Coventry City

by Simon Gilbert

  But it wasn’t just the rent which was an issue. The licence deal ultimately hamstrung the club and saw the Sky Blues fail to get access to the very non-matchday revenues which had prompted the move away from Highfield Road in the first place.

  Asked why the club agreed to pay a rent which seems astronomical in comparison to those paid by other football clubs which rent grounds, Geoffrey Robinson accepted the club’s board was to blame. But he insisted, at that point, they had no choice, with the club already so far into the project and with no back-up option available.

  He said: ‘You have to point the finger at the club’s board. But we didn’t have any option, we were over a barrel – we’d sold Highfield Road.

  ‘It wasn’t just the rent deal, the revenue was just as bad – and not having control of development and being able to expand it. Any benefit of that went to ACL, not to the club.

  ‘That’s where it went wrong. We should have retained control of the Ricoh Arena.

  ‘Paul Fletcher [then chief executive of ACL who went on to become managing director of the club] negotiated extraordinarily well for ACL, and the council. He did a good job – but it screwed the club. Everybody said at the time the rent wasn’t affordable.

  ‘We raised concerns at the time, all the way through. It wasn’t just the rent, we gave away too much of the revenue.

  ‘Paul negotiated for ACL, and Graham Hover [former club secretary] negotiated for us.

  ‘We ended up paying too much rent and not getting enough of the revenue. We even gave away match day parking.’

  He added: ‘Even if we had halved the rent, it wouldn’t have saved us. But about half a million would have been the right rent for it.

  ‘We put all sorts of proposals forward – Premier League rent could have been higher, Championship rent would be lower – we said something like £400,000 to £500,000 – but that wouldn’t have saved us. It might get you another season.

  ‘Relegation was the breaking point for us, but even then Bryan Richardson was clinging on to the hope of an early return. But when we failed then, that was the end of it.

  ‘We talked about tiered rent, at the time and afterwards, but they were all rejected by the council.’

  Listening to the accounts of those directly involved, there is little doubt the club came out of negotiations very badly. But they went into them in a very weak bargaining position and no back-up plan. Fortune had also conspired against the people running the club, with relegation from the top flight coinciding with a drive from financial institutions to lower the level of debt acquired by football clubs. Looking back, do those involved feel they could have done anything differently to leave the club in a stronger position than it finds itself today?

  Geoffrey Robinson said: ‘I regret that we failed on the loan for the Ricoh Arena, that was a terrible failure. Selling our share in ACL and making the deal with the charity was the further mistake.

  ‘But the huge mistake for everybody was the council coming in to run it.’

  John McGuigan added: ‘What would I have changed looking back? Lots and lots.

  ‘But I have yet to meet anybody who says the Ricoh Arena is not good for Coventry.

  ‘The one thing I would have done more than anything else was simplify it. It was such a complex scheme. But the council can’t decide how commercial organisations like football clubs operate. Things happen in a commercial environment that you don’t expect.

  ‘If the football club had got back into the Premier League, the entire saga of the past five years would not have happened.’

  Chapter Two

  Hello Ricoh Arena

  THE date of 30 April 2005 is of huge significance to Coventry City fans. This was the day that the Sky Blues bid an emotional farewell to the club’s home of 106 years.

  For anyone lucky enough to get into Highfield Road that day, it is an occasion none of us will ever forget.

  The atmosphere was one of sadness, but also one of hope and expectation. Hope that the Ricoh Arena, which had revealed its naming rights sponsor just days before, would provide the launchpad needed for Coventry City to become a real force in English football. Perhaps that air of sadness would have been heightened had fans known what cruel tests the future actually had in store.

  The last game at Highfield Road was an almost perfect occasion. Players from bygone years were paraded on the sun-drenched pitch before the match, but it was the class of 2004/05 who ensured the club bowed out in style.

  A fired-up Coventry team, including local youngsters Gary McSheffrey and Marcus Hall, demolished a shell-shocked Derby County side, killing off the game as a contest by half time when the Sky Blues went in leading by four goals.

  A 6-2 victory was capped off when academy product Andrew Whing hammered in a spectacular goal, which was no less than the spiritual home of Coventry City deserved as a sign-off.

  Cue the Mexican wave, as the club’s unofficial anthem Twist and Shout rang out around the ground ahead of the final whistle. Then came the pitch invasion as the referee signalled the end of the game.

  It was a truly magical end to the life of a once cutting-edge stadium that had been bursting at the seams, with over 51,000 supporters on the club’s way to the top flight where – for 34 proud years – great players from George Best to David Beckham had graced the hallowed turf.

  But as the celebrations eased, manager Micky Adams addressed the crowds on the pitch from the main stand. He added to the hope and expectation by insisting that avoiding relegation in the Championship was not good enough for a club like Coventry City. He was right, of course, but little did he know the scale of the turbulent times which lay ahead. Few could have foreseen that the Sky Blues would end up in their current predicament while filled with optimism on that glorious spring day.

  After Adams had finished his crowd-pleasing speech, there really was only one man who could wave Highfield Road off in the way it deserved – Coventry’s most successful manager of all time, the man who had led the Sky Blue revolution from that very stadium in the 1960s; Jimmy Hill.

