Enough is enough. The time has long since passed for Coventry City to come home.
All of the Sky Blues key fixtures over the past 18 months have been in courts and the club has become a laughing stock.
The Judicial Review should finally allow us all to draw a line under the tragic soap opera that has seen a once-proud club reduced to a pawn in a high-stakes game for control of a stadium.
Senior figures at the club always assured us the truth would come out at the High Court. They were right, it did. Sisu’s expensive strategy backfired spectacularly as the judge delivered his damning assessment, dismissing their claims against Coventry City Council and ACL.
Justice Hickinbottom went further, insisting Coventry City’s Ricoh rent strike was part of a “quite deliberate” attempt to cripple ACL while also trying to buy a half-share in the company.
We can all appreciate hedge funds play hardball but when they target the taxpayers of Coventry and a charity (which at one point bailed out the football club) and the club is moved 35 miles away as a result, then we are entitled to think it despicable.
But we must all move on.
We didn’t run this editorial immediately after Justice Hickinbottom’s emphatic judgment. Instead we waited for signs of what is now needed – an olive branch.
Sadly, there certainly haven’t been any in public statements from the owners of Coventry City.
We can only hope that in private there is more of a willingness to do a deal and bring City home.
There is always a deal to be done.
The club is dying in exile, and ACL – once described by former council leader as only half the business it could be – is surely poorer for not having Steven Pressley’s team on the Ricoh Arena pitch. The fans certainly are!
And we hope that thousands will again take to the streets this Saturday for the Telegraph-backed march to send a clear message about how much they still care about the future of this great club.
When the club was moved to Northampton, the Telegraph said Sisu had a duty to ensure the club played its matches in the city which gave it its name.
We said if they couldn’t fulfil that basic obligation they should move on and let someone else do it.
That is still the case now.
We also said that if Sisu brought the club back to the fans we would urge the Sky Blue Army to forget any grudges against the owners and get back on the terraces and get right behind the team, physically, emotionally and financially.
That is still the case now.
Sisu's actions have seem themselves, the council, ACL and the Alan Edward Higgs Charity to spend millions of pounds on a ultimately pointless legal war that has led us nowhere and the club to Northampton.
What a waste.
They shouldn’t waste another second.
Start talking and bring City home.
Help us to drive home the message to those with the power to return Coventry City Football Club to the people of Coventry
