Sideways Sammy

From the moment Fankaty Dabo’s penalty agonisingly cleared the crossbar at Wembley last May, the countdown to the departures of the two star players who had dragged the club to the verge of the Premier League, Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer, had begun. The question that would define the new season, and the ones to follow, was whether the club, under new ownership, was equipped to recover and rally from that close shave with the top-flight.

It wasn’t just the expected departures of Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer but the loss of five loan players from the previous campaign plus the effect of a near two-year dwindling down of investment from previous owners, SISU, that had left Coventry City in need of a near total rebuild of the squad. There was a lot of work to do and with only the free agent signing of Jay Dasilva in the month immediately after that play-off final defeat, concern was building that maybe this new era under the ownership of Doug King was little different to what it had succeeded.

Then, one evening, came rumours indicating that Coventry City had gazumped a host of Championship rivals to the signature of young Everton striker, Ellis Simms. The signing, in the region of £3-4 million, was comfortably the largest outlay the club had made in a generation. While that was funded by the imminent departure of Viktor Gyokeres, it was a positive indication that new owner, Doug King, was willing to reinvest the windfall brought in by the sale of the team’s star players in an attempt to build a team that could challenge for the top six yet again.

Simms’ arrival was backed up by further relatively chunky outlays in the forms of Bobby Thomas (£2m), Tatsuhiro Sakamoto (£2m) and Milan van Ewijk (£3.5m), underlining that the expenditure on Simms was no one-off. Nonetheless, the rate of transfer activity was not quick enough to account for the scale of departures during the summer, leaving the squad looking understocked as the league season approached.

Just ahead of an opening day trip to Leicester City, rather curious reports began to emerge from Turkey that Coventry City had seen an offer in the region of €11 million accepted for the Antalyaspor and United States striker, Haji Wright. It seemed ludicrous, the fee was comfortably more than the club’s record signing, the £6 million paid for Craig Bellamy back when the Sky Blues were a top-flight stalwart. Just a few days later, however, Wright was spotted from behind a bush at the club’s Ryton training ground, with a serene Californian grin and a Coventry shirt in his hands. It crystallised the impression that this would be a new era for the club, one where there were serious ambitions to get to the Premier League and the outlay to support that.

As exciting as the level of spending from Coventry City over the summer was, it didn’t change the fact that this was a team in transition. But for a period during the second-half on the opening day of the season, 1-0 up against Leicester City, with Gustavo Hamer picking a lumpen home defence apart with his passing, the growing pains were evident. Two late Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall goals robbed the Sky Blues of any of the points they deserved on that opening day outing, followed up by blowing another lead in the League Cup against AFC Wimbledon, with Hamer then sold to Sheffield United on the stroke of midnight the day before the first home game of the campaign.

A 3-0 win over Middlesbrough at the CBS Arena bought the team some time to grow into the season but that was followed up by a run of four draws in a row while the club tried to wrap up its transfer activity. That the star power of Gustavo Hamer was replaced by a teenage loan player, in Yasin Ayari, demonstrated that there hadn’t been enough time to complete the rebuild in the space of one window.

Those four draws were followed up by a tame defeat at Cardiff City, before squandering a a1-0 lead in the last minute to draw against a poor Huddersfield Town side to leave Coventry City staring at the wrong end of the table in the early portion of the campaign once again. Unlike the previous year, where the obvious quality of Gustavo Hamer and Viktor Gyokeres dragged the team up the table, it was hard to see where such a run would come from.

Almost none of the new signings had made much of an impression yet. A reshaped defence had developed a bad habit of leaking goals late on, the new wing-backs, Milan van Ewijk and Jay Dasilva, looked to be playing within themselves, the midfield was missing someone of the character of Gustavo Hamer to take charge of games, while the big money additions in attack of Ellis Simms and Haji Wright looked tentative and even appeared to lack some basic technical skills, such as controlling the ball with their first touch, to raise question marks over the outlay for their services.

Back-to-back wins came at a timely moment, with Ellis Simms scoring a brace against Queens Park Rangers, to prevent the knives sharpening, but another extended winless run, saw the pressure soon return. The level of expenditure on this team made the poor performances all the more concerning. The team seemed capable of producing only 20-30 minute spells in games but remained toothless even during those moments. Combined with being poor at both attacking and defending set-pieces, along with being a soft touch at the back, something drastic needed to change to prevent the season turning into a disaster.

