Coventry City

[remember arthur mann]

Never seen that before. Think you can hear the City fans singing 'Alan Ball, ha, ha, ha!' after the penalty miss. Karma :-(

Yes, but the year after, while goading the same AB, he scored a twenty odd yard volley over Harry Dowd (?) All the 6' 6" broken nose scouse dockers " Ok lads altogether now Alan Ball ha,ha,ha" !

 

[petrusha]

Good read this post. Respect for the effort put into writing it.

Thanks. I used to do a lot of posts like that but mainly lack the time now. As I said, I had a very slack morning at work and nothing better to do but if it interested someone, that's good.:)

One of the faces in the crowd was Harry Cross from Brookside, at least 3 clips with him in, the last one smoking a fag

Off topic and completely useless knowledge, but Harry Cross in Brookside was played by an actor who went by the name Bill Dean. According to Wiki, his real name was Patrick Connolly but he took his stage name in honour of 'Dixie' Dean, whose first name was William: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Dean

 

[Mad Eyed Screamer]

Thanks. I used to do a lot of posts like that but mainly lack the time now. As I said, I had a very slack morning at work and nothing better to do but if it interested someone, that's good.:)



Off topic and completely useless knowledge, but Harry Cross in Brookside was played by an actor who went by the name Bill Dean. According to Wiki, his real name was Patrick Connolly but he took his stage name in honour of 'Dixie' Dean, whose first name was William: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Dean

He also ran the chip shop in Kes and was on a roller coaster in the video for the Farm's Groovy Train

 

[cheekybids]

Been excrutiatingly bored at work this morning, with nothing at all for me to do for the first time in months. I appreciate what it says about me that, in such circumstances, I chose to spend my time coming up with a pointless 1,300-word hypothesis of how a 2007 takeover of City by Ray Ranson and SISU might have turned out.

There's an important difference between us and Coventry in relation to the conditions on which each of us leased our stadium. City originally paid a variable rent that depended on attendances but have always been a managing tenant, meaning that we keep all revenues from the use of the stadium. Cov paid a fixed rent of around GBP 1 million a year, IIRC, but received no proceeds from the use of the stadium beyond their gate receipts. I don't think they even had access to non-ticket revenues on a match day from catering and similar. That was relevant to the attitude SISU took towards the rent dispute, although I do agree that their behaviour has been scandalous.

The thing is, just because their tenure at Coventry has been so disastrous, I'm not convinced that we can say they'd have run us into the ground had Thaksin not appeared in 2007 and had John Wardle overcome his implacable operation to doing a deal with SISU and Ray Ranson. SISU/Ranson had tried to buy Villa before that and they later went for Southampton and Derby before picking up Coventry when administration looked a certainty. The plan was for SISU to lend the acquired club money so that it could improve its performance, get some of its money back from the interest repayments and consultancy fees, see Ranson improve commercial performance, and then realise a healthy profit after 4 or 5 years by selling the club on at a substantially increased value.

As far as I can tell, Ranson ran the club neither notably well nor conspicuously badly in the period up to his resignation. However, the issue was that the plan could have worked at Coventry only had they won promotion to the PL, but they didn't and never came close. Basically, as a result, SISU saw their investment turn into something of a disaster and alighted on an alternative idea for rescuing it. This involved getting control of the stadium on the cheap by in effect blackmailing the landlords, then profiting from all the events that took place there. The venue has an indoor arena incorporated into it and I think it does quite well for conferences and the like, while it hosts a fair number of stadium concerts and other sporting events. This plan was thwarted from left field by a rugby club from the Home Counties unforeseeably buying the stadium; SISU had bargained on being the only game in town.

As for MCFC, I believe the SISU plan might have had a chance of working in the circumstances we were in at the time. In 2007, we were in the top seven of the PL for turnover (behind only then-perennial CL qualifiers United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, plus Spurs and Newcastle, but ahead of Villa, Everton and West Ham). Yet the entirety of the club’s shares was sold that year for GBP 21 million, with GBP 25.5 million of director loans (including accrued interest) being assigned to the buyer for only GBP 17.5 million. For a top-third revenue generator in the world’s most popular domestic sporting competition, that seems a surprisingly meagre valuation, and to increase the value of the club for an onward sale would have been an entirely feasible proposition. This was all the more true given the anticipated rise in TV rights for PL games, which of course has come to pass in spectacular fashion.

To compare, despite the club’s debts having spiralled in his year in control, Thaksin on his departure made an estimated total profit of at least GBP 30 million on the sale of his shares and assignment of the Makin/Wardle director loans (unlike his predecessors, the Thai didn’t take a hit on those). The crucial thing was that City were in the Prem already. We’d been running a high wage bill but with a low transfer spend over the preceding seasons, the received wisdom being that there’s a strong correlation between wages paid and league position; however, we’d underperformed significantly based on that indicator. Fundamentally, we were poorly managed, especially in Stuart Pearce’s two seasons, but with a good manager, the finances were in place (at least after the sale of Shaun Wight-Phillips) to support a reasonably successful team and fund the payments to SISU that would have been required.

So would the replacement for the departed Pearce have fitted that bill? I believe that Ranson had an agreement with Sam Allardyce that would have seen the Bolton manager move to East Manchester had the SISU takeover ever come to pass. Instead, Allardyce (incidentally, I wonder if anything interesting has happened to him more recently?) moved to Newcastle. However, in a parallel reality in which Big Sam pitched up at Eastlands, I believe that he could have done quite well. People will suggest that the football would have been turgid, but I’d contend that, had he emulated what he did at Bolton, he’d have been regarded very highly by most Blues. After all, he’d reached a domestic cup final in his time there (we hadn’t for over a quarter of a century), qualified for the UEFA Cup on merit (ditto), and the functional nature of his side was supplemented by genuine flair in the form of players like Okocha and Djorkaeff.