  As he led the crowd in a rendition of the Sky Blue Song, there were tears. Tears of sadness as the club bid farewell to Highfield Road, but also tears of joy as people reminisced about the good times, the memories and the history which had been created in the stadium.

  But now it was time to make new memories in the large new arena constructed to accommodate the football club’s big ambitions. However, it was not quite the smooth transition those involved would have hoped for. A superstitious person might even suggest the project was cursed from the beginning, with the amount of hurdles which had to be overcome. Some of the problems remain until this day.

  Many people will know that the new Arena was originally meant to be sponsored by Jaguar, a prestigious and fitting sponsor in many people’s eyes bearing in mind the luxury car manufacturer’s strong Coventry roots.

  But it’s no secret that around this time the car firm hit a major speed bump, with the company getting into financial difficulty and the Browns Lane manufacturing plant being shut down.

  That meant the impressive artists’ impressions circulated in the months before the Arena’s completion – featuring a gigantic Jaguar leaping from the Arena’s roof – never became reality. It also meant wasted time, effort and money put into strengthening the roof of the Arena so that it could support the giant Jaguar sculpture.

  John McGuigan explained that the council and ACL had essentially let Jaguar off the hook. Despite the firm’s cold feet, the deal had already been signed and sealed and was legally binding.

  He said: ‘It’s probably well known that it was going to be the Jaguar Arena. Naming rights and sponsorship was always seen as an important element of ACL’s funding – for example The E.on Lounge, Yorkshire Bank Lounge, stand naming etc.

  ‘The whole Arena was going to be called the Jaguar Arena and we had to strengthen the structural design and roofing of the egg-shaped façade to the building that fronts on to the A
444/Rowleys Green roundabout to enable the structure to be able to take the planned huge leaping cat.

  ‘The deal had been signed but we understand when Ford, Jaguar’s then parent company in the USA, heard about this they got upset because of Jaguar’s difficult financial position.

  ‘For obvious reasons we didn’t want to proceed with the naming rights contract, even though it was signed and legal, when Jaguar management was in some difficulty.’

  But the failure to sign off on the naming rights deal was actually a huge stroke of luck for the Ricoh Arena business in financial terms.

  Jaguar had promised £5m for the naming rights, but stadium bosses eventually secured a deal for double that.

  Just days before Coventry played their last game at Highfield Road, the eventual naming rights sponsor was announced. It came in the shape of Japanese copier firm Ricoh – perhaps not quite as prestigious as the original plans – but it did provide a valuable £10m boost to ACL’s coffers.

  Coventrians do seem to get everywhere, so it’s perhaps little surprise that the naming rights deal came about, in part, as a result of a Coventry connection within the firm.

  John McGuigan explained: ‘The Ricoh company which operated in Britain and across the world under many different brand names was looking to consolidate their name/brand, especially in terms of their UK business.

  ‘One of their senior managers in their UK business was a Coventry kid and an avid CCFC supporter.

  ‘He used to periodically take his boss to games at Highfield Road. His boss constantly and in jest would deride CCFC because of the state of Highfield Road.

  ‘After one such game, and just as the huge superstructure of the new Arena was being built on the old gasworks site, he drove his boss up to the site and said, “So this is the club without any ambition, is it?”

  ‘That visit, the Arena’s location and profile etc all quickly generated interest from Ricoh UK.

  ‘Therefore Ricoh stepped in as main naming sponsor, with smaller Jaguar sponsorship of the exhibition hall.

  ‘ACL actually got double what it would have got from the original Jaguar contract. So it was a win-win all round.’

  Now we knew what the Arena would be called, but the problems were far from over.

  There were fears the Arena would not be ready in time for the start of the 2005/06 season – fears which necessitated extra money to be thrown at the project in order to avoid serious embarrassment.

  Arena construction firm Laing O’Rourke informed the council that construction was three months behind schedule.

  With Highfield Road already sold and the process of dismantling the stadium under way, serious action had to be taken.

  So ,as parts of Highfield Road were being auctioned off as memorabilia, the council agreed to inject an extra £2m into the project in order to reduce the three-month delay to three weeks.

  That took the total spend for the contract with Laing O’Rourke up to £57m, according to the council’s Ricoh Arena Completion Report of June 2006. That was £2.7m over the original budget.

  There was also a £2.6m overspend on the ‘fit-out’ of the stadium, taking those costs up to £7m. That overspend was partly blamed on the cost of the £250,000 scoreboard, a £150,000 telephone system and £800,000 spent fitting out the on-site leisure centre.

  The extra fit-out costs were split between the council and ACL, who supplied £1.1m via extra financial support from Yorkshire Bank with the council picking up the remaining £1.5m tab.

  The three-week delay to the project meant that Coventry had to play their first three matches of the season away from home. But even that almost wasn’t enough, with the safety certificate for the stadium only signed off on the morning of the club’s first home game against QPR.

  There were also countless other issues which rumbled on behind the scenes for months after Coventry’s first game, but the Sky Blues were at least in their new home.

