Sideways Sammy

When Coventry City travelled to Sunderland back in July last year to kick off their 2022/23 season, no-one involved with the club could have imagined the journey that was set to unfold. It was a time when there was cautious optimism that a top-half finish the previous season could be built upon, a time when it seemed okay that the Commonwealth Games Rugby 7s tournament would be played on the CBS Arena ahead of the first home match a week later, a time when SISU owned Coventry City and London Wasps Rugby Club were still a going concern. What followed that 1-1 draw at the Stadium of Light proved to be one of the longest, most challenging, and yet exciting, seasons in the club’s recent history.

It wasn’t until the announcement of the postponement of that Rotherham United home game that any sense of a crisis at Coventry City was apparent. Summer recruitment had been slow, but the Sky Blues had been able to hold onto all of their best players. With delinquent landlords, Wasps, offering no solution to the pitch fiasco – as it transpired, this was because they were financially unable to – the backwards step of yet another groundshare outside of Coventry had blindsided the club as a distinct possibility.

Battered by Bristol City at a hastily rearranged League Cup tie ‘at home’ in Burton-upon-Trent, Coventry City proceeded to fail to win their next six league matches as further games at the CBS Arena were forced to be postponed. The Sky Blues were bottom of the division, both as a result of the farcical situation with the pitch and on the merit of their performances on it.

Coventry City fans might later reflect that some of the defeats in that period were somewhat unlucky – with Simon Moore’s meltdowns in goal at Millwall and Hull City putting paid to some decent opportunities to claim a valuable first wins early on – but not getting points on the board exacerbated the sense of crisis around the club. This came to a head at the end of the summer transfer window, when key centre-back and club stalwart, Dominic Hyam, was sold to Blackburn Rovers without being replaced and with the buying club openly stating that they paid a lower price for the player than they had been quoted earlier in the window.

The nadir was a 3-0 defeat at Carrow Road to Norwich City in early September where Coventry City looked absolutely rudderless, unable to conjure anything close to a fight against a team that would go on to finish in the bottom half of the Championship table. Off the back of a stuttering end to the previous season, things had not only gone sour for Mark Robins’ vision of progressive improvement with the Sky Blues, they looked to have gone positively stale.

It was not obvious at the time, but keeping a clean sheet at St Andrew’s in a drab goalless draw – enlivened only by Gustavo Hamer’s second red card in his first six games -would mark a sea change for Coventry City. The team had started the campaign with aspirations to play dominant, possession-based football, but lacked the cutting edge and the defensive solidity to make such a plan effective, conceding goals at an alarming rate and tanking the team’s confidence. Mark Robins pivoted by dropping his defence deeper and focusing on the counter-attacking threat posed by Viktor Gyokeres’ running up front and, all of a sudden, the goals conceded column stopped increasing and the points column started to tick over.

After picking up a first win of the campaign, 1-0 at home to Middlesbrough thanks to a Viktor Gyokeres goal, a rapid-fire six weeks of fixtures in the build-up to the mid-season World Cup feels like something of a fever dream looking back on it now. A typical City win over that period involved sitting back for as long as it took for the opposition to exhaust their repertoire of ideas before hitting them at the other end, usually via Gyokeres, to win the game.

Coventry City kept nine clean sheets in twelve games over this period and rose from rock-bottom to 11th in the league and just two points off the play-offs. By the time the league paused for the World Cup, it was clear that the Sky Blues did not want to stop. What had begun as a brutalist, siege effort to get anything out of a team with zero confidence ended with a swagger as the Sky Blues confidently danced past Queens Park Rangers at the CBS Arena to win a fourth game in a row.

While Viktor Gyokeres was clearly the star man, Coventry City were now able to call upon a series of other key performers to get wins over the line. Ben Wilson had gone from a ropey, erratic number two goalkeeper into one of the most effective in his position in the division. Kyle McFadzean had, yet again, defied his years to remain a key leadership presence in the heart of the defence. Jamie Allen had gone from a headless chicken into a key goalscoring midfielder.

Mark Robins’ hand had been further boosted over that period chiefly by the return of Gustavo Hamer from suspension. The midfielder restated his importance for the team with a blockbuster winning performance away at Stoke City, assisting Jamie Allen for the opening goal and then producing a stunning give-and-go with Kasey Palmer before beating three defenders and curling the ball into the top corner to seal the victory. Eager to make up for those early indiscretions, Hamer was not only keen to influence games with his skill but stamped out the unnecessary bookings that had previously dogged his career.

Adding to that creative threat was Kasey Palmer finding match fitness after arriving underbaked at the club over the summer. The lanky, mercurial attacking midfielder’s ability to play telling one-touch passes provided a valuable pivot point in attack, drawing attention away from Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer. Even better, Callum O’Hare had recently returned to full fitness, adding yet another creative final third player, with some of the link-up between Palmer, Hamer, O’Hare and Gyokeres in those last games before the World Cup providing mouth-watering possibilities of what might be in store if O’Hare and Palmer could continue to build fitness levels.

Off-the-pitch, the World Cup break saw a fast-moving picture develop regarding both the club and the stadium’s ownership came to the fore. With Wasps entering administration in October, the Coventry Building Society Arena was suddenly up for grabs. It proved to be poor timing however for Coventry City, with owners SISU in the middle of negotiations to sell the club. By the time that Doug King was announced as the Sky Blues’ new owner, Mike Ashley had already emerged on the scene to purchase the CBS Arena via his company, Frasers Group.

