Grandstanding: The Coventry Stadium Row That Makes Brexit Look Simple

Can you name the long-running property dispute that makes the Brexit crisis look like a walk in the park?

Coventry residents in general, and Sky Blue fans in particular, will have no problem indentifying the Ricoh Arena dispute, now five years old and apparently about to reach a turning point. A hard dealine of 28 April looms, after which Coventry City FC will have no further games at the Ricoh Arena.

The row about the Ricoh Arena has been rumbling on for ages: Coventry City FC, owned by private equity firm Sisu, and Coventry City Council, are locked in a spiral of angry "open letters" and litigation about the council's sale of the club's home, the Ricoh Arena, to the Wasps rugby club, in 2014.

Five years later and the arena saga could be reaching a conclusion, with suggestions that a Coventry school site could provide the football club with a new arena in time to meet Football Association rules that say the team must play within a 6 (or 9) mile radius of the city.

The 46-acre Woodlands Academy site has now been named as a potential solution, Coventry Live reports. The academy site is owned by the council.

This follows earlier reports that Sisu complained the city council was "not engaging" with them about a potential site in their ownership.

This in turn followed a complaint from the council that Sisu was not co-operating in the process of resolving the dispute, and a response from Sisu saying that, on the contrary, it was the council dragging its feet.

The city council responded on Wednesday 3 April with claims that the Sisu masterplan ran to only two sides of A4 paper and would therefore be hard to implement, Coventry Live added.

The latest, perhaps terminal, phase of the crisis, began when a court orded the city council and Sisu to engage in mediation in 2018.