Highfield Road - outsiders perspective (1 Viewer)

Nostalgia said:

Yeah my only visit, we arrived with a 5-1 lead and tried to throw it away but ended up holding on going all the way to the final....great times

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indeed, a great final too! but not the real one of course

Can people please get over it, its like saying "if I was 17 again", not gonna happen. :facepalm:

Nostalgia said:

Yeah my only visit, we arrived with a 5-1 lead and tried to throw it away but ended up holding on going all the way to the final....great times

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I suppose when we think things are really bad we could console ourselves by think we do not have Rafael Nuzzo in goal.

Coventry are one of the moving spirits of the Phoenix League. Their frenzied activity masks panic about their own financial position. It’s always struck me that the acting career of the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet was limited by the fact that there weren’t enough up-to-no-good twins around to portray. Once you’ve done the Krays, who else is there? Step forward Geoffrey Richmond and Bryan Richardson. True, they are not twins. Also true they are up*standing citizens, rather than criminal gang leaders. But they do have a certain physical resemblance – too many good meals in decent restaurants, one suspects – and they are also the joint architects of a rather rum scheme.
Both are short of cash. For Richardson, the chairman of Coventry City, that’s a bit of an understatement. His club are in debt to the tune of £60 million, of which £41 million is due for repayment in approximately five months’ time.

Richardson says these debts are “soft” loans and will not need to be repaid, but a man with a huge debt and who has sold his club’s ground without even starting to build a new one is undoubtedly a man in search of some money.
His Bradford counterpart has been a bit more frugal and wisely began his fire sale before the fire of relegation took hold, but even with Benito Car*bone (and his salary) overboard, he is also tempted by the prospect of the odd bob or too. Between them they have been the public champions of the Phoenix league – a Premiership II which would select by invitation rather than merit, hopes to invite Celtic and Rangers into their midst and wants a much more arms-length relationship with the hoi-polloi of the lower divisions than the current boring old Nationwide First Division.

To understand the Phoenix plan, you only have to look at its most vociferous advocates. By and large they are football’s Micawbers, gentlemen of middle rank who believe they are entitled to a certain status in life but have fallen on hard times and are waiting for something to turn up. Of the main protagonists, only Manchester City can be said to be in decent shape. Alongside them we have Sheffield Wednesday, who find they lack the financial clout to keep their stately home in order and Nottingham Forest, former champions of Europe, who now struggle to publish their accounts.

Coventry’s financial problems are daunting. Not only have Richardson and his board sold off one of the club’s most tangible assets – Highfield Road – but the site of the new stadium, already four years behind schedule, remains a wasteland. The club does not even own the site and sold all its interests in the project last year in return for a bail-out loan of £13 million – a debt which was passed off in the accounts as an asset. I’m no financial wizard but that seems to me like desperate business.

Not that Richardson himself will feel the chill wind of recession. Despite claiming repeatedly that the new stadium project was insulated from the club, and despite presiding over our first relegation for almost half a century, he has award*ed himself a £300,000 “bonus” for work he claims to have done on the new stadium. Over the past financial year he has also exercised a £80,000 loan facility provided by Coventry City Foot*ball Club.

Around a decade ago, Bryan Richardson inherited a club with debts of around £4.5 million and has managed to increase that 12-fold without having anything to show for it on or off the pitch. In the summer the board sold £27 million worth of players – John Hartson, Craig Bellamy, Moustapha Hadji, Chris Kirkland and John Aloisi among them – and spent around £7 million .

Gates have plummeted from over 20,000 in the Premiership to around 14,000 for recent home games and with another £20million of debt to pay off at the end of this financial year, financial survival rather than Premiership survival is now the preoccupation of most Sky Blues fans. It is a matter of desperation: if Coventry and clubs like them believe the Phoenix league can bring in more TV cash, then they are for it.

SISU are rubbish, there's no doubt about that, but imagine if you replaced the words Bryan Richardson with SISU or Onwe in the article below, the anti-SISU/SOCs heads would explode! SISU are bad, but we've had worse and our current situation was created by Bryan Richardson. SISU have had to pick up the pieces and they haven't made a very good job of it.

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December 2001.

Sky Blues fans have reacted angrily to Coventry City's latest accounts which show the club pounds 60 million in debt.

They are unhappy that the club's chairman received a bonus while the club was dropping from the Premiership into Nationwide League Division One.

