http://dlvr.it/3dvdmZ
As someone with a Coventry postcode myself, I probably qualify to comment on the Sky Blues’ crisis.
Am I qualified to judge the rights and wrongs of it? Are you nuts?
Take a cocktail of DNA from Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Marie Curie and genetically engineer a super-genius.
It would still be left scratching its head, unable to sort out this omnishambles.
The bitter battle between Coventry City’s owners Sisu and ACL, the council backed company which owns the Ricoh Arena, is so acrimonious its way beyond mediation.
Gandhi would ditch pacifism and give these warring factions a pasting if he was still around!
Coventry fans praying for some 11th-hour solution which will keep them at the Ricoh are being delusional.
The club is hamstrung by new Financial Fair Play rules which force them to spend what they earn.
The problem is the Ricoh can NEVER provide City manager Steven Pressley with the resources he needs just to survive in League One.
So we are where we are — and sadly for Coventry fans that means a 34-mile hike to Northampton for home games for the next three seasons while a new stadium is built.
Sky Blue Trust Secretary Moz Baker slammed the Football League’s decision to sanction the temporary move and predicted: “Fans won’t travel to Northampton .
“The numbers going there will run into hundreds not, thousands. In three years’ time there probably won’t be a Coventry.”
Three years Moz? Did you read the Football League’s statement?
The part where they admitted they feared Coventry would be unable to see out NEXT SEASON!
The League warned of: “… a very real possibility of Coventry City being unable to fulfil its fixtures for next season. This would inevitably call into question the Club’s continued membership of the Football League.”
It’s impossible not to feel for fans who have been kicked from pillar to post since they left their spiritual home of 106 years, Highfield Road in 2005.
But they have to face up to stark reality, however unpalatable.
At the risk of being the most unpopular person in the area since the guy who handed Lady Godiva her robes back, it is possible the temporary move to Northampton might actually end Coventry’s real curse?
The Ricoh Arena has become as harmful as crack cocaine to Sky Blues fans — and I don’t use the simile lightly.
However difficult it is for them to accept it, their iconic stadium IS sucking the life and soul out of their club.
Leeds are the only club in the country who pay more in rent than Coventry, even though the Sky Blues are languishing in League One.
ACL hog the advertising boards, the catering, the hospitality, the car park fees, the stadium naming rights (worth £10million from Ricoh over 10 years).
Coventry wanted to attract more students by offering a free pie and a pint recently but were forced to scrap the plan because they couldn’t discount the food and drink at their own home games!
Yet fans’ Secretary Baker claimed: “We’ve got a perfectly good, state of the art stadium. We NEED to be playing at the Ricoh Arena.”
WRONG! Supporters NEED to realise a stadium which doesn’t bring in cash is not ‘perfectly good,’ while it continues to suck blood out of the club.
Coventry fans have to kick their Ricoh ‘habit,’ if they want the health of their club to improve.
It’s too easy to crucify Sisu for all of Coventry’s woes — easy and lazy.
ACL like to portray themselves as caring landlords, concerned by the fans’ plight.
They kindly offered to let Coventry play at home rent-free while the club was in administration. It was a slick piece of PR spin.
The council looked good and Sisu looked like the villains when the offer wasn’t taken up.
The reality is it wasn’t even their choice to make.
The club is now split into two companies and ACL’s offer was made to the company which is currently run by the administrator — and doesn’t possess any players!
You’d have thought such a cynical move, which raised fans’ hopes would have been denounced and showed up as a sham.
Yet the local Coventry paper has been fairly quiet on that one.
Perhaps that’s because one of the leading players in trying to wrestle control of the club away from Sisu also happens to sit on the Board of Trinity Mirror — the newspaper group which produces Coventry’s local paper!
Of course fans don’t want to lodge in Northampton for between three and five years.
But if they can grit their teeth and get through it they could be rewarded with a new stadium of their own which could pump fresh finance into the Sky Blues.
I understand three sites are currently under consideration. All three possess a Coventry postcode — and two of these are closer to the old Highfield Road than the Ricoh is.
Fingers crossed, Coventry fans might finally end up with a place to they can genuinely call THEIR home.
Interesting opinion, until he turns it into a bizarre Anti Trinity Mirror thing.
