Coventry City

by Simon Gilbert

  There was also an argument that the arrival of Wasps would undoubtedly benefit the local economy.

  However, there is also a hugely reasonable moral argument that a council and charity which heavily criticised the owners of a football club for temporarily moving a sports team out of its home city should not have supported the owners of Wasps in its plans to permanently relocate the London rugby club.

  Asked when discussions with Wasps had first started, Peter Knatchbull-Hugessen, clerk of the Higgs Charity, told me: ‘During the whole of the period from before 2007, Wasps had gone through a series of different owners.

  ‘When their brilliant plans for development in Wycombe fell away, ACL considered talking to them at that point about a ground-share, renting to a second team.

  ‘We knew we could make it work. But nothing happened.

  ‘Then we were trying to get the hotel sorted and dealing with Sisu. There are only so many things you can deal with at once.

  ‘But the ground-share idea was nothing new. There had been talk of a “Sporting Club Coventry” and getting Coventry Rugby Club there too since Bryan Richardson’s days.

  ‘Those sort of ideas being kicked around are very different from serious business discussions.

  ‘But after Sisu walked out, we started to look seriously at the sorts of things we could fill the stadium with. We even looked at monster trucks.

  ‘From the charity’s perspective, the first time we had any contact with them was around Christmas 2013 or maybe even new year 2014.

  ‘ACL never really had any direct contact with them. It was a council and a charity matter, as shareholders in ACL.

  ‘The deal with Wasps was agreed because the charity had a responsibility to its trustees to seriously consider offers for its shares. Sisu did put in a counter offer but it was almost designed to fail. They had no serious intention.’

  Asked if the charity had any regrets about getting involved in the Ricoh Arena project, he added: ‘The Ricoh Arena project is brilliant. What Wasps are doing with it is what the football club should have done.

  ‘The rugby club now has a turnover getting on for £30m while the football club is p****** in a Johnstone’s paint pot. They should be there.

  ‘Some people have this attitude that anyone who doesn’t help Sisu doesn’t love the club. They can tell that to my late brother in law [Sir Derek Higgs] and my wife [Higgs Charity chairman Marilyn Knatchbull-Hugessen], who have supported the club for over 60 years, like their father before.

  ‘That doesn’t wash with me.

  ‘I have total sadness about how it has all worked out. The football club should be there.

  ‘With each change of leadership, since Derrick Robins, the club got further and further away from reality and further and further away from the fans.’

  One conspiracy theory to emerge in the summer of 2016 was that Chris Millerchip – the former Coventry RFC player who owns the Butts Park Arena land lease (mentioned in Chapter Nine) – was in some way involved in the arrival of Wasps in Coventry and involved in a plot to force the football club out of the city.

  I asked Chris Millerchip if he had been involved in attracting Wasps to Coventry, or if he had any financial interest in the Premiership rugby club. He categorically denied either, although he said he did meet Derek Richardson, the owner of Wasps, briefly on one occasion some months before the Ricoh Arena move, but was adamant that he had no influence on the decision to move to Coventry.

  There has also been a suggestion that a ‘City of Rugby’ charity initiative being run in Coventry is also part of a move to alienate the football club. This is a scheme which aims to promote the values of rugby in schools and increase engagement in the sport.

  Chris Millerchip is chairman of this project and has invested about £200,000 into it. But, looking at this objectively, it is hard to understand how this initiative could possibly be aimed at forcing the football club out of Coventry. It doesn’t aim to promote rugby at the expense of football or any other sport.

  Furthermore, it’s a grassroots scheme that deals in things such as organising rugby tournaments for disabled schools in Coventry. It’s really difficult to see how this could conceivably be part of some far-reaching evil conspiracy.

  But looking for any tangible impact the arrival of Wasps had on the football team, I asked Steven Pressley about the situation in the early days – including the period when they were switched to the ‘away’ dressing room as Wasps took exclusive use of the ‘home’ dressing room.

  He said: ‘I don’t think it had a negative effect on us. I actually preferred the dressing room we went in.

  ‘It was smaller but the home dressing room was a dressing room we weren’t able to put our own stamp on.

  ‘When we moved into the away dressing room, its sole purpose was for the use of Coventry City.

  ‘We were able to put our own stamp on that and I actually think that was a better situation than the cold feeling of the home dressing room.

  ‘Although the home dressing room was used by Coventry City, it was used by other people who were utilising the stadium, so it never had that feeling of it being our own dressing room. To be fair to Wasps, they made strides to try and make things better.

  ‘They replaced the pitch, it wasn’t ideal, but it was certainly better than what we were playing on.

  ‘They actually also put a system in place within the stadium where you could take down their branding and replace it with Coventry City branding on match day, so it would give you more of a CCFC feel.

  ‘Although Coventry City never utilised that, Wasps did make a real effort to embrace the fact the stadium was going to be used by themselves and Coventry.’

  With Wasps now in control of the stadium, I spoke to former ACL chief executive and CCFC managing director Paul Fletcher – one of the men responsible for the delivery of the project.