The Sky Blues Supporters' Club said the accounts showed an "inevitable" debt of £59,613,661 but queried a payment awarded to club chairman Bryan Richardson.

Mr Richardson's renumeration package rose to £588,045 from £217,432 the previous year.

The amount included a bonus for the chairman's work in selling the shopping development on the Foleshill gas works site where the club hopes to build a new stadium.

But supporters were unhappy with the bonus - which had been awarded for work done in an earlier year - and said it was "crazy" they still had no stadium of their own.

John Haddon, secretary of the Sky Blues Supporters' Club, said: "I think its something that was inevitable - it was going to happen after their performance last year.

"It's absolutely ridiculous to have a bonus at a time when the club has been relegated and they're losing money as well.

"They've spent money on players when it wasn't their money but loans which they're going to have to pay back."

"We're down to earth people and are amazed at the amounts of money involved especially in Mr Richardson's case. Apparently he has a bonus from a retail development where none has occurred.

"I don't think he deserved a bonus in the year we were losing money and the team was relegated.

"We must be the only club in the league that doesn't have its own ground.

"The supporters here can't see any way out of this debt without some knight in shining armour coming along and buying Richardson out.

The club's annual general meeting takes place on December 21.


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Back to HR. I loved the place. Over the years I sat and stood at either end. Started off in the West End, like you do then went to stand next to the away fans on the East Terrace, back to the West End, on the Kop and finally in the new East Stand before we moved. I've seen some brilliant games; the 5-5 draw with Norwich, the 5-4 win against Forest. Anyone remember our first ever Sunday game? I think it was Brum at home and the result was 4-3, but I might just be making that bit up. A guy that works with me played at HR as he used to play in the lower leagues with Rotherham and Wigan and other grim northern teams, he said it was a great ground to play in.

I've seen some rubbish games too, the Anglo Scottish Cup game vs St Mirren (I think) and all those awful Full Members' Cup games, particularly the one against Millwall. Dreadful.

HR was much easier to get to, even with larger crowds, there was plenty of parking in streets and industrial parks, it was just a good atmosphere. I used to love the first game of the season, going from underneath the stands and seeing the pitch for the first time in the August sunshine. Great memories.

sly_old_fox said:

agree with your comment re: admin/local business's, the stadium was built for £30M which was borrowed from an American lender, who we couldn't then pay, so they took posession and we rented. I think we own it now

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Wasn't it Gary Lineker who stepped in and sorted that out? Regardless, administration tends to shaft people in the local economy which is why I'm glad we didn't resort to it.

shmmeee said:

HR was horrible to get to, devoid of atmosphere and horrible to watch games in.

Any other viewpoint is just nostalgia because we were in the Prem at the time IMO. I remember many a game in front of a silent 12k with a pillar blocking my view, my knees by my ears and talking an hour to get out and back to my car.

I wouldn't trade the Ricoh for HR in a million years.

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Probably the worst post I have ever read on here.

At times HR was much better than the Ricoh. At other times it was much worse.

I remember the 80's well. At one stage we were averaging 12,000 at the most. This was for top flight football. Some games you had to fight your way to the ground and then fight your way out. This was not a fault of the ground but of the times. A lot of games had no atmosphere. Relegation battle after relegation battle( of course until the late 80's) Going to games with 8k to 9k crowds. As said earlier, not always a good view. Queueing up to use stinking toilets. The west terrace was great most games though. Lots of noise and lots of banter most games.

I still miss HR. Think I will always miss HR. So many good memories. I think the good memories make me forget about the bad ones though. The last time I ever went to HR was after a fire above where the club was. Made me feel so sad. I know there is now an estate in place of the ground. I just don't want to look. Keep my memories how they are.

can we all just agree to call it the phoenix stadium? upton park is also known as the bolyne ground, they can sponsor things all the want but atleast the sports direct arena had an identity before and will probably always be known as st james's park, maybe we the fans should refer to it as something else, something that it can always be no matter how much the powers that be chop and change the name??? just a thought

classicfooty said:

can we all just agree to call it the phoenix stadium? upton park is also known as the bolyne ground, they can sponsor things all the want but atleast the sports direct arena had an identity before and will probably always be known as st james's park, maybe we the fans should refer to it as something else, something that it can always be no matter how much the powers that be chop and change the name??? just a thought

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What about Phoenix Way? That's the name of the road it's on. Beats a Japenese printing company anyway

phoenix way certainly has a good ring to it