Athletic Article - "Coventry City: no home, no stopping them" (1 Viewer)

skylark37

Well-Known Member
Part 1:

Coventry City: no home, no stopping them

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By Liam Twomey and Gregg Evans 1h ago
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Liverpool are not the only proud club to have an historic season halted by the coronavirus. With 10 matches left to play in League One, Coventry City sit top of the table with a five-point lead over Rotherham in the second automatic promotion spot. It is the first time they have led any division after Christmas since 1967 and Championship football looks a likely prospect again after an eight-year absence from English football’s second tier.

But the most remarkable — and slightly sad — fact about Coventry’s promotion push is that a large chunk of the club’s fanbase have not been there to see it. The decision to play this season’s “home” matches at St Andrew’s, home of Birmingham City and 23 miles from Coventry, has created a hard divide between those prepared to follow the team everywhere and those determined to boycott until the club returns to the city that bears its name.

Coventry drew an attendance of 6,534 fans for their season-opener against Southend at St Andrew’s in August — less than half the 13,549 who turned up for their final home match of the 2018-19 campaign against Shrewsbury Town at the Ricoh Arena in April. The numbers have grown steadily since, with the visit of Sunderland earlier this month watched by a crowd of 10,055, but a large chunk of the club’s support have been following the team’s success from afar.

“I refuse to go,” says Dave Eyles, chair of the Sky Blue Trust. “Coventry City should be playing in Coventry — it’s that simple.

“I’d estimate there are about 10,000 people who aren’t attending. We all want to be associated with a promotion push. The football on the pitch has been fantastic. Mark Robins has brought together a very good team and got them performing extraordinarily well, and hopefully we can get ourselves over the line (in League One). But the big thing for the fans is to make sure that, at some point in the very near future, we get ourselves back to Coventry and playing back in the city.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When they ended their 106-year stay at Highfield Road to move into the shiny new Ricoh Arena in the summer of 2005, Coventry hoped they were setting themselves up for a bright future. Capacity rose from just over 23,000 to a little under 32,000 but the seeds of their current predicament had already been sown. Relegation after 34 years in English football’s top flight in 2001 hit the club’s finances and jeopardised construction of the new stadium.

The city council stepped in to fund the project and Coventry eventually moved in as tenants rather than owners. Terms of the lease included a £1.3 million annual rent payment to the council while Coventry’s match-day revenues were limited to ticket and merchandising sales. The club’s brush with administration in 2007 brought in new owners, London-based hedge fund Sisu, but the on-field decline continued with relegation to League One in 2012.

Sisu sought to force a renegotiation with the city council by suspending rent payments for the Ricoh. When resulting discussions did not yield an agreement, they made the drastic decision to relocate Coventry to Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium — 34 miles away — for the 2013-14 season, prompting widespread boycotts as well as fan protests and marches against the owners.

Coventry returned to the Ricoh in the summer of 2014, shortly before the city council sold the stadium to Wasps Rugby Club for £21 million. The fallout from that deal continues to this day. Sisu made a formal complaint to the European Commission about the sale, arguing that the council undervalued the stadium operating company by £27 million. They have not been deterred by having their case thrown out by the UK Supreme Court last year.

Sisu’s ongoing legal action further complicated talks with the city council and Wasps about a new long-term rental agreement at the Ricoh Arena and last summer, Coventry left their home city for the second time in a decade, joining Birmingham at St Andrew’s. In a rare interview with Sky Sports News, Sisu director Joy Seppala called it “an absolute tragedy” and apologised to supporters but insisted “there are circumstances that are out of our control”.

Fan discontent can best be measured by contrasting Coventry’s relatively paltry home attendances with the fact that their away following remains one of the largest in the Football League. Winning has largely kept the tension bubbling just beneath the surface this season but it remains present enough in the minds of all parties to help create what Robins described to The Athletic in December as “probably the most unique set of circumstances in football”.


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skylark37

Well-Known Member
Part 2:

Playing in front of relatively sparse crowds has not prevented Coventry from making St Andrew’s a fortress — they have lost just one of 17 home matches in League One this season.

“At the start, it was a little bit strange but it’s the norm now,” club captain Liam Kelly tells The Athletic. “You can’t look for excuses. From day one, we said playing away from home wouldn’t be an excuse. You just need to get on and deal with whatever’s in front of you, and fair play to the staff and the fans who have travelled with us and tried to make the season a success.”

