Sisu mortgage training ground to keep Coventry City afloat

[dutchman]

New evidence has emerged about the extent of Coventry City’s financial plight with the discovery that the club has taken out a mortgage on its training ground to raise cash to help cover running costs.



The Sky Blues secured a loan for what the Coventry Telegraph understands to be in the region of £1 million on what was the only freehold property owned by the club in July last year, to provide capital to help pay the bills and offset their annual losses of more than £4m.

Records at Companies House show that City took out a mortgage with Swynson Ltd on July 27 for their ten to 15-acre Ryton training facility.

The news comes in the wake of Ray Ranson’s resignation as executive chairman after becoming increasingly disillusioned with club owners Sisu who he feels have failed to give him the tools to build a promotion winning team, having sold off key players Scott Dann – now believed to be worth in the region of £8m – and Danny Fox to raise in the region of £5m and not re-investing that in the squad.

The sale of Academy star Conor Thomas to Liverpool for a quick-fix £1m was the last straw for Ranson who wanted to keep the teenager who is expected to be worth several million in the future.

Although Sisu have invested upwards of £25m since saving the club from administration in 2007 – including a £500,000 facelift of the training ground in 2008 – and continue to pay the wages, they are desperately looking for fresh investment to avoid having to continue to throw good money after bad at a club whose revenue streams are limited to ticket sales, sponsorship and merchandising due to the fact that it doesn’t own the Ricoh Arena.

To that end, some bills have not been paid, including to their official coach firm Harry Shaw, as of last week.

And as exclusively revealed by the Telegraph yesterday, in his first interview since resigning as vice-chairman, high-flying banker and life-long fan Gary Hoffman is also actively looking for a new owner to take over the club and buy the stadium.

The club has been hit with a transfer ban by the Football League and is currently a month overdue in submitting accounts to Companies House.

City acquired the old mining gravel pit site at Ryton in the early 1960s when the club’s then property consultant Harvey Williams identified it for visionary manager Jimmy Hill who wanted the players to train away from Highfield Road.

After Hill and then chairman Derrick Robins invited the owner, Alderman Featherstone-Dilke, to a match they came to an agreement to buy the then 25 acre plot – which included the land where the Sky Blue Connexion sports centre now stands – for £10,000 to be paid at £1,000 a year for ten years with no interest.

Then when Hill returned as chairman in 1980 he decided to develop the site further and the club gained a Duke of Edinburgh grant to build the sports centre, which was later sold by chairman John Poynton for just under £100,000 because it was losing too much money, but the club kept the remaining land including the Sky Blue Lodge which is City’s current training ground.