The Preservation Sky Blues Group have issued an open letter to Coventry City Council leader Ann Lucas.
The letter reads as follows:
Dear Mrs Lucas
I write to you on behalf of the recently formed PSB (Preservation Sky Blues). Our aim is simple. That being to do all we can as a group of lifelong Coventry City fans to ensure the preservation of OUR football club. A goal we are all firmly committed to.
Since our group formed at the start of year we have embarked on a series of protest events and other strategic initiatives with this objective in mind.
We have recently written to Coventry City Chairman Tim Fisher expressing our serious concerns about the way the club is being run. Detailing a complete lack of ambition and a catalogue of poor business decisions and wait to hear back from him.
I’d like to make clear at this point that like a vast number of fellow Sky Blues fans we feel that SISU’S time at the club has run its course and that we believe vehemently that if the club is to have any viable future these current owners need to sell up at the earliest opportunity.
All that said as chair of this group I feel now is an appropriate time to register our concerns at the part Coventry City Council has played in this debacle. We have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have been in touch since we formed offering their support and this clearly demonstrates that we have struck a chord with our actions. However many have urged us to be even handed in our approach which was always our intention anyway. In the coming days and weeks we will be making contact with Joy Seppalla and the Football League amongst others for further answers but for now there are a number of issues that I would like to raise with you as Council Leader.
Firstly the deal that saw Coventry City Council selling its interest in Arena Coventry Ltd to Wasps. For us as a group with wise ranging business interests this deal seems to have been brokered with seemingly indecent haste. Why was it pushed through so quickly? Was it not appropriate, when the outcome was inevitably going to have such a devastating effect not only to the Football Club owners but also the clubs supporters, to embark on some sort of consultation exercise with council tax payers ahead of the sale being agreed ?
You stated at the time of the sale that the deal was in the best interests of the people of Coventry. How can that be so? We’ll reserve judgement on the whole franchising debate, other than to say that there appears to be a faint whiff of hypocrisy coming from council headquarters when you and your officials were so outraged by the football club moving the Sky Blues out to Sixfields, but what concerns us more is the impact on Coventry City Football Club and of course Coventry Rugby Club.
We want nothing more than SISU out of this football club and out of this city. They have been an absolute disaster. Their employed tactics in going on a “rent strike” with the perceived aim of bankrupting ACL were despicable but we feel strongly that their departure from the scene would have been accelerated by uniting the club, in at least part, with the Ricoh to allow them a heightened chance of finding a potential buyer.
Can you therefore advise whether CCFC were at least offered the same opportunity to match the Wasps offer and if that wasn’t the case why not?
In business we all have to look at the big picture and have on a number of occasions had to “dance with the devil” to get a mutually beneficial result. We can all totally empathise that the council will not have wanted to deal with these people after the shocking way they’ve conducted their affairs but there appears to us be an element of spite in this decision which although understandable on a personal level isn’t in our opinion the way a city council should conduct its business.
We have been speaking to Coventry City fans for some time now and the overriding emotion we come across on a daily basis is a feeling of “hopelessness” about the future viability of the football club. The fact that the club do not own the stadium means the prospect of finding a potential buyer is going to be so much more difficult, not impossible, but unnecessarily challenging. Would it not have been within the City Councils gift to try and engineer a potential deal where the football club and Wasps shared the ownership of the Ricoh Arena? After all the stadium was surely built for the people of Coventry and Coventry City Football Club in particular.
We would really appreciate answers to these questions and look forward to hearing from you at your earliest opportunity.
I will finish by clarifying that it is our considered view that SISU have been the main culprits in this now tedious saga and in many ways are the undoubted architects of their own sad demise but we feel that Coventry City Council had a duty to do more to support the fans of Coventry City Football Club in helping to preserve OUR football club. An institution we care passionately about.
We feel the very least all supporters of CCFC deserve are honest answers from all sides involved in this desperately sorry situation.
Kind Regards
Group Chair
PSB
Preservation Sky Blues