Former Coventry City Chairman Bryan Richardson has said in an interview with the Coventry Telegraph's Simon Gilbert that the Ricoh Arena was his brainchild.
He said: “The Ricoh Arena was my brainchild. I did the deal with Tesco, we didn’t use any outside agents and I did that directly with the chairman of Tesco at the time.
“I sold that 30-acre piece of land at the time for £66.5million, well I don’t know where that money went after I’d gone. Somehow or other the stadium was no longer ours.
“My whole idea was that the stadium would be the future of Coventry City.
“I was demonised when I left, it’s well documented. People came up with all sorts of figures that we owed. Those figures I’m afraid were just put out by Geoffrey Robinson(a fellow board member at the time) and his crew.
“They were so ridiculous. If he thinks anybody, any bankers are going to loan Coventry City Football Club £50m or £60m, he’s mad.
“The highest ever bank overdraft was £8m. They can verify that with the reported accounts.
“It wasn’t about that, it was about people wanting to be chairman and do whatever they wanted to do.
“If we had held on then, we were nearly top of the Championship table at Christmas in 2001/02, if they had held their nerve I think we would have come straight back up.
“Would I have done anything differently? Yes, I wouldn’t have had some of those people on the board. They actually destroyed Coventry City Football Club.”
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