OSB. Could you send your post to the CET please, to at least encourage them to offer a more balanced view than reported in the article. Not saying that they are suporting any particular agenda; just that they haven't considered the bigger picture of how all of this knits together. Is it worth contacted Les REid directly perahps?
Reid constanly massages the facts, for instance he says
Yet previous council taxpayer investment was nothing like the full £118m final cost of building the Ricoh, which opened in 2005.
Costs were partly met from around £40m profit on a £59m sale of part of the land to Tesco; £21m borrowed money later repaid by ACL’s Yorkshire Bank loan; from Europe, the club, and from the former regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands.
This suggests the £21M was repaid in full, but in reality there is still £14-15M of that debt left and also the £10M from AWM was used to fund part of the build as well as the council money, he also omits the ~£13M direct council funding of the project and that the club paid effectively sweet Fanny Adams towards it.. whatever claims he makes towards being balanced or neutral are bloody nonsense.
He also repeats unchallenged Byng's assertion that..
Mr Byng argues the damage to the city’s economy from losing its football club could be £50m to £125m – based on turbulent and tumultuous times at Leeds United and Swansea City. Lost business could also mean less return to council taxpayers in business rates.
frankly that is nonsensical also, whatever money was spent locally was never that much, the total turnover of CCFC was no more than £10M, so I can't believe the loss to Coventry could exceed double that figure, £20M tops & even that is a gross overestimate in my view...