Coventry City FC (The Bantams, Sky Blues)

I was hoping to see a signature, but not to be

Telegraph. In a word... Cobblers!

Sadly the issue of "administration" within the football industry takes advantage of very loose UK business laws which permit firms to change name and sell you the item you previously paid for - but not yet collected - once again! As such, those who provided the club a service are defrauded by a company that clearly had no intention of paying their bill. The Ricoh and the managing agent together with the council seem to fall into this category. The administrator, Appleton, represents a profession which should put safeguards into the system to ensure a fair outcome for all. To the untrained eye, he seems to be complicient with what could well be a policy to avoid paying the creditors. Well, selling a company in administration to another company within the same group is pushing it a bit isn't it. Clearly legal but surely not morally correct. Perhaps the law should be trained to ensure that the administrators are representing all parties, not just the company, or in this case, seemingly the companies involved. Of course, there could be tax implications too which might just be to our advantage. Will the owners sell on once the debt has been reduced by the administration process. Time will tell. What might be more important, given the involvement in the Council in all this - they are likely to be one of the loosers in this process - is that planning permission for a new stadium is not seen to be in the public interest, given that the area will be left with the Ricoh. Whether the Ricoh would survive anyway is something I cannot answer. Council, voters and tax payers - over to you...............................................................

This disaster goes from bad to worse. But I did predict earlier in the thread that Sisu would gerrymander the administration process, and the ludicrous figures released by Appleton about how much each bit of Sisu owes the others just confirms what a bunch of crooks and shysters we are dealing with. None of their 'plans' make any sense at all. The fanbase will be tiny if they play at Sixfields, so they will have almost no income. They claim to be building a new stadium but they have no land, no plans, and of course no planning permission. The only salvation will be for the Football League to rule them not fit and proper owners and to reject Appleton's report. But nobody is holding their breath on that one. I said earlier that I feared the worst. That has not changed one bit!

The Football Supporters Federation has joined forces with Sky Blue Fans in the effort to keep" Coventry in Coventry". I now hope ACL have the bottle to turn down the offer of 25.9p in the pound. According to the administrator the Club will be put into liquidation if ACL say NO. This would mean the end of Sisu and Coventry could start again to build a future for itself. The Club has little in the way of saleable assets - they might get small fees for two or three players, but either way Sisu's own stupidity will have cost them dear. It's high time the Football League stepped in and told sisu they are not FIT & PROPER people to own a Football Club. Tony, I liked your Joke earlier, Still laughing.

Hi all, If this was not such a serious issue for our city, it could well pan-out as a pantomime plot. The sad fact is that the wellbeing feeling, that many in the UK had following the Olympics last year, and also yesterday when a 77 year famine came to an end at Wimbledon, is passing Coventry by, as we can't even run a football club. What for me stands out in all of this Sky Blue scenario, whatever the rights or wrongs, is the simple fact that with any business, the most important aspect is the customer, which is why I believe that the present management, unless they change, could not run so much as a paper bag! All of the focus should be on the customer for any business to succeed. It appears that the management here are not only NOT focussed on their customers, they are NOT even looking. That sums them up to me, more than anything else, why they are, and will remain, a total failure unless they change. I have not got a clue about football, or the complexities of their particular management agenda, but I did study the principles of business and accounts and it is the principles that are missing here. So, whilst this game of "Boardroom Dallas" goes on, our Coventry loyal football fans are cheated out of what should have been an exciting start to a new season.

The £1k assets is misleading though. Otium have never registered a set of accounts, so the only known transaction that has taken place is the issue of the shares upon incorporation. I bet the £1k relates to 1,000 £1 shares. Since then it could have obtained millions of pounds worth of assets via trading (unlikely) and/or raised further capital from various means (SISU loans more than likely) etc. But without the accounts this hasn't been officially recorded yet. When/if Otium submit their accounts in order to get the embargo lifted, expect the assets to be in the millions.

Agree in principle with your view's on Otium's financial status because they are just another Sisu Co. However this does not justify why Sisu and all it's associated companies are allowed to break criminal law and not post accounts. Why are they not prosecuted? If they had criminal convictions registered against them they could not be deemed FIT & PROPER by the F L to run a football club. Sisu have no interest in football clubs, just in property & land, to this end I hope the misguided chairman of Northampton Town FC is aware of this because there is land around their stadium awaiting development.

