Sideways Sammy

There wasn’t really much more that Coventry City could have done to keep the dream of making the Premier League alive. These final few months of the season have been this seemingly endless quest simply to keep the dream going, from Ben Wilson’s final-minute equaliser at Blackburn Rovers, to beating Reading and Birmingham City to get into a play-off position for the first time for the campaign, drawing at Middlesbrough to seal a top six place, and then edging the same opponent out to make it to the final. There has rarely been a moment’s pause to consider what was truly at stake, it had always being a case of needing to reach that next step of the journey. That was until this final, where the only options were success or failure.

The play-off final was a microcosm of that arduous quest that Coventry City have been on this season. Starting so flat and falling behind meant there was never a moment to dream about the prize on offer. Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool at the CBS Arena, being on Match of the Day, people from all around the world having an opinion on Coventry City, all of that never seemed close at hand. The scenes after Gustavo Hamer’s equaliser were as much jubilation as they were relief of keeping the dream alive, but the end of the road would soon present itself

A VAR-assisted let-off in extra-time meant that Coventry City at least got to take their quest to its final possible step. The biggest disappointment of the day is that it came down to someone missing the penalty to lose the game, rather than someone, for either team, producing a moment of glory. Now that such a hard-fought journey has come to an unsuccessful conclusion, the overriding feeling is emptiness.

Is it better that Coventry City never had a moment to dream about what Premier League football might feel, touch and taste like despite coming so close? In the end, the possibility of making that top-flight return still feels just about as distant as it has for much of the past two decades. The Sky Blues went close this season, but never close enough that it felt real. Maybe the point of a dream is that never feels quite real, even when it actually happens.

It isn’t the defeat itself that hurts, it’s knowing that Coventry City will have to start next season on the same footing as everyone else in the Championship. That making the play-offs again will be every bit as hard as it was this year, that winning promotion might be even harder. That alone could be difficult to recover from, even without factoring in that as few as three or four of the starting players in this game could be starters on a similar occasion next season.

This isn’t just the end of one season for Coventry City, it’s the culmination of several. Players who took this club into the Championship, like Michael Rose, Liam Kelly and Fankaty Dabo, look to have been outgrown by the team. Players who established this club in this division and then elevated the Sky Blues even further, namely, Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer, have outgrown the team. It is not just about replacing players as like-for-like as possible, it’s losing people who know what this club means and how hard-fought its current position has been.

The major source of positivity right now is Mark Robins. The tale of his revival of this football club has been his ability to constantly reinvent the team to take it to new levels. From building an experienced team of winners to get out of League Two, to something younger and more free-flowing in League One, to then adding a pragmatic edge elevated by two standout individuals, in Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer, in the Championship, Mark Robins has always been able to be flexible in his approach and assess what is possible with the available resources for the task at hand.

There are plenty of unknown factors heading into the summer, however. One of the key ones is that it is not known how soon Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer might leave the club and how much they will be sold for. While it would be foolish to wish such talented players away, the longer any exit sagas drag on, the tougher it makes the task to replace them, as other clubs swoop in for players on a potential shopping list.

Another significant unknown factor is Doug King. There is precious little evidence available yet to assess what kind of owner he will be, what kind of resources he is willing to put into the club and what his vision for Coventry City truly is. That’s not to say that he definitely can’t take the club to greater heights than this season, but that he cannot be judged on a first six months of ownership where he’s had little opportunity to make key decisions.

Additionally, the club have brought in an entirely different player recruitment team since January. The people that brought Gustavo Hamer, Callum O’Hare, Ben Sheaf and Viktor Gyokeres to the club, Chris Badlan and Stuart Benthom, are no longer here, which reduces the level of confidence that similar feats of smart player recruitment can be repeated. Much like Doug King, the onus is on Dean Austin and Jamie Johnson to prove what they are capable of, until they do that, they are another question mark hanging over Coventry City right now.

The sickener is that, even with the best owner recruitment team in the world, there is a chance that this was Coventry City’s best opportunity in a long time to return to the Premier League. Spending money and signing good players are only pieces of the jigsaw, what other teams do and luck are the key factors outside of the control of anyone of a Sky Blue persuasion.

At the very least, Coventry City can come out of this season knowing that they did just about everything they could, and under some of the most ludicrous circumstances, to make the dream of Premier League football a reality. The story of much of this time out of the top-flight has been that not even seeming a remote possibility. Now that the Sky Blues have come as close as they possibly could to getting back there, the hunger to make it happen is all the greater.