Coventry City facing expulsion from the Football League over long-running and bitter Ricoh Arena dispute
The clock is ticking for Coventry City.
Crunch time has been sneaking ever closer for some time, but the lingering uncertainty around the Sky Blues has now turned into a pressing sense of urgency.
On the pitch the past few years have been successful. Coventry were promoted last season for the first time in 51 years. That League Two play-off final victory over Exeter City in May made it two memorable days out at Wembley as many years, following 2017’s Checkatrade Trophy win over Oxford United.
With manager Mark Robins at the helm, gradual progress has been made. Promising young players such as Tom Bayliss have emerged and gradually fans have been encouraged to return. Coventry are currently eighth in League One, five points outside the play-off places, following a run of five games without defeat.
But right now all of that is immaterial, because the club’s very existence is under threat.
Coventry beat Exeter City in the League Two play-off final last year (Source: Getty)
The Sky Blues have been caught in the crossfire of an increasingly bitter argument between their private equity fund owners, Sisu Capital, Coventry City Council and rugby club Wasps.
Coventry’s four-year tenancy at their current home, the Ricoh Arena, expires at the end of the season. The club want to renew it but Wasps, who contentiously bought the 32,000-seater stadium from the council in 2014, will not enter negotiations because Sisu is pursuing legal action against the council over the sale, with Wasps named as an interested party.
The London-based company, which took over Coventry in 2007, has already lost its case in the High Court and Court of Appeal, but is waiting for it to be heard at the Supreme Court.
In a three-way Mexican stand-off in which everyone is blaming each other, Coventry have been left paralysed by inaction.
The upshot of the row is that in 51 days the club could be ejected from the English Football League. Two days later, on 27 April, Coventry play Shrewsbury in what could prove to be their last game at the Ricoh Arena – a stadium built in 2005 specifically for them.
A total impasse has held for months, but with the EFL’s extraordinary general meeting – and the 75 per cent of votes needed to expel Coventry – looming on 25 April, something has to give.
The club’s accounts up to 31 May 2018, published this week, detail the strain on Coventry. An operational loss of £1.57m – up from £1.11m in 2017 – was attributed to playing in League Two, but greater worry stems from what the auditors describe as “significant doubts” and “material uncertainty” over the club's future.
Both Coventry and Wasps currently play at the Ricoh Arena (Source: Getty)
“It impacts on every day because everyone is talking about it,” manager Robins said last week. “It’s 100 per cent the same with Brexit – albeit on a different scale – but it means a lot to every Coventry City fan.”
Supporters, who previously endured home games being moved 35 miles away to Northampton, have repeatedly protested against Sisu, calling on them to drop their legal case in order to facilitate negotiations.
Meanwhile, the club released a statement today accusing the council of passing on blame to Sisu, “trying to re-write history” and making “misleading, contradictory statements”.
Now, for the first time in a year since mediation was ordered by the High Court, all parties – Coventry, Sisu, Wasps, the council and the EFL – will be around the same table in Westminster next week.
Dave Boddy, chief executive of Coventry, told BBC Coventry and Warwickshire: “[There’s] still a lot of water to go under the bridge, but we have to be prudent and have to look at other options as well now because time is ticking.”