Plus Ça Change: The High Court Damning of Coventry City

The words of Mr Justice Hickinbottom could scarcely have been more unequivocal. He ruled this week that Coventry City Council had not acted “irrationally” in refinancing a loan for the Ricoh Arena’s operators, ACL, in January 2013. The judge also found that the £14.4m loan did not breach European State Aid law, a central claim of the football club’s owners.

But the summary went further, providing a damning indictment of the motives behind the club’s recent conduct. The judge found that the withholding of rent payments to ACL was a deliberate strategy. Its aim was to financially stress the company to a point where the club’s owners, Sisu, could purchase a significant shareholding in it at a considerably reduced price.

By 2012, the Judge found, “Sisu had no strategy for maintaining a sustainable football club, except one which involved the purchase, at a knockdown price, of at least a 50% share in ACL and thus the Arena.” The verdict laid bare in the starkest terms what many supporters had long suspected.

A Bullish Response

Coventry City’s reaction to the judgement was as extraordinary as it was predictable. Chief Executive Tim Fisher, a man supporters see as a primary architect of the club’s fall from grace, claimed the club was “very surprised by the judgment.” He stated: “We believe it is wrong in law and in fact. I have no doubt that this will be heard in the Court of Appeal in front of three very senior judges.”

This chutzpah is familiar. Last July, Fisher told the London Supporters Club that, “Sisu is a distressed debt fund and therefore batters people in court.” Those words must surely haunt him now. Sisu, it seems, can be battered in court as effectively as they can do the battering themselves.

Fisher also confirmed that the club’s “Plan A” remains the construction of a new stadium. This plan has been mentioned for a considerable time, yet the only evidence of its progress has been some artist’s drawings released at the start of the year. The question of why a new stadium is needed when a perfectly serviceable one sits empty in Coventry remains unanswered.

The Football League Sits on its Hands

The saga began when the club stopped paying its £100,000 monthly rent at the Ricoh Arena in 2012, following a financially ruinous period that ended in relegation to League One. At the end of the 2012-13 season, the club moved out and began a groundshare thirty-five miles away at Northampton Town’s Sixfields stadium.

The Football League’s approval of the move was widely criticised, and its reaction to this week’s court judgement has been just as unfocused. The League expressed “deep regret” but concluded it would simply “continue working with the Administrator and Otium to achieve an exit from Administration in line with the Board’s Insolvency Policy.”

Its chance to act decisively has long passed.

As part of its ‘membership agreement’ to remain in the league, the club accepted a ten-point deduction for last season and agreed to pay a bond and £590,000 to ACL. That amount remains unpaid, even though the deadline has passed. The club disputes the figure, claiming a recent £300,000 payment to ACL by two former directors should be deducted from the total.

A Second Year in Exile

On the pitch, manager Steven Pressley somehow kept the team’s head above water last season. Despite the points deduction and playing in front of crowds that sometimes dipped below 2,000, Coventry finished eighteenth, four points clear of relegation. The team even flirted with the play-offs before tailing off.

Repeating that feat looks like a tall order. An exodus of players has begun, the latest being Callum Wilson’s £3m move to AFC Bournemouth. The timing may be a coincidence, but for any ambitious player, the prospect of playing in front of a handful of supporters was never going to be an enticing one.

The ultimate losers, as always, are the supporters of Coventry City. They face a second year in exile in Northampton while the legal cases rumble on. How many of the small number who followed the team last season will do so again is an open question, but it seems inconceivable that it will be many more than the pitiful number that did so before. With the owners on their destructive path and the Football League sitting on its hands, a happy resolution to this car crash of a football club feels more distant than ever.