So what will be the outcome? (1 Viewer)

Persistent stalemate !! I can see a new flower meadow being muted, they're all the rage at the moment. Maybe they could open up the concourses for the homeless if the weather gets bad?!

OyJimmy said:

Curious to see what fans think will happen. My view on it is that a deal for the Ricoh is not achievable largely because Sisu would need to buy out Higgs, the council and probably take on a shed load of debt.

So in those circumstances I think Sisu will look for a new ground to play in and hopefully the council will now facilitate a move in Coventry. However it could still take us 5 years to get a new stadium built.



As for ACL they clearly need a tenant and realistically the best option in business terms is probably to buy Nuneaton football club and move it to Coventry. No football fan likes to see clubs uprooted like that but I can't see any other option for ACL.

What does everyone else predict? I'm coming at this from a business point of view as I think ultimately that's what will drive all of this now

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Won't building a new stadium take on shed loads of debt?

To me SISUE will still try their best to get the freehold of the Ricoh with all existing contracts cancelled. But this would lose CCC millions so it won't happen. I can see it goin on until they exhaust their JR effort. I also can't see them going for plan A which was building a tinpot stadium outside Coventry. They know that the odds are stacked against them getting the freehold on their terms for what they are willing to pay. Yet they have not taken the build plans any further than showing us a few pictures.

The last time I remember Timothy saying anything was when he said they could come to a rental agreement. This would be the cheapest option and also give them the biggest return. The only problem is that Timothy don't bluster So to save face they might move him on. Lobotomy seems to have taken over from him recently even though he don't seem to be doing a good job of it.

I've got a hunch Joy gave herself 3 years. I reckon if a Ricoh deal isn't done by the end of next season she'll put us into admin.

shmmeee said:

I've got a hunch Joy gave herself 3 years. I reckon if a Ricoh deal isn't done by the end of next season she'll put us into admin.

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That don't make sense to me. All debts are to SISUE or whatever they call themselves. Admin/liquidation makes sense like last time where they got rid of everything they didn't want like the rental agreement, tax bill and whatever else they got rid of. But the club itself?

They have not lost money in our club yet. They are investing it and also putting up what the club owe in management fees. They will only have made a loss when they leave and not get their money back. They would make money by taking a rental agreement and running us on a shoestring like they do now. Admin/liquidation would lose them a lot of money unless they have another tax bill or whatever to get rid of.

Astute said:

That don't make sense to me. All debts are to SISUE or whatever they call themselves. Admin/liquidation makes sense like last time where they got rid of everything they didn't want like the rental agreement, tax bill and whatever else they got rid of. But the club itself?

They have not lost money in our club yet. They are investing it and also putting up what the club owe in management fees. They will only have made a loss when they leave and not get their money back. They would make money by taking a rental agreement and running us on a shoestring like they do now. Admin/liquidation would lose them a lot of money unless they have another tax bill or whatever to get rid of.

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It may be admin after a rental deal, but I think that's her cut off.

Like I say just a hunch.

Astute said:

That don't make sense to me. All debts are to SISUE or whatever they call themselves. Admin/liquidation makes sense like last time where they got rid of everything they didn't want like the rental agreement, tax bill and whatever else they got rid of. But the club itself?

They have not lost money in our club yet. They are investing it and also putting up what the club owe in management fees. They will only have made a loss when they leave and not get their money back. They would make money by taking a rental agreement and running us on a shoestring like they do now. Admin/liquidation would lose them a lot of money unless they have another tax bill or whatever to get rid of.

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If their plan was to run us on the smallest budget possible, attempting to break even while paying interest to themselves and taking management fees (which would be a valid way to get their money back if it's possible) then we wouldn't be in Northampton now, they would have taken one of the last ditch deals or at least the recent offer to play for free (other than costs) this season and next. Thing is it's probably not possible to run at break even while paying the interest and management fees, and it's certainly not possible to do it in northampton.

OyJimmy said:

Curious to see what fans think will happen. My view on it is that a deal for the Ricoh is not achievable largely because Sisu would need to buy out Higgs, the council and probably take on a shed load of debt.

So in those circumstances I think Sisu will look for a new ground to play in and hopefully the council will now facilitate a move in Coventry. However it could still take us 5 years to get a new stadium built.

As for ACL they clearly need a tenant and realistically the best option in business terms is probably to buy Nuneaton football club and move it to Coventry. No football fan likes to see clubs uprooted like that but I can't see any other option for ACL.