Coventry officials credit Birmingham with making them feel welcome and comfortable at St Andrew’s from the day they arrived. Training still takes place at Sky Blue Lodge in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, a village five miles southeast of Coventry, and many of the players live in Rugby or Leamington. They can still drive themselves to home games and the post-match dress code is more casual than the mandated suit-and-tie look at the Ricoh Arena.

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“Home” games for Coventry are often poorly attended
Hospitality staff are a combination of Birmingham and Coventry employees, as are the stewards. Anything bearing the Coventry name or crest has to be put up on the morning of each match-day and taken down before they leave St Andrew’s in the evening — but those at the club point out that it has been a similar situation at the Ricoh Arena ever since Wasps bought the ground.

One unexpected benefit of the St Andrew’s groundshare is that Coventry have been able to maximise the passing game implemented so effectively by Robins and his backroom staff on a surface not battered by frequent rugby union action. “The ground staff at Birmingham deserve a lot of credit,” Kelly adds. “The pitch has been fantastic this season considering there have been two football teams playing on it.

“I know at times last season, especially at this time of year, it became very hard to play the kind of football we want to play at the Ricoh with the rugby club playing there. The grass was long and bobbly. At Birmingham, it’s a proper football pitch, designed for football, and it allows us to play our game.”

Robins wants his team to build with the ball from defence to attack, and the level of control they exert on games is impressive; in addition to conceding just 30 goals in 34 games and keeping 14 clean sheets, they also give up the second-lowest number of shots (9.8) per game.

At the other end of the pitch, Coventry are good rather than great — their tally of 48 goals scored is bettered by the rest of League One’s top six teams. But it is the combination of the two that has made them very difficult to beat. They have drawn 13 of their 34 matches yet lost only three times. Coventry’s only defeat so far in 2020 came on penalties against Birmingham City in an FA Cup fourth-round replay — a dramatic finish to a bizarre tie that consisted of two matches played at St Andrew’s, with each team taking turns to enjoy the home dressing room.

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skylark37

Well-Known Member
Part 3:

Robins arrived too late to prevent Coventry’s on-field nadir in May 2017, suffering relegation to the fourth tier of English football for the first time since 1959. But the turnaround he has masterminded since has been very impressive: promotion back to League One via the playoffs in 2017-18 followed by an eighth-placed finish last season with one of the youngest squads in the division. Smart recruitment last summer turned them into genuine contenders this time around.

Kyle McFadzean, the only Coventry player over the age of 30, arrived on a free transfer from Burton Albion to anchor the meanest defence in League One while goalkeeper Marko Marosi also cost nothing from Doncaster. Callum O’Hare and Liam Walsh, on loan from Aston Villa and Bristol City respectively, have become key starters along with Fankaty Dabo, the Chelsea academy graduate persuaded to join by Adi Viveash, the former Cobham academy coach who is now Robins’ assistant.

There’s a steely determination to the squad Robins has built, along with a genuine camaraderie. “Not even because of the winning — because of the whole team,” Dabo tells The Athletic. “When I say that, I include the coaches and everyone who works at the club because it’s like a family. You don’t get that as much with other clubs.

“Usually, you go in the dressing room and there are a couple of players you maybe don’t see eye-to-eye with. But personally, here, I really enjoy everyone’s company and that’s a massive element for me. Without being happy, I can’t play as well, so it’s great.”

The players stay connected off the pitch as well as on it. Earlier this month, a group of them gathered at McFadzean’s house to watch the Saturday scores come in. Rotherham’s 1-1 draw at home to MK Dons offered Coventry the chance to go clear at the top of League One. The next day, Matty Godden scored within the first two minutes to ensure they did just that.

Planned novelty goal celebrations have also become a theme. Back in January, Jordan Shipley celebrated his seventh goal of the season against Doncaster Rovers by leading several team-mates in a coordinated wheel away towards the corner flag with arms outstretched to mimic the wings of an aeroplane. In the most recent win over Ipswich Town, Godden marked what proved to be the winner by light-heartedly bumping elbows with team-mates, referencing English football’s handshake ban.

Shipley, a Coventry fan favourite born in Leamington Spa and a key player under Robins earlier in the season, has fallen out of the starting XI in recent weeks — but that didn’t deter him from celebrating a hard-fought away win over Rochdale last month as wildly as anyone in front of the travelling supporters, having come on as a late substitute. Wins are soundtracked by “Sweet Caroline” in the dressing room, with Robins and all his coaching staff joining in the singing.

