For a few years now, Cov City have been owned by a secretive hedge fund called Sisu. Their probable agenda has been reduction of the wage bill and to force the owners of the Ricoh to sell this, the major asset, to them. I say probable because Sisu have never made a credible pronouncement about their running of the club.
To the 1st end, most of the quality players got sold off, which unsurprisingly led to relegation, and a big drop in gates, though the supporters would still be there if there was anything worth watching, as evidenced by the huge turnout for the Johnston's Paint Trophy final (really a semi=final in normal terms). There was also the turnaround in form under Mark Robins, but he quit as he was privy to a fair bit more info about the club's future than the general public.
To the 2nd end, last season Sisu simply stop paying the rent, running up a debt of over £1m. The stadium's owners, ACL (partly the council and partly a sports charity called the John Higgs Trust, who bailed out the stadium's financing when the club's previous owners fucked it up completely), in desperation threatened to put the club into administration. Sisu responded by putting CCFC Ltd into administration themselves, partly because they could then appoint their own administrator, and partly because they'd already transferred all assets to another company, CCFC Holdings. The administrator recently sold off CCFC Ltd to his preferred bidder, a company called Otium Entertainment, with a very tarnished record. Turns out they're owned by, guess who, Sisu.
If that wasn't bent enough, Sisu acquired the club for virtually nothing a few years back, with the guys then running it, Ray Ranson and Ken Dulieu, claiming the only alternative was administration and liquidation (amazingly, an awful lot of clubs go into admin without getting liquidated). Ken Dulieu just happens to be a director of Otium Entertainment. Just after Sisu took the club over, they announced they'd paid off all the club's debts. This season, the debts mysteriously became £40m, mostly owing to a Sisu subsidiary, Arvo, based in the Caymans. Anyone with an interest in tax avoidance sagas will have alarm bells ringing just at that! Around the time of admin, the debt to Arvo was suddenly £70m (though I think they're claiming £40m again now).
And then there have been the transfer embargoes for the club being late to file its accounts 2 seasons running. An organisation as rich and powerful as Sisu can't get adequate accountancy in place for a normal run-of-the-mill operation such as that? Far be it from me to suggest that something murky could be going on.
What really got people going was when it was first announced the club will no longer be playing in Coventry, the chairman, a loathsome Sisu hireling called Tim Fisher, announced they would also be taking the Jimmy Hill statue and the Wall Of Remembrance. He seems to have been surprised at the anger it generated and backed down! Fisher is also a director of Otium.
're
This isn't a story of poor, unfortunate Coventry City, it's about a ruthless hedgefund destroying a community's culture as part of an asset grab.
There's tons more of this shit gone on, but i think I've covered all the most horrific points.