That change came mid-way through the club’s annual defeat at Preston North End, with Mark Robins ditching Kyle McFadzean from defence after having cost the team yet another goal through his increasing lack of pace and switching to a back four. It was a move that truly marked the start of a new era at Coventry City, ditching the three at the back that had served the team so well since promotion from League One four years earlier and with two of last season’s most important players, the aforementioned Kyle McFadzean along with Ben Wilson in goal, dropped for their inability to keep up with the pace of change.

Importantly, the move to a back four enabled the Sky Blues to take advantage of wing play. It gave the Japanese winger, Tatushiro Sakamoto, the platform to finally start games regularly and build on the eye-catching cameos he’d made in the previous months. On the other side, moving the club’s record signing, Haji Wright, out wide seemed to enable the American to threaten in games more consistently, without having to worry about being caught offside.

A 3-0 win at Millwall featuring some sumptuous, lightning speed, counter-attacking play finally demonstrated that there was quality about this rebuilt Coventry City side, backed up by a 1-0 victory over Plymouth Argyle the following midweek. After a 2-1 defeat with a rotated side at Ipswich Town, a confident victory over Birmingham City at a pumping CBS Arena saw the Sky Blues enter a groove that would take them from lower mid-table to the top six.

Along with the tactical change, the return of Callum O’Hare to play the central attacking midfield role in the team’s 4-2-3-1 shape allowed Coventry City to move up through the gears. After missing the best part of 18 months through injury, O’Hare was not just back but playing better than he ever had in Sky Blue. Having previously been a furiously energetic player who frustrated with his end product, O’Hare seemed to have discovered some composure since regaining his fitness, with his two finishes against Birmingham City demonstrating that he could be the team’s leading attacking figure.

A couple of creditable draws against automatic promotion-chasing Southampton and Leeds United were followed up by another statement win, this time on the road against a Sunderland side whose confidence was shaky following a change in management. Goals from Tatsuhiro Sakamoto, Callum O’Hare and Kasey Palmer saw the Sky Blues romp to victory in some style as their attacking play became increasingly swift and incisive.

Wins over Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesbrough over the festive period kept the good mood going, along with a highly entertaining 6-2 FA Cup Third Round victory over Oxford United that saw Kasey Palmer and Callum O’Hare let loose against inferior opposition. Confidence was brimming about the team and the atmosphere in the CBS Arena stands was becoming boisterously loud as the belief was growing that Coventry City could achieve a second top six finish in a row.1-0 down at home to Leicester City, the team simply kept plugging away against the ten-man Foxes to turn the result around and keep the good feeling flowing.

However, the fixture list was beginning to mount and the team was still a few bodies short of being able to rotate without a drop-off in performance and cohesion levels. The one January signing was that of Victor Torp in central midfield, the long-awaited out-and-out replacement for Gustavo Hamer. The Dane scored a blinding strike on his debut in the FA Cup away at Sheffield Wednesday, but a lack of squad depth saw energy levels dip in the second-half, allowing the home side to nick a goal to set up an unwanted replay.

Ben Sheaf was forced off early in a midweek game against Bristol City, beginning an unhelpful run of injuries that left a thin squad even thinner at a crucial phase of the season. A tired performance saw the Sky Blues only able to scrape a draw against opponents seeking to do little more than contain them, that was followed up by a defeat in what proved to be a crucial game against play-off rivals, Norwich City, that signalled the end of the festive surge up the table.

Performances became scrappy and inconsistent as Mark Robins looked to plug the holes in the team in various ways. A comfortable FA Cup Replay win over Sheffield Wednesday was followed up by a sluggish, disjointed performance at home to Millwall that was only saved by two second-half goals to secure the win. The Sky Blues somehow managed to claim four points from two further tired displays at Plymouth Argyle and Stoke City, but their lack of vim was brutally exposed at home to Preston North End in a 3-0 defeat that forced Mark Robins into something of a re-think over personnel and systems, not helped by the team’s one winger, Tatsuhiro Sakamoto, seeing his season ended after jumping for a header a little too enthusiastically.

The FA Cup provided, once again, a respite from disjointed form in the league, with part-timers Maidstone United unceremoniously dispatched with ease at the CBS Arena. While there may have been little to read into defeating a side four tiers below Coventry City, a hat-trick from Ellis Simms in the game marked a turnaround in form from the one summer signing who had failed to show any indication of getting going up until that point of the campaign.

