012.
Sisu sought to force a renegotiation with the city council by suspending rent payments for the Ricoh. When resulting discussions did not yield an agreement, they made the drastic decision to relocate Coventry to Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium — 34 miles away — for the 2013-14 season, prompting widespread boycotts as well as fan protests and marches against the owners.
Coventry returned to the Ricoh in the summer of 2014, shortly before the city council sold the stadium to Wasps Rugby Club for £21 million. The fallout from that deal continues to this day. Sisu made a formal complaint to the European Commission about the sale, arguing that the council undervalued the stadium operating company by £27 million. They have not been deterred by having their case thrown out by the UK Supreme Court last year.
Sisu’s ongoing legal action further complicated talks with the city council and Wasps about a new long-term rental agreement at the Ricoh Arena and last summer, Coventry left their home city for the second time in a decade, joining Birmingham at St Andrew’s. In a rare interview with Sky Sports News, Sisu director Joy Seppala called it “an absolute tragedy” and apologised to supporters but insisted “there are circumstances that are out of our control”.
Fan discontent can best be measured by contrasting Coventry’s relatively paltry home attendances with the fact that their away following remains one of the largest in the Football League. Winning has largely kept the tension bubbling just beneath the surface this season but it remains present enough in the minds of all parties to help create what Robins described to The Athletic in December as “probably the most unique set of circumstances in football”.
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Coventry City: no home, no stopping them
By Liam Twomey and Gregg Evans 1h ago
Liverpool are not the only proud club to have an historic season halted by the coronavirus. With 10 matches left to play in League One, Coventry City sit top of the table with a five-point lead over Rotherham in the second automatic promotion spot. It is the first time they have led any division after Christmas since 1967 and Championship football looks a likely prospect again after an eight-year absence from English football’s second tier.
But the most remarkable — and slightly sad — fact about Coventry’s promotion push is that a large chunk of the club’s fanbase have not been there to see it. The decision to play this season’s “home” matches at St Andrew’s, home of Birmingham City and 23 miles from Coventry, has created a hard divide between those prepared to follow the team everywhere and those determined to boycott until the club returns to the city that bears its name.
Coventry drew an attendance of 6,534 fans for their season-opener against Southend at St Andrew’s in August — less than half the 13,549 who turned up for their final home match of the 2018-19 campaign against Shrewsbury Town at the Ricoh Arena in April. The numbers have grown steadily since, with the visit of Sunderland earlier this month watched by a crowd of 10,055, but a large chunk of the club’s support have been following the team’s success from afar.
“I refuse to go,” says Dave Eyles, chair of the Sky Blue Trust. “Coventry City should be playing in Coventry — it’s that simple.
“I’d estimate there are about 10,000 people who aren’t attending. We all want to be associated with a promotion push. The football on the pitch has been fantastic. Mark Robins has brought together a very good team and got them performing extraordinarily well, and hopefully we can get ourselves over the line (in League One). But the big thing for the fans is to make sure that, at some point in the very near future, we get ourselves back to Coventry and playing back in the city.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When they ended their 106-year stay at Highfield Road to move into the shiny new Ricoh Arena in the summer of 2005, Coventry hoped they were setting themselves up for a bright future. Capacity rose from just over 23,000 to a little under 32,000 but the seeds of their current predicament had already been sown. Relegation after 34 years in English football’s top flight in 2001 hit the club’s finances and jeopardised construction of the new stadium.
The city council stepped in to fund the project and Coventry eventually moved in as tenants rather than owners. Terms of the lease included a £1.3 million annual rent payment to the council while Coventry’s match-day revenues were limited to ticket and merchandising sales. The club’s brush with administration in 2007 brought in new owners, London-based hedge fund Sisu, but the on-field decline continued with relegation to League One in 2012.
Sisu sought to force a renegotiation with the city council by suspending rent payments for the Ricoh. When resulting discussions did not yield an agreement, they made the drastic decision to relocate Coventry to Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium — 34 miles away — for the 2013-14 season, prompting widespread boycotts as well as fan protests and marches against the owners.
Coventry returned to the Ricoh in the summer of 2014, shortly before the city council sold the stadium to Wasps Rugby Club for £21 million. The fallout from that deal continues to this day. Sisu made a formal complaint to the European Commission about the sale, arguing that the council undervalued the stadium operating company by £27 million. They have not been deterred by having their case thrown out by the UK Supreme Court last year.
Sisu’s ongoing legal action further complicated talks with the city council and Wasps about a new long-term rental agreement at the Ricoh Arena and last summer, Coventry left their home city for the second time in a decade, joining Birmingham at St Andrew’s. In a rare interview with Sky Sports News, Sisu director Joy Seppala called it “an absolute tragedy” and apologised to supporters but insisted “there are circumstances that are out of our control”.
Fan discontent can best be measured by contrasting Coventry’s relatively paltry home attendances with the fact that their away following remains one of the largest in the Football League. Winning has largely kept the tension bubbling just beneath the surface this season but it remains present enough in the minds of all parties to help create what Robins described to The Athletic in December as “probably the most unique set of circumstances in football”.
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