Just what the upshot of the simultaneous developments would be is not even clear at this point in time. There had been an early threat of the club being kicked out of the CBS Arena, however, both King and Ashley were too canny to allow such a PR own goal to occur. Nonetheless, with the club only agreeing a five-year rental agreement to play in the ground built for them, the possibility that another Coventry City stadium crisis could occur further down the line cannot yet be ruled out.

On the pitch. the worry was what would happen once that momentum had been broken by a six-week pause in regular play. A 1-0 defeat away at Reading and then a squandering of a 3-0 lead at home to Swansea City with 20 minutes left, immediately upon the return to action raising that worry further. A costly injury suffered by Kyle McFadzean immediately before the resumption of league action looked to be a key factor behind those two results.

A 1-0 home win against a bang-in-form West Bromwich Albion side proved to be the only positive result during a poor run until the end of January. A Boxing Day defeat at Sheffield United saw Callum O’Hare pick up a season-ending injury, before a sloppy second-string FA Cup defeat to Wrexham truly signalled that a wobble was occurring.

The absence of Kyle McFadzean was clearly hurting the defence, with Callum Doyle too inexperienced to replace the team captain as a defensive leader, especially with Michael Rose and Jonathan Panzo struggling to maintain concentration or performance levels alongside him. Further forward, the plan to get the ball to Viktor Gyokeres remained a good one, but the quality of the support from the players behind him had waned.

By the time the Sky Blues took on Huddersfield Town before the end of January, there was a remote chance of being sucked back into the relegation scrap. However, a comfortable home win, involving an impressive debut from defensive loan signing, Luke McNally, would end any remote fears of being dragged back down the table.

As the January transfer window closed with only further temporary additions made, Coventry City looked to be in a holding pattern for the final months of the campaign. Lacklustre performances away at West Bromwich Albion and at home to Luton Town did little to close the increasing gap to the play-offs, with the previous two months looking to have put paid to any loftier ambitions than mid-table.

A midweek home win against high-flying Millwall, however, signalled that maybe there was still life in this team yet. Followed up by wins over Rotherham United and Sunderland, Coventry City went on a nine-game unbeaten run that saw them rise from 13th to 8th-place and to just three points off the play-offs.

It set up an exciting final month of the season, only for the Sky Blues to stall out the traps once again after an international break. A stunning 4-0 defeat at home to a Stoke City side who had turned into the best team in the Championship on that day, was followed up by two draws over the Easter Bank Holiday to leave Coventry City with work to do to make that leap into the play-offs.

Fortunately, the teams around the Sky Blues in the table seemed equally keen to drop points. A confident 3-0 win away at Queens Park Rangers began Coventry City’s final charge, with a late-late equaliser from Ben Wilson in an otherwise sub-par display at play-off rivals, Blackburn Rovers, proving to be the key moment in the run.

Other results continued to go the Sky Blues’ way, as they beat struggling Reading and Birmingham City sides at an increasingly packed CBS Arena to leave them needing just a point on the final day of the season to secure a top six finish. That was duly achieved against a Middlesbrough side that would become the team’s opponents in the play-off semi-finals.

A tight home leg, where Middlesbrough had the best chances to take the lead, was followed up by an expert away performance at the Riverside Stadium. Coventry City denied their opponents the time and space in the final third that they usually thrived in, before unpicking them on the break with a Ben Sheaf ball over the top, Viktor Gyokeres drawing the opposing goalkeeper, Zack Steffen, well off his line, and Gustavo Hamer finding the top corner from an acute angle. That singular goal was enough to send the Sky Blues to Wembley.

The opposition on that sunny May Saturday was a Luton Town side on an even more remarkable rise from the ashes run than Coventry City, having been a non-league side within the past decade. Perhaps it was that hunger from the Hatters that proved to be the key area of difference between the two sides, as they started very quickly and had the ball in the net three times – albeit, with only one of those occasions counting – before the Sky Blues had got going on the Wembley pitch.

An improved second-half performance eventually delivered an unforgettable memory for most City fans in attendance, with the two star-men, Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer, involved in a sweeping counter-attack that saw the former set the latter up to send the Sky Blue half of the stadium into delirium. It almost felt good enough to sweep Coventry City into the Premier League, with a glorious chance falling soon after to Matt Godden, which was scooped over the bar, before the game entered into a grim deadlock as extra-time and penalties loomed.

A costly mistake from Jonathan Panzo in the depths of extra-time almost cost Coventry City their chance to take a top-flight return all the way, only for the Video Assistant Referee to intervene for a let-off that had all the feeling of marking it a Sky Blue day. However, an excellent set of penalties from both teams left Fankaty Dabo in the unfortunate position of being the only player to miss as promotion slipped away by the tightest of margins.

At the end of such a long and remarkable season, failing to get promotion over the line didn’t exactly feel like failure. A terrible start to the campaign and some of most farcical off-the-pitch machinations yet seen in Coventry City’s recent saga would have been more than enough excuse to have laid down from the fight Mark Robins and his team put in to get within a couple of kicks away from the Premier League. Instead, the manager was resourceful and his players did almost literally everything they could do to put what had seemed impossible for much of the past two decades within touching distance.

If this was an opportunity missed, then it wasn’t for want of trying. This was a season in which Coventry City produced two of the most coveted players in the country, saw an end to a deeply unpopular ownership regime and had the stadium packed out on an increasingly regular basis. This season was not only memorable but there are elements that have been put in place that may not render it as simply a one-off.