Had all this come to pass, IMO we’d have been very attractive prospect for those looking to take over a club in a PL increasingly awash with cash, so I view as an entirely realistic prospect an eventual takeover that would have been lucrative for SISU in line with their model. And, in that event, City fans would probably have viewed them as owners who, while undoubtedly motivated by the pursuit of their own financial ends, had left the club in a far better state than they found it in.

But could we ever have ended up with ADUG even with a SISU takeover in 2007? The proposition that Thaksin’s identity as owner was decisive in the ADUG takeover of 2008 seems to me to rest on several principal points, the following among them: firstly, our international profile was lifted greatly during the Thai’s year in charge; secondly, City director Pairoj Piempongsant, Thaksin’s aide, had significant contacts in the UAE which proved beneficial in the deal; thirdly, the persuasiveness of Thaksin’s appointee Garry Cook is widely acknowledged to have been highly lubricious; and fourthly, Thaksin’s own personal situation dictated that he had to try to sell in August 2008.

However, I believe that City had core attributes which, in ADUG’s view, made us a fundamentally more suitable option for them than the other English clubs they looked at. As a result, I believe that Ranson’s City might well have caught their interest and that he might have got a deal done on tyerms acceptable to SISU. Frankly, my view is less sanguine with regard to any alternative scenario where Wardle soldiered on without Makin (as, I believe, was the outgoing chairman’s non-Thaksin contingency). I’m afraid I just don’t rate Alistair Mackintosh and am not convinced that he’d have got us over the line, while I think it would have been a very hard season on the pitch and that might also have coloured matters.

I acknowledge that this view of a potential SISU takeover at City is very much a best-case scenario, and things may very well not have happened in this way. Nor am I seeking to excuse SISU for the utterly reprehensible way they’ve run things at Coventry. I just think that it’s not quite so black and white that SISU for City would have been an inevitable catastrophe. IMO, their model had the potential to work in certain circumstances, and those were lacking in the West Midlands but stood at least some chance of coming to pass at Eastlands from 2007 onwards.

Fascinating read that, thanks for your efforts.

After reading it did a wiki search on Ransom as I met him in early 90s as he tried to do a sales pitch on his new venture of laundry for Sunday league teams, was aghast that he was then bidding for our club a few years later.

Anyway it didn't take long on wiki to see he was in business with Peter ridsdale with a player transfer lease back company then after looking at ridsdale you see the links with a certain Italian agent called Piña.

I wondered why people who seem to fail in football ownership are always attracted to return.

 

[idahoblues]

6000 there Tuesday night so they can stick their 20K signatures where the sun doesn't shine.
They are going the same way as Stockport County - bought out and shafted by a rugby union club and being second class citizens in their own home and town.

However, as someone who spent my teen years living in the concrete jungle known as Cov, I shed no tears..... long may their derby be against Nuneaton and Bedworth United.

have my sympathies my friend, I hate Coventry City (not even the football team) an awful place

 

[kas_tippler]

No sympathy, remember them being dicks in the FA Cup at Maine Road?

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Never seen that before. Think you can hear the City fans singing 'Alan Ball, ha, ha, ha!' after the penalty miss. Karma :-(

He had his revenge on us for that though......

 

[manclad]

No sympathy, remember them being dicks in the FA Cup at Maine Road?

The Goat was fed from a corner,and the Coventry fans kicked off in the North Stand. Wankers.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Thanks. I used to do a lot of posts like that but mainly lack the time now. As I said, I had a very slack morning at work and nothing better to do but if it interested someone, that's good.:)

As ever it was a great post Peter and you're pretty well right. It's still intriguing though that both clubs weren't owners of their grounds and I can't help feeling that this played some part in SISU's interest.

 

[petrusha]

Fascinating read that, thanks for your efforts.

After reading it did a wiki search on Ransom as I met him in early 90s as he tried to do a sales pitch on his new venture of laundry for Sunday league teams, was aghast that he was then bidding for our club a few years later.

Anyway it didn't take long on wiki to see he was in business with Peter ridsdale with a player transfer lease back company then after looking at ridsdale you see the links with a certain Italian agent called Piña.

I wondered why people who seem to fail in football ownership are always attracted to return.

I've never met him and some of what I've heard from people who have has been less than complimentary. Nothing too scandalous - just that when you talk to him, you may form the impression that he isn't quite of the calibre you want from a person running MCFC. That's hearsay and could be unfair, but whether it's fair or not, the model at Cov was always going to be basically a gamble on winning promotion.

As ever it was a great post Peter and you're pretty well right. It's still intriguing though that both clubs weren't owners of their grounds and I can't help feeling that this played some part in SISU's interest.

I suppose it could be more than a coincidence that they went fortwio clubs in a similar position. Maybe they did have plans for our ground as well.

As for Cov's current position, it's difficult to see a way out for them. I think they could well end up being liquidated. I haven't seen any discussion of what might happen in that event, but if I were involved in their fans' group, I'd be thinking of contingency plans for a fan-owned phoenix club to start out in either Conference North or maybe even the Conference National itself.

IIRC, the plans were for Pompey to start at Conference National level playing at Havant & Waterlooville had they been liquidated a few years back when in the Prem - there are (were?) no rules on this, and it's just a question of what league accepts you. If the worst happened, Cov would probably be the best supported club since Leeds City/United* to have been in the position of setting up a phoenix, so could probably expect to start higher than any of the others (Halifax, Chester, Darlington etc).

I believe Coventry rugby club has a ground of 3,000 seats which is a single stand down the other side of the pitch. With temporary stands around the rest, you could probably get a venue with a decent capacity for a new Coventry club at least to start off at.

* - Apologies if I've forgotten one.