Team spirit, however, only takes a team so far. Robins reinforced his squad with real quality last summer, despite not having the resources of some of his League One rivals.

“It was upsetting to know that my time at Chelsea had come to an end, but that’s football,” Dabo, who was released by Chelsea last summer after loan spells at Swindon Town, Vitesse Arnhem and Sparta Rotterdam, adds when asked about his own decision to join Coventry. “I knew I’d be looking elsewhere and Adi (Viveash) texted me asking for my agent’s number, and it all flew from there.

“I spoke to the gaffer and he showed me the brand of football he wanted to play. Everyone always says they want to play an attractive style but I actually believed him when he said it to me. It made the choice a bit easier and now playing a bit easier because that’s how I was coached and brought up to play.”

While not a free-scoring team, Coventry have invariably been able to find goals when they have needed them largely thanks to Godden, acquired from Peterborough for an undisclosed six-figure sum. The 28-year-old has netted 14 times in 26 League One appearances this season, including back-to-back hat-tricks in 4-1 away wins over Wycombe Wanderers and Tranmere Rovers.

“Wycombe away was a big turning point —mentally, more than anything,” he tells The Athletic. “We hadn’t won away from home until then. They were top of the table at the time and we went there and managed to turn them over 4-1 away from home. That was probably the catalyst for this run.”

Godden has the air of a striker itching to make up for lost time. The first five years of his professional career were plagued by niggling injuries that prevented him from nailing down a regular starting spot at Scunthorpe United before he made the bold decision in 2014 to drop down to the Conference South and sign with Ebbsfleet United on a free transfer.

It proved the making of him. A 26-goal season in 2015-16 earned him a move back into the Football League with Stevenage before Peterborough and then Coventry came calling. “A lot of young players are happy with the status of being a Football League player and they’re not really doing anything in the game,” he adds. “They’re just sitting there and increasing their egos.

“But it was more than that for me. I wanted to get as much out of the game as I could. I had to drop down the levels and earn my way, and it’s the best decision I ever made.”

At the other end, McFadzean has been every bit as impactful. “He’s a vocal leader who wins everything in the air at the back,” Kelly says. “There are a lot of big, physical teams in this league who pile on a lot of pressure, and when you’ve got someone like him who can handle it and lead those around him – it’s been a massive factor in our success this year.”

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skylark37

Well-Known Member
Part 4: (Final)

Robins assembled this team in spite of Coventry’s considerable financial challenges. The club posted a marginal pre-tax profit of £69,916 in its most recent financial results, powered largely by a significant chunk of former midfielder James Maddison’s transfer from Norwich City to Leicester City, coupled with the sale of Marc McNulty to Reading. Sam McCallum has remained a regular starter since Norwich City agreed a deal worth up to £3 million to buy the defender in January before loaning him back for the rest of the season.

Even before the coronavirus shutdown raised huge, unforeseen financial questions across the Football League, it was clear that Coventry’s sustainability going forward would continue to be reliant on annual player sales — a need that only becomes more pressing the longer the club endures reduced match-day revenue from playing outside their home city.

“I’ve had to rebuild three times in less than three years,” Robins said in an interview with The Athletic in December. “We’ve had situations where we’ve had to sell players.

“We have to do it a different way. Coventry is a big club because of its fanbase. Potentially, we have an unbelievable fanbase. But the truth of it is we have 5,000 people watching us. That’s what we are at the moment. We have no home. We are out of our city playing in another city, being followed by 5,000 supporters — but the potential of this club knows no bounds. We have to take it back to Coventry and we have to do things the way we are.”

Robins signed a new contract with Coventry in October, one day after being approached to take over at Sunderland. He is not the only one tangibly committed to the club’s long-term revival; lifelong supporter and businessman Tom Overson has poured some of his personal wealth into improving Sky Blue Lodge, financing the construction of a new first-team changing room as well as covering the costs of new gym equipment, technology and general redecorating.

The stadium issue continues to loom largest, however, even if there is hope that Coventry’s nomadic recent existence can be ended sooner rather than later. Talks are ongoing over a new agreement to bring them back to the Ricoh Arena in time for 2020-21 but the club also have an option to extend their groundshare with Birmingham at St Andrew’s for another two seasons if required. Early season ticket sales had already been delayed before the coronavirus outbreak.

