Coventry City Council have Failed CCFC (1 Viewer)

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

Please note: This is NOT a pro SISU thread. I fully acknowledge SISU's many catastrophic mistakes and deplore them. I also acknowledge that one of those mistakes was in not renegotiating the rental deal following due diligence. Having said that, when it became clear that the club would not survive under the existing agreement, CCC should have been instructing ACL (I'm sure the Higgs Charity would have agreed to this) to restructure its business model in favour of the club thus allowing it to maintain it's tenancy and avoiding the eventual situation of the club (rightly or wrongly) withholding rent. I realize that I am inviting accusations of naivety (its just business - would you expect your landlord to knock your door offering a rent reduction, etc etc) but this was not a normal tenant/landlord relationship. The club is not just a business, it is a huge part of our community and loved by thousands. CCC is not just a landlord it is a democratically elected body with a responsibility to its community and its electorate. CCC should have been doing all it could to enable the club to move forward as was its duty. In neglecting to do so it has failed its community, the people of Coventry and the club, costing the city many millions of pounds in the process. At best they stood by, did nothing and watched the club implode, at worst they refused/ignored requests from the club for help.
In my opinion this amounts to dereliction of duty.

bigfatronssba · Mar 9, 2014

The council offered lower rent 3 to 4 times.
What else should they have done?

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

What a load of **** Sisu have plenty of money, they decided not to spend it on the rent, even when it was reduced, end of story

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

bigfatronssba said:
The council offered lower rent 3 to 4 times.
What else should they have done?

More recently yes, after relations had broken down and the club was crippled.

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

jan87 said:
What a load of **** Sisu have plenty of money, they decided not to spend it on the rent, even when it was reduced, end of story

A very very simplistic view

dongonzalos · Mar 9, 2014

Is it so wrong to be proud of the council/ACL
for the actions they have taken so far.

Firstly the council saving the Ricoh deal when it was about to fail.
Then offering the club a sliding scale rent dependant on league and attendances which was rejected.

If the rumours are true after years of regression under SISU when faced with owners not paying their bills. Making an attempt to take the situation head on that hopefully would have led to new owners.

Then standing up to an administration process that was in their opinion flaws. Surely the easy thing to do would be accept the administration decision. Getting the money back and not looking like the bad guy when the points deduction occurs. Instead they stood their ground protesting against a flawed process.

Despite all this and lots of provocation they have made various offers to get the club back. Including a temporary rent free offer.

Now with all this pressure surely the easiest thing to do would be to crumble to whatever SISU demand. Yet they are still prepared to fight it out and not be bullied by a moraless hedge fund.

Some of their decisions have affected me personally in a negative way, yet I can't help taking my hat off to them and feel proud that little Coventry Council and a local charity are prepared to take on a global hedge fund.

Yes I do believe you can have it all support your team, support your council and do not want your clubs owners to stick around.

bigfatronssba · Mar 9, 2014

Samo said:
More recently yes, after relations had broken down and the club was crippled.

The finances of Coventry city fc are not the responsibility of the council.

End of.

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

I fail to see how the council is to blame for all this. Sisu only has one plan, that is to get the Ricoh for next to nothing

ryb1983ccfc · Mar 9, 2014

You are a failure in life

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

Maybe bit it is true

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

bigfatronssba said:
The finances of Coventry city fc are not the responsibility of the council.

End of.

No, but they do have a responsibility to the community and the people

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

Who are you referring to?

diggerdaley · Mar 9, 2014

What rent should a Championship club with reasonable crowds, have been paying then.

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

You know nothing about me

dongonzalos · Mar 9, 2014

The football club rejected a sliding scale rent in the first place
Then rejected a approx 650k rent
Then rejected a 400k one
Then rejected a 150k one

Proud of the council, the charity, the fans, the manager and players

Disgusted by our owners

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

jan87 said:
You know nothing about me

I think he meant me. But he knows nothing about me either.

chiefdave · Mar 9, 2014

Samo said:
More recently yes, after relations had broken down and the club was crippled.