What does everyone else predict? I'm coming at this from a business point of view as I think ultimately that's what will drive all of this now

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There is absolutely no way ACL are going to buy Nuneaton football club and move it in, having a tenant is probably important to them but doing this almost certainly loses more money than it brings in.

I don't believe that sisu will build a new stadium, it's throwing good money after bad, I don't believe they will try to franchise us and move us somewhere else, I'm sure they are pig sick of owning a football club and certainly won't be interesting in building one up over time in a new location.

There is no way SISU are going to buy the freehold of the ricoh without leases, they won't be interested with leases, so sisu aren't going to be buying the freehold.

The only thing that makes sence to me is sisu either believe they can win the JR, bankrupt ACL and then buy the freehold without ACL or at least they believe the small percentage chance of this happening is worth the extra year of losses, because leaving now it's a likely loss of tens of millions. There doesn't seem to be any other way of recouping even 10% of what they say they have invested and it only gets worse the longer they stay.

Nothing will be resolved until the JR has been put to bed. SISU need to win it to enable them to negotiate for the arena. From their point of view the fact that the council bailed out ACL means they can not by the stadium unencumbered. If they had bought the debt and acquired ACL then they would have been able to theoretically control the contracts at the Ricoh as they would have been sitting tenants. Their angle will be the fact that the council used public money to block a commercial deal which is against the rules, this has also forced them to only be able to get a freehold for the stadium on match days. I am no lover of SISU, they make hard headed business decisions based on a return not on what's necessarily the best action for the club, but the more you look into the murky dealings over the Ricoh itself the more you see what the council has acquired on the cheap and expect a premium return for. SISU bluster over a new stadium is a smoke screen, it looks like its the only probable way of applying any kind of pressure on the council to try and resolve the situation before going to court. The council has a set formula to sell what is classed as a public asset, your between the devil and the deep blue sea in their position. The one thing that genuinely does make me think is what regeneration has gone on in that part of the city since the Ricoh was built and what income does the tax payer of Coventry benefit from it other than the interest on the loan it has with ACL? This is going to run for another 18 months at least.

Sorry, can you clarify "the council has acquired on the cheap and expected a premium return for"?

Noggin said:

If their plan was to run us on the smallest budget possible, attempting to break even while paying interest to themselves and taking management fees (which would be a valid way to get their money back if it's possible) then we wouldn't be in Northampton now, they would have taken one of the last ditch deals or at least the recent offer to play for free (other than costs) this season and next. Thing is it's probably not possible to run at break even while paying the interest and management fees, and it's certainly not possible to do it in northampton.



There is absolutely no way ACL are going to buy Nuneaton football club and move it in, having a tenant is probably important to them but doing this almost certainly loses more money than it brings in.

I don't believe that sisu will build a new stadium, it's throwing good money after bad, I don't believe they will try to franchise us and move us somewhere else, I'm sure they are pig sick of owning a football club and certainly won't be interesting in building one up over time in a new location.

There is no way SISU are going to buy the freehold of the ricoh without leases, they won't be interested with leases, so sisu aren't going to be buying the freehold.

The only thing that makes sence to me is sisu either believe they can win the JR, bankrupt ACL and then buy the freehold without ACL or at least they believe the small percentage chance of this happening is worth the extra year of losses, because leaving now it's a likely loss of tens of millions.

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And if you would have read my recent posts you will have seen that I have been saying that they are going to go as far as they can trying to get the freehold. And whilst the JR is in process they still have a chance......however slim the chance is. But once they run out of ideas on how to do it they would then look at an agreement to return to the Ricoh on a rental agreement. You say that after management fees and interest payments makes it harder to make a profit. These fees go to them. It is not as though these fees go elsewhere. Admin/liquidation could bring to an end all of these payments as well as lose them money already invested.

To be fair non of it makes sense but everything that Sisu have done is just amazingly so....

Who really knows what the final scenario will be not sure they know themselves.

They have both (ACL/CCFC) dig a hole and only one will survive maybe even none...

Astute said:

That don't make sense to me. All debts are to SISUE or whatever they call themselves. Admin/liquidation makes sense like last time where they got rid of everything they didn't want like the rental agreement, tax bill and whatever else they got rid of. But the club itself?

They have not lost money in our club yet. They are investing it and also putting up what the club owe in management fees. They will only have made a loss when they leave and not get their money back. They would make money by taking a rental agreement and running us on a shoestring like they do now. Admin/liquidation would lose them a lot of money unless they have another tax bill or whatever to get rid of.