As someone with a Coventry postcode myself, I probably qualify to comment on the Sky Blues’ crisis.
Am I qualified to judge the rights and wrongs of it? Are you nuts?
Take a cocktail of DNA from Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Marie Curie and genetically engineer a super-genius.
It would still be left scratching its head, unable to sort out this omnishambles.
The bitter battle between Coventry City’s owners Sisu and ACL, the council backed company which owns the Ricoh Arena, is so acrimonious its way beyond mediation.
Gandhi would ditch pacifism and give these warring factions a pasting if he was still around!
Coventry fans praying for some 11th-hour solution which will keep them at the Ricoh are being delusional.
The club is hamstrung by new Financial Fair Play rules which force them to spend what they earn.
The problem is the Ricoh can NEVER provide City manager Steven Pressley with the resources he needs just to survive in League One.
So we are where we are — and sadly for Coventry fans that means a 34-mile hike to Northampton for home games for the next three seasons while a new stadium is built.
Sky Blue Trust Secretary Moz Baker slammed the Football League’s decision to sanction the temporary move and predicted: “Fans won’t travel to Northampton .
“The numbers going there will run into hundreds not, thousands. In three years’ time there probably won’t be a Coventry.”
Three years Moz? Did you read the Football League’s statement?
The part where they admitted they feared Coventry would be unable to see out NEXT SEASON!
The League warned of: “… a very real possibility of Coventry City being unable to fulfil its fixtures for next season. This would inevitably call into question the Club’s continued membership of the Football League.”
It’s impossible not to feel for fans who have been kicked from pillar to post since they left their spiritual home of 106 years, Highfield Road in 2005.
But they have to face up to stark reality, however unpalatable.
At the risk of being the most unpopular person in the area since the guy who handed Lady Godiva her robes back, it is possible the temporary move to Northampton might actually end Coventry’s real curse?
The Ricoh Arena has become as harmful as crack cocaine to Sky Blues fans — and I don’t use the simile lightly.
However difficult it is for them to accept it, their iconic stadium IS sucking the life and soul out of their club.
Leeds are the only club in the country who pay more in rent than Coventry, even though the Sky Blues are languishing in League One.
ACL hog the advertising boards, the catering, the hospitality, the car park fees, the stadium naming rights (worth £10million from Ricoh over 10 years).
Coventry wanted to attract more students by offering a free pie and a pint recently but were forced to scrap the plan because they couldn’t discount the food and drink at their own home games!
Yet fans’ Secretary Baker claimed: “We’ve got a perfectly good, state of the art stadium. We NEED to be playing at the Ricoh Arena.”
WRONG! Supporters NEED to realise a stadium which doesn’t bring in cash is not ‘perfectly good,’ while it continues to suck blood out of the club.
Coventry fans have to kick their Ricoh ‘habit,’ if they want the health of their club to improve.
It’s too easy to crucify Sisu for all of Coventry’s woes — easy and lazy.
ACL like to portray themselves as caring landlords, concerned by the fans’ plight.
They kindly offered to let Coventry play at home rent-free while the club was in administration. It was a slick piece of PR spin.
The council looked good and Sisu looked like the villains when the offer wasn’t taken up.
The reality is it wasn’t even their choice to make.
The club is now split into two companies and ACL’s offer was made to the company which is currently run by the administrator — and doesn’t possess any players!
You’d have thought such a cynical move, which raised fans’ hopes would have been denounced and showed up as a sham.
Yet the local Coventry paper has been fairly quiet on that one.
Perhaps that’s because one of the leading players in trying to wrestle control of the club away from Sisu also happens to sit on the Board of Trinity Mirror — the newspaper group which produces Coventry’s local paper!
Of course fans don’t want to lodge in Northampton for between three and five years.
But if they can grit their teeth and get through it they could be rewarded with a new stadium of their own which could pump fresh finance into the Sky Blues.
I understand three sites are currently under consideration. All three possess a Coventry postcode — and two of these are closer to the old Highfield Road than the Ricoh is.
Fingers crossed, Coventry fans might finally end up with a place to they can genuinely call THEIR home.
Interesting opinion, until he turns it into a bizarre Anti Trinity Mirror thing.