This argument only really works if the rental amount could be shown to be the cause of our problems but looking at the accounts it clearly isn't. Look at % of income spent on wages! look at the cost of interest payments. Even if the rent had been zero we would still have tens of millions of debt, are the council responsible for all that debt?

It has been clearly demonstrated over and over again that we would be far better off accepting ACLs 3 year offer than playing at Sixfields yet SISU refuse to even consider it, how is that the councils fault?

You can't rewrite history so given where we are today what offer do you think should be made to SISU? ACL have offered a very competitive deal, Higgs agreed to sell their stake to SISU and CCC have said they will consider any serious offer for their stake or for the freehold. Unless your suggesting CCC pay off all the existing contracts and hand everything over for nothing what more can they do?

Bennets Afro · Mar 9, 2014

I agree with the OP. ACL had already bankrupted the club once and refused to reduce the rent when asked before Sisu even took over. They then tried to put the club into administration over a rent strike that was agreed between both CCFC and ACL to stress the mortgage to pay it off at a reduced rate.

All will be revealed in court and I can't wait for it all to come out

stupot07 · Mar 9, 2014

Can we please stop banging on the about the sliding scale rent we've never seen the details to. Sounds good, but we don't know the detail, we can assume it still would have been £1.2-1.3m in the championship anyway which was way too much. For all we know (and non of us do) it could have been

Championship £1.2-1.3m
PL £2.m
League one £1m
League two £800k.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - so please excuse any spelling or grammar errors

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

chiefdave said:
This argument only really works if the rental amount could be shown to be the cause of our problems but looking at the accounts it clearly isn't. Look at % of income spent on wages! look at the cost of interest payments. Even if the rent had been zero we would still have tens of millions of debt, are the council responsible for all that debt?

It has been clearly demonstrated over and over again that we would be far better off accepting ACLs 3 year offer than playing at Sixfields yet SISU refuse to even consider it, how is that the councils fault?

You can't rewrite history so given where we are today what offer do you think should be made to SISU? ACL have offered a very competitive deal, Higgs agreed to sell their stake to SISU and CCC have said they will consider any serious offer for their stake or for the freehold. Unless your suggesting CCC pay off all the existing contracts and hand everything over for nothing what more can they do?

I'm not suggesting they do anything, just that they should have done more.

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

Bennets Afro said:
I agree with the OP. ACL had already bankrupted the club once and refused to reduce the rent when asked before Sisu even took over. They then tried to put the club into administration over a rent strike that was agreed between both CCFC and ACL to stress the mortgage to pay it off at a reduced rate.

All will be revealed in court and I can't wait for it all to come out

Got inside info have you?

dongonzalos · Mar 9, 2014

Who posted that Jan?

I can't see the original post

Bennets Afro · Mar 9, 2014

I have seen documents that back this up yes

covmark · Mar 9, 2014

Samo said:
Please note: This is NOT a pro SISU thread. I fully acknowledge SISU's many catastrophic mistakes and deplore them. I also acknowledge that one of those mistakes was in not renegotiating the rental deal following due diligence. Having said that, when it became clear that the club would not survive under the existing agreement, CCC should have been instructing ACL (I'm sure the Higgs Charity would have agreed to this) to restructure its business model in favour of the club thus allowing it to maintain it's tenancy and avoiding the eventual situation of the club (rightly or wrongly) withholding rent. I realize that I am inviting accusations of naivety (its just business - would you expect your landlord to knock your door offering a rent reduction, etc etc) but this was not a normal tenant/landlord relationship. The club is not just a business, it is a huge part of our community and loved by thousands. CCC is not just a landlord it is a democratically elected body with a responsibility to its community and its electorate. CCC should have been doing all it could to enable the club to move forward as was its duty. In neglecting to do so it has failed its community, the people of Coventry and the club, costing the city many millions of pounds in the process. At best they stood by, did nothing and watched the club implode, at worst they refused/ignored requests from the club for help.
In my opinion this amounts to dereliction of duty.