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Astute said:

And if you would have read my recent posts you will have seen that I have been saying that they are going to go as far as they can trying to get the freehold. And whilst the JR is in process they still have a chance......however slim the chance is. But once they run out of ideas on how to do it they would then look at an agreement to return to the Ricoh on a rental agreement. You say that after management fees and interest payments makes it harder to make a profit. These fees go to them. It is not as though these fees go elsewhere. Admin/liquidation could bring to an end all of these payments as well as lose them money already invested.

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I know the management fees and interest go to them, I'm saying I don't think it's possible to run the club at breakeven at all, certainly not in northampton and to do so while taking a couple of mill out of the club in order to get their money back (which is what you were suggesting) just isn't possible and if it was what they are doing is now extremely harmful to doing that. What they have done was also very likely to have ended in relegation making this plan even less possible, (they have got lucky and it probably won't now this season).

So while I completely understand the idea and if possible it's a very valid way to get their money back I don't think this is their plan because so many of their actions have worked against this.

How can you acquire something on the cheap when you already own it???

Senior Vick from Alicante said:

Nothing will be resolved until the JR has been put to bed. SISU need to win it to enable them to negotiate for the arena. From their point of view the fact that the council bailed out ACL means they can not by the stadium unencumbered. If they had bought the debt and acquired ACL then they would have been able to theoretically control the contracts at the Ricoh as they would have been sitting tenants. Their angle will be the fact that the council used public money to block a commercial deal which is against the rules, this has also forced them to only be able to get a freehold for the stadium on match days. I am no lover of SISU, they make hard headed business decisions based on a return not on what's necessarily the best action for the club, but the more you look into the murky dealings over the Ricoh itself the more you see what the council has acquired on the cheap and expect a premium return for. SISU bluster over a new stadium is a smoke screen, it looks like its the only probable way of applying any kind of pressure on the council to try and resolve the situation before going to court. The council has a set formula to sell what is classed as a public asset, your between the devil and the deep blue sea in their position. The one thing that genuinely does make me think is what regeneration has gone on in that part of the city since the Ricoh was built and what income does the tax payer of Coventry benefit from it other than the interest on the loan it has with ACL? This is going to run for another 18 months at least.

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shmmeee said:

Sorry, can you clarify "the council has acquired on the cheap and expected a premium return for"?

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If you read the other post on what Paul Fletcher wrote, and I do take it with a pinch of salt, he indicated the sale of 35 acres to Tesco netted them 62.5 million. With no accurate build figure involved, this is only known to the council and will probably become public knowledge the JR, it would have to be a significant amount more than the 42.5 million net in build costs to have cost the tax payer significantly. He also stated that the council were not allowed to share any of that profit with the club because of state aid implications, now call me stupid but you can not tell me that whom ever was running the council at the time was not aware of this when entering into negotiation with club, Fletcher suggests that they would have been.

Senior Vick from Alicante said:

If you read the other post on what Paul Fletcher wrote, and I do take it with a pinch of salt, he indicated the sale of 35 acres to Tesco netted them 62.5 million. With no accurate build figure involved, this is only known to the council and will probably become public knowledge the JR, it would have to be a significant amount more than the 42.5 million net in build costs to have cost the tax payer significantly. He also stated that the council were not allowed to share any of that profit with the club because of state aid implications, now call me stupid but you can not tell me that whom ever was running the council at the time was not aware of this when entering into negotiation with club, Fletcher suggests that they would have been.

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It is known, all of that money, every single penny of it, was spent on building the Arena. There is a publicly available council document on it..

There is a deal ... but the bloody mindedness of parties ... that will be the stubbling block.

I have said this before, but we are all assuming SISU are the only game in town wishing to buy the freehold. Whether this is correct or not I would say none of us know for sure.

Therefore, if the JR goes against the CCC (which I don't actually believe will happen) that would mean that ACL would be directed to repay the loan. In this scenario, don't we all think that the CCC and or ACL are looking at how they could raise that funding. Any sale of whatever form would go out to the open market which may (or may not) attract other investors.

They surely don't have their heads in the sand - 'moving on' means planning for this (JR) eventuality while securing future revenue streams without CCFC.

Noggin said:

I know the management fees and interest go to them, I'm saying I don't think it's possible to run the club at breakeven at all, certainly not in northampton and to do so while taking a couple of mill out of the club in order to get their money back (which is what you were suggesting) just isn't possible and if it was what they are doing is now extremely harmful to doing that. What they have done was also very likely to have ended in relegation making this plan even less possible, (they have got lucky and it probably won't now this season).

So while I completely understand the idea and if possible it's a very valid way to get their money back I don't think this is their plan because so many of their actions have worked against this.

