It has emerged that SISU, the owners of Coventry City Football Club, have re-mortgaged part of their Ryton training facility to help fund the club as it continues to wade from one financial crisis to another.
The fifteen acre Ryton site is the only freehold property the club owns and it is now known that a mortgage of around £1m was taken out through Swynson LTD for ten of the fifteen acres of land.
The money raised was used to help pay some of the club's bills as they continue to lose around £4m a year. The deal is recorded at Companies House and shows that Coventry City took out a mortgage on 27th July 2010 on ten of their fifteen acres at Ryton.
Sisu have a record of raising money from the sale of assets and have annoyed fans as well as some of the club's directors. It was the continued sale of important and valuable players that ultimately led to the resignations of vice chairman Gary Hoffman and later that of the chairman Ray Ranson.
The sale of Scott Dann and Dan Fox led to a board room row in which Ray Ranson threatened to resign and when academy youngster Conor Thomas was offloaded to Liverpool. Gary Hoffman did walk and was followed a few weeks later by his chairman in protest at the lack of support he was being given by the majority shareholders Sisu.
Little or none of the money raised through the sale of assets has been reinvested in the squad, it has nearly all been used to subsidise the losses and to pay the club's creditors.
The vast bulk of the club's income comes through the sales of tickets and merchandise and from sponsorship, but with poor performances on the field and yet another relegation battle, the fans are simply not turning up in sufficient numbers and sponsors are reluctant to be linked with a failing club.
Sisu have invested between £25 and £30m since their takeover in December 2007 and they continue to subsidise the club in order to pay staff wages, but some local businesses have not been paid for some time, including the coach firm Harry Shaw, who supply the team coach.
Coventry City acquired the Ryton site in the early 1960's under their visionary manager Jimmy Hill, who wanted his players to train away from their home ground Highfield Road, partly to help prevent undue wear on the pitch and partly to provide a better training environment for the players and coaches.
The site, an old gravel quarry, was identified for Hill by property consultant Harvey Williams and was then owned by the Coventry city council Alderman Featherstone-Dilkes.
Hill and his chairman at that time Derrik Robins invited Alderman Featherstone-Dilkes to a home game and a deal to buy the land for £10,000 was struck. The club would pay ten interest free instalments of £1,000 over the next ten years for the 25 acre site.
Nearly twenty years later, when Hill returned to Coventry City as chairman, he decided to develop the training ground and with a grant through the Duke of Edinburgh the club built what is now the Sky Blue Connexion Sports Centre.
The sports centre was not a huge success and when the losses became to big to manage John Poynton, who was by now chairman of the club, sold it for nearly £100,000 thereby reducing the landholding to the fifteen acres they own today.