I used to work in accounting, and to be honest it's not overly uncommon for accounts to be filed slightly late for even small companies, although obviously it's avoided if at all possible purely due to avoid the penalty fines for doing so. There can be numerous things go wrong. It's a very minor offence and is a fine. It'd be like being sent to prison and given a criminal record for a parking ticket really, or anyone who didn't file their tax return on time (which would be millions of people going to prison every February!). When you get into something as complex as the SISU structure it's a nightmare - inter-company accounts can take an age to sort through (especially when said companies have been, lax, shall we say, in their recording) and as companies become bigger the reporting requirements become more strict, with management accounts and greater disclosure required under the FRS. At this stage SISU are obviously taking the absolute mickey and will be picking up huge fines but I doubt you'd ever see a person prosecuted criminally for it. Usually they'd just say they'll strike the company from the record, but even then it can be years. I remember one person who came in and asked for his accounts for his new company to be done and then wasn't heard from for five years. We just assumed the businesses never took off as we couldn't get hold of him then all of a sudden he turns up with a car full of boxes with five years worth of records (in no order whatsoever) saying he'd had a letter they were going to wipe the company if they didn't get any accounts registered so he thought he'd better get the records looked at. He genuinely thought he only needed to do accounts if HMRC specifically wrote asking to see them! He got quite a bill (although was remarkably prompt from then on in)!

It's been announced this morning that Joe Elliott has resigned as life-president of the club. A sad day.

I suppose so, but to be honest 'Uncle Joe' has to take just as much blame as anyone else in this mess. He's been the only person on the boards of Richardson, Mcginnity, Robinson and SISU at one time or another. He was the chairman that sold to SISU and encouraged all fans to give their shares to them for nothing. Yet during none of those times has he managed to stop the clear mismanagement of this club despite being in a position of power and authority to do so. If he felt that strongly about it I'm sure he could release all kind of information on what's gone on. It would involve breaking confidentiality clauses but when things have got to this stage and you're against an opponent who clearly thinks very little of contractual obligations what have you got to lose?

I agree - and perhaps now he's resigned he will open up (if he really does have any feelings for CCFC and its followers/fans/supporters)

I don't think you can hang "blame" round Joe Elliott's neck. There was NO option at the time but to hand over to SISU, they were the only ones who had stepped forward to save us from going straight down the pan - to say it is his fault is pretty harsh. His backing of the "handover" was purely to prevent his beloved club from going to the wall. I disagree, When has he been in any sort of "powerful" position as to have much of a say in any of the inner workings as far as management of the clubs finances and running of the club? He was used and abused by SISU just like a lot of others.

I agree that JE had little option with SISU (other than admin which now seems a more preferable option) But JE has had a huge amount of power and influence at the club for the best part of two decades. He has been in the boardroom or had access to those people in it for a vast majority of that time, making him part of the 'inner circle', including access to financial and confidential data. He's had plenty of power. Philip has said there are many questions to be answered over the running of CCFC for the past 15 years or more, and in that time the longest boardroom presence has been JE. While on the board he didn't question the sale of HR by Richardson for what seemed like a pathetic sum, nor the hugely expensive lease back agreement on it (for the same price we paid for the Ricoh). Neither did he question BR paying himself a salary that made him the highest paid Chairman in the Premier league at the time, or the sensibility of selling a stadium before a new one had even been started. In those cases you have to question either his judgement as he believed all of these things were the correct thing to do, or his effectiveness as a director by making his fears and objections known, essentially making him a yes man (and possibly answering why he has remained on the board for so long - he refused to rock the boat, even when it was sinking fast). Now I think JE is a massive CCFC fan and wants the best for the club. I appreciate he has given his time, without salary, for many years to the club and used his contacts to try and raise finance for the club. But there are thousands of others who would happily do so. It does not mean they would make a decent job of it. I just don't see his loss as being particularly bad. If you look at the state of the club when he joined the boardroom and when he left, it's fortunes both on the field and financially had taken an alarming step backwards.

It wasn't quite the "FA Cup" turnout, but none the less, it was pretty impressive. There were far more people than I think the organisers expected! The crowds started to gather on Gosford Green around 12:00 midday This is Mr John Harrison. He has been a Coventry City season ticket holder for 49 years - and in that time has only missed 10 home games!! Some of the banners were very impressive By the time the march reached Broadgate there must have been four or five thousand supporters - who were even joined by fans from AFC Wimbledon, who went through a similar process to the one we are facing, and showed their support. Bob Ainsworth MP and Nikki Sinclaire MEP also addressed the crowd