Great post. No surprise to see the usual "we should be proud of the council/ACL" crap.
No one should feel proud of this bullshit situation.

chiefdave · Mar 9, 2014

stupot07 said:
Can we please stop banging on the about the sliding scale rent we've never seen the details to. Sounds good, but we don't know the detail, we can assume it still would have been £1.2-1.3m in the championship anyway which was way too much.

Given that you've said we've never seen the details how can you assume it would have been £1.2-£1.3m in the championship?

tisza · Mar 9, 2014

Samo said:
No, but they do have a responsibility to the community and the people

The 10000 who might go to the Ricoh or the other 290000 that don't?

jan87 · Mar 9, 2014

Bennets Afro said:
I have seen documents that back this up yes

Are these documents in the public domain?

Samo · Mar 9, 2014

tisza said:
The 10000 who might go to the Ricoh or the other 290000 that don't?

The 25-30,000 that might now be attending if both parties had done their fucking jobs properly!

stupot07 · Mar 9, 2014

chiefdave said:
Given that you've said we've never seen the details how can you assume it would have been £1.2-£1.3m in the championship?

Because that was the level we were paying, given that the generally argument people give for us having to pay such high rent is that ACL needed it to ensure they could pay the mortgage, I can only assume that the championship rent would have remained the same, if not why didn't they charge us lower rent in the championship regardless?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - so please excuse any spelling or grammar errors

dongonzalos · Mar 9, 2014

Bennets Afro said:
I agree with the OP. ACL had already bankrupted the club once and refused to reduce the rent when asked before Sisu even took over. They then tried to put the club into administration over a rent strike that was agreed between both CCFC and ACL to stress the mortgage to pay it off at a reduced rate.

All will be revealed in court and I can't wait for it all to come out

Why can't you wait for it to come out?

What do you think will be achieved?

dongonzalos · Mar 9, 2014

Bennets Afro said:
I have seen documents that back this up yes

I am sure you will say you can't say. However I assume only SISU's senior management. Their legal advisors and the PA's would have seen such documentation.

Under what circumstances would you see it?

Mr T - Sukka! · Mar 9, 2014

Leading to all this mess.

Did CCC force CCFC to sell HR? NO.

Did CCFC have proper funding in place to 100% own and build a new stadium prior to leaving HR? NO.

Did CCFC sell off income streams at the Ricoh? Yes.

I think people need to look in house and how CCFC was run before SISU arrived. And how it has been managed since.

shy_tall_knight · Mar 9, 2014

SISU bought the club in Dec 2007 only 2 and a bit seasons into the Ricoh move, Paul Fletcher and Co had made it clear to ACL that the club's finances just weren't sustainable, I'm sure that had SISU not come into the game then ACL would have re-negotiated but the arrrival of the hedge fund boasting that they were going to invest and were prepared to suffer operational losses - then ACL had no reason to change their charging structure why would they ?.

Had SISU made saving the club was conditional on reduced rents plus access to other income then ACL may have negotiated or dismissed their request. It is totally unacceptable not to challenge the rent etc.. during their due diligence and then to being it up 4/5 years down the line. Had reduced rents etc.. been on the table then maybe other potential buyers would have been at the table.

SkyBlue_Bear83 · Mar 9, 2014

dongonzalos said:
The football club rejected a sliding scale rent in the first place
Then rejected a approx 650k rent
Then rejected a 400k one
Then rejected a 150k one

Proud of the council, the charity, the fans, the manager and players

Disgusted by our owners

Ridiculous, the only people to have come out of this with any credit are the manager and the players.

ccfc92 · Mar 9, 2014

never really understood this "ACL extorting CCFC with rent" argument.

If a landlord sets a rent per month/year and there is a tenant willing to pay that amount, how is the landlord being extortionate?

If ACL kept raising the rent etc then fair enough, but if someone is willing to pay you a certain amount of money then you don't question it surely?

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