COVENTRY’S FINAL FLING
30 years after they won the FA Cup, the Sky Blues will return to Wembley next week. But their future looks bleak and legend Micky Gynn says the club’s decline is like a slow painful death
COVENTRY 1 Thomas 80 BRISTOL ROVERS 0 AT the requiem for a football club, there was almost an air of triumph. Two wins in a week, next stop Wembley Way.
Coventry City have sold 43,000 tickets for next Sunday’s EFL Trophy final against Oxford, and they will sway along English football’s most revered boulevard with renewed optimism after Mark Robins’ second coming at the Ricoh Arena.
But it’s a bit like celebrating a decent buffet at the wake after your funeral. Never mind the grief, have a sandwich.
Coventry are still 11 points from safety in the crypt of League One, Robins is the club’s fourth manager this season, and although a statue of Sky Blues godfather Jimmy Hill stands at the main entrance, the Ricoh landlords are now rugby club Wasps.
Hedge fund managers Sisu, who gained control in 2007, put Coventry into administration four years ago and sent them into exile at Northampton, playing home games 34 miles away at Sixfields.
Although they returned to the Ricoh in 2014, their £100,000-ayear rental agreement expires at the end of next season and chairman Tim Fisher is exploring a ground-share with Coventry rugby club at Butts Park Arena in the city centre.
Thirty years ago, the Sky Blues were the toast of the nation, winning the FA Cup in a classic final against Spurs. The steep decline towards vagrancy since they left Highfield Road in 2005 shames football.
Coventry legend Micky Gynn (right), one of George Curtis and John Sillett’s Wembley heroes in 1987 before he became a postman, said: “It’s been like a slow and painful death. “You keep thinking we’ve hit rock bottom and then you find the basement is still another flight of stairs down, and you wonder where it’s going to end. “We look pretty doomed to relegation because although we’ve a good manager, a lot of the players simply haven’t been up to the job. “You go home feeling depressed every week, thinking it can’t get any worse, and wishing it was 1987 again – but you can’t imagine this lot playing Tottenham, can you? It would be double figures. “It breaks your heart to think this year is the 30th anniversary of Coventry City winning the FA Cup, the greatest day in our history, and instead of a celebration, it’s a funeral. “But if you can take 43,000 fans to Wembley, it shows how many people care about the club and the sheer volume of support which Coventry should be tapping into.
“Whatever happens, if the club moves out of the city again, I won’t be going with them – and the majority of supporters would feel the same way. We had to grit our teeth and bear it when the club was exiled to Northampton, but I won’t do that again. It was madness. I hated it.”
Coventry’s latest manager famously scored the goal which allegedly saved Sir Alex Ferguson’s job at Manchester United 27 years ago.
But rescuing a whole club from the legal minefield around Sisu’s complex ownership is another ball game.
The dugout has become a transit lounge and this lot need Clark Kent, not just Mark Robins. Back-to-back victories against Port Vale and Rovers, whose defeat was a huge disappointment for 4,000 travelling fans, have at least lifted the mood. Robins (below) said: “I want more, but what we have now is a group working for each other – and not before time.” Robins has lifted a dispirited squad and George Thomas, who scored Saturday’s winner, said: “He’s definitely made an impact on us – he’s clamping down on soppy things, little details that can add up and make all the difference.
“There’s still a belief in the changing room, and if we keep going you never know where we might be in a few weeks, but we can now get excited about Wembley.”
For Rovers, the dream of a third consecutive promotion is all but over – but for the Sky Blues, a pilgrimage to Wembley could be like a mirage in the desert and the worst may not be over yet.
Coventry City can stand the despair – it’s the hope that’s killing them.
‘If you can take 43,000 to Wembley it shows how many care about the club’