  Asked if the club could ever be successful while Wasps owned the Ricoh Arena, he returned a damning verdict.

  He told me: ‘It will never work. It’s a fair old middle-of-the road. Every single penny needs to be given to the manager so he can get into this greatest league in world football.

  ‘It’s the greatest league in world football and Coventry should be there. Then the word ‘Coventry’ would be emblazoned all over the world and it would be great for the city, because this is a great city.

  ‘I don’t like seeing the word Coventry alongside Rochdale and Scunthorpe. I want to see Coventry alongside Manchester, Chelsea and Liverpool – that’s where Coventry should be.’

  Asked about his views on the current situation, which sees Wasps in control of the ground he helped build for the football club, he said: ‘I have to honestly say I don’t like it. When I was there, it was difficult to get the building built, but I thought if we could get the building built it had enough revenue streams to keep Coventry in the Premiership.

  ‘That’s why the Ricoh Arena was built, that’s why it is there and that’s why all the hotels and casinos are there; so that when Coventry got into the Premier League, all that revenue would keep them there and they wouldn’t have to put the ticket prices up, as they’ve done at Liverpool.

  ‘I’m sad that’s not happened; it’s a great building. When people talk to me about football stadiums, I think the Ricoh is as good a stadium as you can get. I’m just saddened that Coventry are not in the Premier League.’

  Paul Fletcher added that finger-pointing would not help turn the club’s fortunes around, and that success could only be achieved by the club owning its own ground.

  Asked who was responsible for the current situation, he said: ‘Have you got about 12 hours for me to give you my view on it? Probably everyone will have different views, but the thing that must happen soon is that Coventry City must own their own stadium – they just have to.

  ‘If they don’t, they will never have a chance of getting back. A message to the city – this is a fabulous city, it deserves a Premier League football club.
It will only have that if Coventry City can own its own ground.’

  But Mr Fletcher conceded he did not think this was a realistic aspiration.

  He said: ‘No, they won’t build a new stadium. I don’t think that would ever happen. If it did, it would be a stupid thing because I don’t think the fans would follow. The fans have started to have a voice. They do have a strong voice these days.

  ‘I loved the Coventry City fans during my time here. I thought they were fantastic and very patient. They waited until we got this great building put together.

  ‘I think they expected better things of both their football club and their council.’

  Fletcher also issued a plea to the football club’s owners and the council to work together for a brighter future for the city and the football club.

  He said: ‘I admire Sisu for investing in the game. It’s all right being critical, but they’ve probably lost quite a few million pounds.

  ‘They didn’t intend to do that, but sooner or later something has to happen where the football club needs to own its own stadium.

  ‘It doesn’t look good, but it has to happen if everybody in this area wants a taste of not only football matches, but football tourism.’

  Another key man behind the project was then Coventry City Council development chief John McGuigan. I asked him how he felt about the way the Ricoh Arena project had turned out.

  He told me: ‘All the things the council said it wanted to achieve from the scheme – the regeneration, the employment opportunities, attracting businesses, changing the image of that part of the city – it did.

  ‘The day we opened for the first football game, I overheard a woman say to her husband ‘I didn’t think Coventry could do anything like this.’

  ‘The image impact was enormous. Who would have thought 15 years ago we would be seeing Take That or Bruce Springsteen playing in Coventry, or that we would be hosting Olympic football there? That is so hugely positive.

  ‘But then, at the same time, I think what a huge opportunity lost for the football club.

  ‘Because, certainly, they have got one of the best stadiums in the country. People come from across the world to look at it.

  ‘The chief executive of Eden park in New Zealand came to see it two years before they hosted the Rugby World Cup to see how to generate income 365 days a year.

  ‘The football club and successive owners have not taken the huge opportunity in front of them. From a business point of view, I just can’t understand it.

  ‘Eighty per cent of the income was not football related. I don’t know why hard-nosed business people did what they did.’

  The project was, of course, the vision of former club chairman Bryan Richardson. Oddly, he has never been to the arena which originally was his brainchild. Asked how he felt about the situation today, he described it as a ‘tragedy’.

  He told me: ‘I don’t know the background to everything now, but I think it’s an incredible shame what has happened. Nobody has thought of the club, nobody has thought of the supporters. People have just wrecked the club. It’s an absolute tragedy.’

  However, he indicated his belief that the club might have a brighter future working with Ricoh Arena landlords Wasps than when Ricoh firm ACL was jointly owned by Coventry City Council and the Alan Edward Higgs Charity.

  He said: ‘Maybe it’s better being owned by a rugby club than people who have no interest in football and no interest in Coventry City. That’s the worst thing of all.

  ‘I think it’s better than having people who own that have no interest in sport – people who are only interested in it as property.

  ‘The whole thing really was about Coventry City Football Club, then they end up going to Sixfields and you think ‘what on earth has happened?’

  ‘It’s criminal really.’

  Many blamed the long-serving chairman for the financial woes at the club following his departure, with reports of debts exceeding £60m widely circulated at the time.

