Reddit room R/Soccer now has a great post on Coventry and it's at the top of the subreddit Soccer. Some great comments on there from Gooners. Reddit has also used a picture of the Cov fans for the banner of the day!
Here is the original post located at
http://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1w2zuf/thank_you/
Just wanted to say a quick thank you to the mods of /r/soccer for their use of the image of our fans protesting at last night's Arsenal game on the front page of the sub-reddit. It's obviously an important issue to us fans, and the more publicity it gets the better. So yeah, thank you for sharing the image for those who didn't catch the game tonight and drawing attention to the issue, times like this when we need the wider footballing communities support, and thankfully we seem to be getting it.
EDIT: For those who don't know the reason for the protest I'll post a quick summary here.
Coventry City Football Club were purchased by Finnish hedge-fund SISU in 2007, saving the club from the brink of administration. For the first year or so of SISU's ownership things were going ok, we signed some decent quality players and seemed to have a squad capable of challenging for promotion, or at least a respectable position in the Championship (2nd tier of English football), but due to some poor managerial appointments (Chris Coleman, Aidy Boothroyd) we failed to really live up to the potential of the squad.
After a few poor finishes some of the better players started to leave, as can be expected with a lower Championship club but the problem was that we'd often just let players contracts run out, meaning they'd go for nothing when they could have been worth over £1m while still in contract. Replacements were brought in on reasonable wages and just failed to live up to the expectation until finally in the 2011/12 season, after letting something like 15 players go in the summer, and bringing only 3 in with two of those being goalkeepers, Coventry were relegated to League One under the management of ex-Chief Scout, Andy Thorn. Thorn was basically installed as manager because he was cheap and already working at the club, despite having no managerial experience. SISU also sold the club's top goalscorer for the season, Lukas Jutkiewicz, in the January transfer window, failing to provide the funds to replace him.
Last season, during our first season in League One, it emerged that SISU had decided to stop paying the rent on our stadium, the Ricoh Arena. They said that the rent of £1.2m per year was way too high for a club of our stature, and refused to pay until it was lowered. SISU were offered the stadium on a rent deal believed to be around 250K a year (I'm not sure on this, it was a while back now) but they rejected it due to lack of any match day income in the deal. After negotiations broke down SISU begun the process of entering Coventry City Ltd into administration. At this point the club was separated into two parts, and the part that was put into administration contained the lease for the Ricoh Arena. This resulted in Coventry receiving a 10 point deduction, and grinding our season a halt.
Over the summer SISU filled for liquidation of Coventry City Ltd, cutting all ties to Ricoh lease meaning we have absolutely no right to be there. However it was also determined that Coventry City Ltd also contained the Golden Share which is required to be part of the Football League. The Football League granted SISU permission to move the Golden Share to the other part of the football club to avoid the club disappearing completely but this resulted in another 10 points deduction for the beginning of the current season. The liquidation process also meant that the club had to be sold by the administrator, but the preferred bidder was a company named Otium, who basically are just SISU, meaning we were effectively sold back to the people that got us into this mess.
Without the Ricoh to play in Coventry now play their "home" matches at Northampton Town's Sixfields Stadium, which holds around a quarter of the capacity of the Ricoh Arena, and is located 35 miles away from the Ricoh Arena.
TL;DR: Coventry City play their home games 35 miles out of the city of Coventry over £1.2m rent and the stubbornness of both the owners and the local council.
Here is the original post located at
http://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1w2zuf/thank_you/
Just wanted to say a quick thank you to the mods of /r/soccer for their use of the image of our fans protesting at last night's Arsenal game on the front page of the sub-reddit. It's obviously an important issue to us fans, and the more publicity it gets the better. So yeah, thank you for sharing the image for those who didn't catch the game tonight and drawing attention to the issue, times like this when we need the wider footballing communities support, and thankfully we seem to be getting it.
EDIT: For those who don't know the reason for the protest I'll post a quick summary here.
Coventry City Football Club were purchased by Finnish hedge-fund SISU in 2007, saving the club from the brink of administration. For the first year or so of SISU's ownership things were going ok, we signed some decent quality players and seemed to have a squad capable of challenging for promotion, or at least a respectable position in the Championship (2nd tier of English football), but due to some poor managerial appointments (Chris Coleman, Aidy Boothroyd) we failed to really live up to the potential of the squad.
After a few poor finishes some of the better players started to leave, as can be expected with a lower Championship club but the problem was that we'd often just let players contracts run out, meaning they'd go for nothing when they could have been worth over £1m while still in contract. Replacements were brought in on reasonable wages and just failed to live up to the expectation until finally in the 2011/12 season, after letting something like 15 players go in the summer, and bringing only 3 in with two of those being goalkeepers, Coventry were relegated to League One under the management of ex-Chief Scout, Andy Thorn. Thorn was basically installed as manager because he was cheap and already working at the club, despite having no managerial experience. SISU also sold the club's top goalscorer for the season, Lukas Jutkiewicz, in the January transfer window, failing to provide the funds to replace him.
Last season, during our first season in League One, it emerged that SISU had decided to stop paying the rent on our stadium, the Ricoh Arena. They said that the rent of £1.2m per year was way too high for a club of our stature, and refused to pay until it was lowered. SISU were offered the stadium on a rent deal believed to be around 250K a year (I'm not sure on this, it was a while back now) but they rejected it due to lack of any match day income in the deal. After negotiations broke down SISU begun the process of entering Coventry City Ltd into administration. At this point the club was separated into two parts, and the part that was put into administration contained the lease for the Ricoh Arena. This resulted in Coventry receiving a 10 point deduction, and grinding our season a halt.
Over the summer SISU filled for liquidation of Coventry City Ltd, cutting all ties to Ricoh lease meaning we have absolutely no right to be there. However it was also determined that Coventry City Ltd also contained the Golden Share which is required to be part of the Football League. The Football League granted SISU permission to move the Golden Share to the other part of the football club to avoid the club disappearing completely but this resulted in another 10 points deduction for the beginning of the current season. The liquidation process also meant that the club had to be sold by the administrator, but the preferred bidder was a company named Otium, who basically are just SISU, meaning we were effectively sold back to the people that got us into this mess.
Without the Ricoh to play in Coventry now play their "home" matches at Northampton Town's Sixfields Stadium, which holds around a quarter of the capacity of the Ricoh Arena, and is located 35 miles away from the Ricoh Arena.
TL;DR: Coventry City play their home games 35 miles out of the city of Coventry over £1.2m rent and the stubbornness of both the owners and the local council.
Also, just a note about the City fans on there - they are all handling the situation and attention well and being very good representatives of our fans, which is awesome.