CAN RICOH EVER BE TRULY A FOOTBALL GROUND?

COVENTRY City will finally return to the Ricoh Arena on Friday after a season spent playing home games 35 miles away in Northampton.

It’s brilliant news that the club have been reunited with their community. What has happened over the last year or so has been utterly, utterly diabolical.

But it’s also important to remember that this is just the start. The overall problem hasn’t gone away.

Which is that somehow, when Coventry left Highfield Road in 2005, they lost control of their own bricks and mortar.

I say somehow because only the people responsible truly know what happened. But the results have been catastrophic.

The club lost control of its own revenue streams. They had no income from the 24/7 spend, from the hotel and casino, the seemingly endless concerts, even food and drink from the kiosks. The maximum they could ever make was a proportion of gate receipts.

It’s the recipe that led to last year’s administration and it’s the recipe that’ll lead to ongoing struggle unless – fingers crossed – they can find a place to call their own and control in its entirety. A fouryear target has been set to achieve that and I hope it bears fruit.

In the meantime – having patched up their differences with the owner of the Ricoh – I hope the organisers will do something to turn that place into a football stadium.

It’s far too corporate. You walk in there and you see posters for gigs, hotel customers, the casino. It’s by far the most soulless venue of the 72.

I could be inside a five or ten years out-of-date hotel or shopping centre. It’s got bells and whistles, facilities all over the place. But it’s got no heart.

Where are the pictures of Cyrille Regis? Where are the pictures of Willy Carr and Gordon Milne? Even if you go down the tunnel, it’s plastered with pictures of Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner. Terrible. I just don’t feel like I’m at a football match.

If the club were doing it to raise money, I’d cut them some slack. But it isn’t them, it’s the Ricoh owners. Even if it’s just for a few years, they have to turn it into something that feels like a

football ground.