  But Mr Richardson disputes those figures to this day, and said the Ricoh Arena should have been the key to making the club self-sustainable, and blames other board members for ‘destroying’ the club.

  He said: ‘The Ricoh Arena was my brainchild. I did the deal with Tesco, we didn’t use any outside agents and I did that directly with the chairman of Tesco at the time.

  ‘I sold that 30-acre piece of land at the time for £66.5m. Well, I don’t know where that money went after I’d gone. Somehow or other, the stadium was no longer ours.

  ‘My whole idea was that the stadium would be the future of Coventry City.’

  He added: ‘I was demonised when I left; it’s well documented. People came up with all sorts of figures that we owed. Those figures, I’m afraid, were just put out by Geoffrey Robinson [a fellow board member at the time] and his crew.

  ‘They were so ridiculous. If he thinks anybody, any bankers are going to loan Coventry City Football Club £50m or £60m, he’s mad.

  ‘The highest-ever bank overdraft was £8m. They can verify that with the reported accounts.

  ‘It wasn’t about that; it was about people wanting to be chairman and do whatever they wanted to do. If we had held on then – we were nearly top of the Championship table at Christmas in 2001/02 – if they had held their nerve I think we would have come straight back up.’

  He added: ‘Would I have done anything differently? Yes, I wouldn’t have had some of those people on the board. They actually destroyed Coventry City Football Club.’

  Asked about what he thought the future held for the club, he said: ‘I really hope Coventry City can return to the top flight. But it is damn difficult.

  ‘It’s difficult because of nothing else other than money. But you can think back and people like Southampton have done it, and done it incredibly well. Look at Bournemouth. They’re the classic case of “you can do it.”

  ‘But you can’t do it if you’re chopping and changing every season.

  ‘You’ve got to support managers. You can’t just throw him out there and throw him to the wolves and say, “it’s up to you, you get on with it” because that won’t work,’ he added.

  ‘You can’t have manager after manager and expect to do anything.

  ‘You have to have consistency and a trust in who you have got working with you. You can’t go flipping from one to another.

  ‘I had Gordon Strachan for about six years and Ron [Atkinson] was here for two or three. Out of ten years, that’s a long time.

  ‘It’s almost unheard of now. I think it’s a sad reflection on the chairmen of football clubs.’

  Four years ago Mr Richardson had offered his help to the existing owners – but he now says a return to the club, or football, is not something he is interested in.

  He said: ‘It’s too late now.

  ‘It’s one of those things where while there are disparate owners, and owners who know nothing about football, you can’t work that way.

  ‘You know what should be done, but you can’t do it because people won’t let you get on and do the job properly.’

  At the time of writing, the club’s future appears to hang in the balance yet again.

  The deal to return to the Ricoh Arena, signed in 2014, was a temporary arrangement, a two-year deal with an option for two more years, which was subsequently taken up.

  The terms include an annual rent of £100,000 and a share of match day revenues. But club officials insist much of the income needed for the club to be viable in the long-term continue to be inaccessible.

  Before this book went to print, talks over extending that deal had been frozen by Wasps, who have cited the ‘background noise’ of ongoing legal action by the owners of the football club as a hurdle to any long-term deal being agreed on terms more favourable to the Sky Blues.

  There also seems to be little progress on any potential new stadium. This leaves Sky Blues fans facing the prospect of the club having nowhere to play by summer 2018.

  D
avid Conn, sports writer for The Guardian, is one of the few national journalists to have also covered the plight of the Sky Blues.

  The former British Sports journalist of the year gave me his analysis of the situation.

  He said: ‘Football clubs are beloved institutions that people support all their lives and have a great loyalty to.

  ‘Very often, the management and ownership of the clubs doesn’t do justice to that sense of loyalty. Also, the wider governance of football – leagues and the Football Association – don’t do justice to that loyalty either.

  ‘Coventry City are a club that so many people think fondly of, probably because they were in the top flight for so long. To end up playing at Northampton Town, as a tenant, in front of 1,500 fans is arguably the worst decline of any major club that I have covered.

  ‘It was second only to Wimbledon for the biggest boycott by supporters – an almost complete boycott. It was extremely serious. The more I looked into it, the more shocking and sad it was. The Ricoh Arena was meant to be the springboard for Coventry City into the modern era that actually solidified them as a Premier League Club.

  ‘There were obvious financial difficulties when they moved into the Ricoh, they didn’t have any money to put in and that’s how the whole Higgs Charity arrangement came up.

  ‘I would say the only other club that is comparable is Leeds – and Leeds is a catastrophic story in so many ways. But at least they are in the Championship playing at Elland Road in front of crowds in the 20,000s.

  ‘Leeds United fans could look at Coventry City if they need to count their blessings.

  ‘It is probably the worst in terms of calamities and the worst decline compared to a time when there has been so much money in football and local authorities have been prepared to build stadiums on really quite beneficial terms.

  ‘It was a good vision that the arena would have all these activities in it which would self-finance things.