Visiting the Ricoh Arena website underlines the surreal nature of the current situation: in addition to scheduled performances by The Killers and Rammstein this summer, information can be found about the upcoming Residential Surveying Careers Fair and The Roofing, Cladding and Insulation Show — but not the city’s football team. Yet a statue of Jimmy Hill, the legendary Coventry manager who oversaw Division Three and Division Two title triumphs in the 1960s, still stands outside.

Sisu have repeatedly stated that their long-term aim is to build Coventry a new stadium within the city limits, and six possible sites have been shortlisted and approved by the EFL. Highfield Road is not among them; the site, in the Hillfields district close to the city centre, was redeveloped into housing after the original stadium was demolished. Back in 2016, talk of a groundshare with Coventry Rugby Club at a redeveloped Butts Park Arena was shot down by the club’s chairman Jon Sharp, who said he would not risk association with Sisu because they are “correctly or not, vilified within the city”.

Earlier this month, Seppala met with supporters and said she was “hopeful” of reaching an agreement to bring the club back to the Ricoh while longer-term stadium options are pursued, though many fans still don’t trust Sisu to act in the club’s best interests. “They’re a hedge fund,” Eyles says. “They make a habit of buying distressed assets and making money out of them.

“They’re making the right noises, saying that’s what they want, but we don’t even have planning permission for a stadium yet. The fans want to know what’s going on for next season. We’re told talks are ongoing with Wasps, but we don’t hear anything positive coming out of those meetings.
“There’s a real air of positivity on the pitch but it’s the off-field stuff we’re looking at. Whether it’s a long-term lease deal at the Ricoh while a new stadium is built or not, it’s got to be something.”

In many ways, Coventry City were a club on hold before the coronavirus outbreak, making the team’s rise under Robins this season all the more remarkable. They will keep waiting for the chance to finish what was set to be the club’s most successful league campaign in half a century — but returning home would be an even more cherished prize.

(Photos: Nigel French/EMPICS/PA Images via Getty Images)

 

chiefdave

Well-Known Member
No mention of the actual problem, basic factual errors and the only person they've bothered speaking to is someone who doesn't go. You'd think with no sport going on they'd have time to check these things.
 

Magwitch

Well-Known Member
I’m more concerned about our ground situation than the will we or won’t we go up due to this Coronavirus issue.
 

pipkin73

Well-Known Member
Just a thought, but with CRFC losing so much funding from the RFU (or whatever it is) and now from Covid 19 would they be open to new talks about sharing The Butts with us?
 

Liquid Gold

Well-Known Member
Basic research missed again. The only sticking point keeping us away from the city ignored. The sky blue trust using media to push their agenda. A full house of shit as usual.
 

Liquid Gold

Well-Known Member
Just a thought, but with CRFC losing so much funding from the RFU (or whatever it is) and now from Covid 19 would they be open to new talks about sharing The Butts with us?
The council wouldn’t give them permission to redevelop the ground unless they could change the covenant to ban professional football.

something else missed from the article.
 

clint van damme

Well-Known Member
I know it’s unlikely, I know there are roadblocks, and I know there is a lack of will on both sides. But wouldn’t that be the ultimate? You could fit a 25k ground in there and what a location. The two proper Coventry sports teams together while Wasps go to rack and ruin.

I don't think you could.

And why would the rugby club want to when they have plans for other commercial developments on the site and onlybget crowds of a few thousand ?
The second phase of the retirement village is well on the way to been completed now, there's no way the Butts is a realistic option
 

Philosorapter

Well-Known Member
Isn't there a limit on the amount of time they can stay at Broadstreet.

I am sure in the original application to the controlling council that the move would be temporary with the site being changed back to how it was originally.

London Wasps moved there in the summer of 2016.

This is starting to look like anything but temporary.
 

Gynnsthetonic

Well-Known Member
I know it’s unlikely, I know there are roadblocks, and I know there is a lack of will on both sides. But wouldn’t that be the ultimate? You could fit a 25k ground in there and what a location. The two proper Coventry sports teams together while Wasps go to rack and ruin.
Pitch could be sunk down loads and a new pitch laid, don't think the covenant exists. Ample parking in town.
 

Sky_Blue_Dreamer

Well-Known Member
Pitch could be sunk down loads and a new pitch laid, don't think the covenant exists. Ample parking in town.

I think sinking the pitch further could be a big drainage issue. Usually loads of standing water around that area after it rains.
 

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