  John McGuigan said: ‘As the start of the football season loomed, Laing O’Rourke announced that completion would be at least three months delayed – citing issues with [sub-contractor] Haden Young.

  ‘It could be accelerated to a three-week delay, but we’d have to pay them £2m to fund this acceleration.

  ‘For obvious reasons, this is something I had to do and argue the case afterwards. With Sir Derek Higgs’ help, we got two meetings with Ray O’Rourke, the owner of Laing O’Rourke, still a privately-owned company.

  ‘Despite our arguments and our implied threats to chastise them publicly and advise other public bodies not to tender to them, Ray O’Rourke continued to argue his corner.

  ‘But the £2m we ultimately paid was significantly less than Laing O’Rourke originally wanted.

  ‘In reality, whilst CCFC had to play away for the first three weeks of the new season, the final completion of the Arena – particularly its complex fit-out and finishes and dealing with all the snagging works identified – took another six months, but little of this would have been apparent to the general public.

  ‘Notwithstanding all this, in hindsight Laing O’Rourke weren’t a bad company to deal with. Their project director on the job was good, as were his senior management.

  ‘It seems that the Ricoh Arena scheme unfortunately got caught up in the bigger issues that Laing O’Rourke was dealing with at that time, issues that we didn’t know about.

  ‘As but one example of practical problems we encountered when finally opening the Ricoh, we had to operate a summer menu in all our corporate catering facilities for at least the first six weeks after opening day because – between Laing O’Rourke and Haden Young – they’d installed the wrong size gas governor for the whole building, and we could only operate with our electric ovens until the correct gas governor was procured and installed and the main gas supply and the big gas ovens could be switched on.’

  Coventry City’s first game at the Ricoh Arena was held on 20 August 2005, and it was a day to remember.

  Unfortunately, safety restrictions prevented the 32,609-seater stadium from being filled to capacity. But the 23,012 people who were able to get a ticket for the opening game were treated to a feisty 3-0 victory over Queens Park Rangers.

  The game had an added edge, with Coventry players and management unhappy with the way QPR had celebrated beating City in an ill-tempered final of a pre-season tournament in Ibiza.

  But it was the Sky Blues who had the last laugh, cruising to an impressive victory as they christened the Ricoh Arena in style.

  Nobody summed up the occasion better than former Coventry Telegraph sports editor Rob Madill. His report read: ‘The sound of In our Coventry home was ringing around the Ricoh Arena.

  ‘It was 3.05pm on Saturday 20 August 2005 and the Sky Blue faithful were settling into their new stadium by singing an old anthem.

  ‘It had been a difficult, stressful move. With no money to buy, City had to rent, delays had put the completion date back and the property still wasn’t quite finished.

  ‘Doubts had been expressed about the wisdom of selling a perfectly good property to be tenants in a flashier more expensive new one.

  ‘Yet five minutes later the agonies had turned to ecstasy, Claus Jorgensen headed in and the Ricoh rocked for the very first time.

  ‘The roar was deafening, 23,000 voices exploding with joy, relief and the knowledge that all the anxieties were over – this truly was the Sky Blues’ new home.

  ‘And what a home. A mass of steel and concrete welded into a stunning structure. Sweeping stands, wonderful views, a superb setting for football. A field of dreams surrounded by a sea of Sky Blue.

  ‘Even at only three-quarters full, the noise was amazing. Passion poured on to the pitch from the massed ranks of the Sky Blue Army – the West End and the Kop joined together in the new Coventry Evening Telegraph stand to create a formidable new force that, on this evidence, can be worth a goal start to the team.

  ‘Dele Adebola made it 2-0 and the roars were so loud they must h
ave been heard in Highfield Road – you remember, that place where City used to play, and now almost forgotten amid the awe-inspiring magnificence of the Ricoh.

  ‘Twenty minutes later it was 3-0. “Easy, easy” chanted the fans, the game now almost becoming incidental to the occasion. The house-warming party was in full swing and the gracious visitors from Queens Park Rangers had no intention of spoiling it. It was heady stuff.

  ‘Like any good party, after the intoxication comes the singing. In the second half, the Sky Blue Song reverberated around the ground in celebration and pride.

  ‘Jimmy Hill had been brought on to sing his Coventry City anthem before the game, a reminder of that memorable last day at Highfield Road last April and a piece of symbolism to create a little of the old ground’s atmosphere at the new one.

  ‘It was scarcely needed. As the game ended the manager responded to cries of “Micky, Micky, give us a wave” with a raised hand of acknowledgement. Even with Hill’s vision, the man who created the first all-seater stadium in England at Highfield Road in 1981 could surely never have envisaged his beloved Sky Blues playing in such a venue as this.

  ‘As the Sky Blues supporters trooped out, delighted with their team’s win and even more delighted with their new surroundings, it was somehow fitting that the concourses and staircases they walked down, and the bars and the toilets they had used, weren’t quite finished.

  ‘They know that, like their team, there’s much work to be done before they can sit back and admire the view.

  ‘But for now, they’ll take the three points and the knowledge that their team plays in one of the best grounds in the country.’

  Coventry manager Micky Adams was also impressed, although he clearly hadn’t been completely won over by the time of the post-match press conference.