Simms may have toiled, like the rest of his team-mates, during a meek 2-1 defeat against a West Bromwich Albion side in the top six, but the striker repeated his trick from the Maidstone United game, in scoring another hat-trick against slightly better opposition, Rotherham United. With Haji Wright also capable of stepping up with goals of his own, Coventry City looked to have found their two match-winners to build a surge into the top six in the final months of the campaign around – a similar formula to the previous campaign.

It gave the team the confidence to head to Premier League Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup and take control of much of the game. Unfortunate not to be ahead early than the second-half, another Ellis Simms goal looked to be enough to secure progress to a Wembley semi-final. While Wolves managed to muster a late comeback with two of the few chances they created the Sky Blues, out of nowhere, stirred themselves into a remarkable comeback thanks to goals from Simms and Wright, yet again.

In an era of remarkable results and memorable campaigns for Coventry City, that late, late comeback at Molineux added to the collection. It set up a fourth Wembley trip in the seven years since Mark Robins returned to the club. It marked the progress the Sky Blues had made during that time-span that the chance of beating the opponents drawn for the game, Manchester United, didn’t seem much outside the realm of possibility.

Until then, there was the chance to add to that one Wembley trip with another in the play-offs, if Coventry City could keep their league campaign going. A confident display at relegation-threatened, Huddersfield Town, with Ellis Simms and Haji Wright again doing the business in front of goal kept the good mood going, and with Simms scoring another poacher’s finish at home to Cardiff City, there was a familiar feeling of the Sky Blues hitting their straps at the right time of the campaign.

However, two Liam Kitching own goals saw that lead squandered and the play-offs slip dangerously close to being out of reach. While Coventry City improved to end a lengthy Leeds United unbeaten run at the CBS Arena, that big effort to beat one of the division’s best teams proved to be a step too far with the fixtures piling up as a result of the FA Cup run.

A missed Haji Wright penalty early on at Southampton the following midweek saw the home side rally to a comfortable 2-1 lead. Realistic hopes of making the top-six were dashed in calamitous circumstances away at Birmingham City, with the Sky Blues appearing to forget how to defend completely to allow the relegation-threatened hosts to saunter to a comfortable 3-0 victory.

It was less the results and more the sense that this team had little left to give that meant that Coventry City fans travelled to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United feeling that the occasion would be marked by the atmosphere they could provide, rather than what the team could offer on the pitch. That was backed up as United eased to a three-goal lead around the hour mark without really having to get out of second gear.

An Ellis Simms goal with around 20 left to go at least provided the fans something to celebrate, but then a Callum O’Hare strike that took a wild, looping deflection off Manchester United’s Aaron Wan-Bissaka and enter the net changed the mood at Wembley. There was now a game to be played and the Sky Blues were in the ascendancy against their much-vaunted and significantly more expensively assembled opponents.

Manchester United looked like they had just held on, only for Wan-Bissaka to be penalised for a handball in the final minutes of second-half stoppage time, allowing Haji Wright to step up to the spot. The American confidently dispatched the penalty to set up more raucous FA Cup celebrations for Coventry City and a remarkable, end-to-end extra-time period.

When Victor Torp turned in a Haji Wright cross in the dying minutes of extra-time, the Sky Blues looked to have pulled off one of the greatest FA Cup shocks in the competition’s history, coming from three goals down against superior opposition to make it to the final. However, replays showed that Wright had strayed narrowly offside to see the goal ruled out. It set up penalties for the second time at Wembley in less than a year, with most Coventry City fans feeling as if the same outcome was likely.

That penalty-kick defeat marked the end of the campaign for Coventry City. A midweek game against play-off rivals, Hull City, saw a tired and heavily rotated Sky Blues side hand the victory to the Tigers with some truly inept defending. A rare clean sheet at Blackburn Rovers was not enough to keep top six hopes mathematically alive heading into the final week, before further tired displays and sloppy defending saw Coventry end the season with back-to-back 2-1 home defeats.

It was a limp end to a campaign where an almost entirely rebuilt team threatened to achieve some truly remarkable things once they clicked. In the end, that it took so long to click and that the team was in its first year of a rebuild and left Mark Robins and his squad with too much work to do and not enough resource in order to achieve it. The hope is that this season can act as a platform for greater things once the process of rebuilding is further along after another transfer window or two, but it’s never a nice feeling in football to be close to achieving something and falling short.

You never know when you’ll get an opportunity to achieve something again, but that this club rebuilt and came so close after last year’s near-miss provides some confidence that this year was just one opportunity missed, rather than the opportunity missed.