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It is about plan Z. As we all know many plans have already failed.

To me if they can't get the freehold for peanuts they don't have much choice other than liquidating our whole club and getting hardly anything back, sell to someone when they won't get much back or as I said earlier run us on a shoestring on a low rent at the Ricoh. IIRC they are charging management fees of about 2.5m and interest payments of about 1.5m. This is how our debt owed to them has gone up so quickly. So if we went back to the Ricoh we could get 15,000 paying an average of only a tenner. £150,000 a game. So with cup games they would get at least 4m a season. Then you have TV rights and more. So if they made 3m a season profit it would pay for most of what they charge the club. But the debt keeps on going up whilst they keep taking money out.

The main problems we had before was they offered average to poor players big money and on top of that we had the massive management charges. Yet it was all blamed on the high rent. Yes the rent should have been lower but so should the management fees. They wouldn't take too long to get back their approx 25m to 30m they put in. But we would be stuck with them for years.

runner said:

There is a deal ... but the bloody mindedness of parties ... that will be the stubbling block.

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Bloody mindlessness of not accepting rent free then 100k a season? Of course they won't take our club back whilst they think the massive pot of gold in the Ricoh could still happen.

Astute said:

It is about plan Z. As we all know many plans have already failed.

To me if they can't get the freehold for peanuts they don't have much choice other than liquidating our whole club and getting hardly anything back, sell to someone when they won't get much back or as I said earlier run us on a shoestring on a low rent at the Ricoh. IIRC they are charging management fees of about 2.5m and interest payments of about 1.5m. This is how our debt owed to them has gone up so quickly. So if we went back to the Ricoh we could get 15,000 paying an average of only a tenner. £150,000 a game. So with cup games they would get at least 4m a season. Then you have TV rights and more. So if they made 3m a season profit it would pay for most of what they charge the club. But the debt keeps on going up whilst they keep taking money out.

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Like I said though if that is their plan then we'd be back at the ricoh already. I also don't belive they can make three mill a season profit, if they could then this plan Z would have been plan A. In fact I don't belive they can break even before you take into account the interest and management fees and they certainly can't do it now they have alienated so many fans, chased away most the sponsors, ruined merchandising sales etc.

Noggin said:

Like I said though if that is their plan then we'd be back at the ricoh already. I also don't belive they can make three mill a season profit, if they could then this plan Z would have been plan A. In fact I don't belive they can break even before you take into account the interest and management fees and they certainly can't do it now they have alienated so many fans, chased away most the sponsors, ruined merchandising sales etc.

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No they wouldn't take our club back whilst attempting to get the freehold. Full stop. That is why they took it away to start with. And the return from their investment they would be getting about whilst paying most of the charges put on our club would be about 10%. They would be happy with this instead of losing just about everything.

skybluebal said:

I have said this before, but we are all assuming SISU are the only game in town wishing to buy the freehold. Whether this is correct or not I would say none of us know for sure.

Therefore, if the JR goes against the CCC (which I don't actually believe will happen) that would mean that ACL would be directed to repay the loan. In this scenario, don't we all think that the CCC and or ACL are looking at how they could raise that funding. Any sale of whatever form would go out to the open market which may (or may not) attract other investors.

They surely don't have their heads in the sand - 'moving on' means planning for this (JR) eventuality while securing future revenue streams without CCFC.

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Unless ACL make a substantial loss in their next accounts and can't show decent business projections based on enquiries and actual bookings they'll be able to obtain finance to cover swapping the loan to another source. They'll just have to pay more interest.. but maybe they can extend the payback period to keep repayments to manageable levels... anyway any prospective lender is going to have full accounts to assess the risk.

Captain Dart said:

Unless ACL make a substantial loss in their next accounts and can't show decent business projections based on enquiries and actual bookings they'll be able to obtain finance to cover swapping the loan to another source. They'll just have to pay more interest.. but maybe they can extend the payback period to keep repayments to manageable levels... anyway any prospective lender is going to have full accounts to assess the risk.

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This is where the JR plan falls apart. First SISU need to win it, think they're going to have a very difficult case to prove. Then the court needs to rule that ACL have to pay back the loan, even if the court finds in favour of SISU it's far from a forgone conclusion the loan will have to be paid back and paid back in one lump sum. Then on top of all that ACL have to be unable to get funding from any other source. After all that SISU then need to be the only people interested in purchasing the lease.

It needs all of those things to line up for SISU to even have a chance of getting the outcome they appear to desire, ie: getting the Ricoh on the cheap. Seems unlikely.