Coventry City losing £80,000 a week

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COVENTRY CITY are forecasting that they will lose £4million this financial year.

Despite the Sky Blues takeover by Ray Ranson and SISU Capital, it is estimated that the club are still losing somewhere in the region of £70-80,000 a week, although that has been slashed by a half from about £150,000 a week over recent months.

That is a hangover from the previous regime which Ranson and his Sky Blue Sports and Leisure Ltd group are trying to address with a series of initiatives, including the merging of the football club staff with Ricoh Arena personnel ahead of the club buying a stake in the stadium.

The club's set of recently-published latest set of accounts - the last of the Geoffrey Robinson era - reveal the club's debts reached a crippling £29million during the year ending May 2007. That rose to £38million by the time the takeover went through in December last year.

However, those debts were either paid off or written off at the time of the takeover, but the club is still losing money because of the wage bill and lack of revenue from the stadium.

"These accounts show what a financial mess the club was in and hopefully the fans appreciate the work we are doing to put things back on a financially secure basis," said chairman Ray Ranson, "but we are still forecasting to lose several million pounds next year."

The figure of £29 million for 2007 was an increase of £2.8 million on the previous year and came despite making £4 million profit from selling players (primarily Gary McSheffrey), but also caused by a 40 per cent increase in staff and player cost and a 30 per cent increase in administration costs.

Interestingly, the club's directors at the time increased their pay 286 per cent during the year from £143,000 to almost £555,000.

That was the period in which Paul Fletcher, Mal Brannigan and Ken Sharp became directors of the club.

Sharp is set to link up with the club's former finance director Mal Brannigan at Derby County.

He will leave the Ricoh Arena next week and take up a consultancy post at Pride Park as well as other clubs.

His contract was due to run out at the end of this year.

MAIN points from the Coventry City accounts from May 2006-May 2007, before Ray Ranson's SISU-backed takeover.
TURNOVER up to £7,699,064 (£7,561,467 in 2006)
OPERATING LOSS up to £6,274,554 (£2,358,558 in 2006)
PROFIT ON SALE OF PLAYERS up to £4,079,319 (£76,572 in 2006)
MATCH RECEIPTS down to £5,311,248 (£5,391,011 in 2006)
WAGES up to £7,369,580 (£5,273,769 in 2006)
TOTAL DEBT up to £29,197,500 (£26,355,357)

Jun 4 2008 By Andy Turner Coventry Evening Telegraph

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'Interestingly, the club's directors at the time increased their pay 286 per cent during the year from £143,000 to almost £555,000'


And Coventry were losing how much a week and they get a pay rise...perhaps we now understand why these guys buy into football, certainly not for the love of the game, or pride in their city thats for sure.