Coventry City rediscovered
Coventry City rediscovered
A football club finding its way
Of all the tedious rubbish bestowed upon football supporters in the age of social media, former footballers laughing maniacally while they tell each other bone-dry anecdotes about other former footballers is right up there with the worst.
The ex-professional hilarity industrial complex is in full swing and here to stay.
May the gods have mercy on us all.
Coventry City rediscovered
The town where I grew up has a Premier League football team now. Their games are reasonably well attended and they seem to have finally grabbed the imagination of the local community.
When I lived there, the club played in the third and fourth divisions. I went to most home games for a while. I was at one of their most fondly remembered away matches. Before the next match, at home, I trained on the pitch as part of a soccer school run by a monolithic junior club down the road.
But I wasn’t a supporter and there weren't all that many who were. Considering the size of the place, the absence of a genuine love for its football club was a shame.
The upshot of this, from a personal point of view, is that the only place I've ever lived where there was a well supported club really giving its people something to go loopy for was London. The thing about London – you might have heard this – is that London is massive. It's impossible to even imagine what would have to happen to infect it with football fever.
Coventry, though? Not as big. I no longer live there but I'm not far away, I'm there all the time and it has essentially become my home. The place has always been football mad in that very specific way only a one-club city can be.
Of course, nowhere in England is really a one-club city. Ours is a country that loves football deeply and to the depths; Coventry's population of nearly 350,000 sustains a large and vibrant Sunday league scene as well as a team in the eighth tier of the men's game and another in the division below. Below that, it sometimes seems as if Coventry has a football club around every corner.
Now, after years of volatility and dread, and more than a little creeping apathy, it's obsessed with Coventry City again too. The supporters of the Sky Blues have always deserved better than what they've been subjected to in the last quarter of a century.
Some football clubs just drift. Others bounce between divisions. Others still seem to exist in a kind of perpetual entropy, both good days and bad shrouded in futility because theirs is a football in its purest form.
Coventry's chaos has been a threat to its existence more than once, and more than once the club has pushed the loyalty of its supporters to the limit by leaving the city entirely.
The details of the Sky Blues’ ownership, their tumultuous tenancy at what is now the Coventry Building Society Arena, and their seasons played in Northampton and Birmingham are well documented. It's a story of a city loving football and football not loving it back.
After an inauspicious start to 2022/23, hampered on this occasion by the turf as much as the building around it, the Sky Blues came roaring back and secured a play-off place.
They shrugged Middlesbrough aside over the two legs of the semi-final before succumbing to the very cruellest of fates in the final at Wembley. Missing out on promotion to the Premier League in a penalty shoot-out is the kind of sickener that can set a club back a generation.
That was all just on the pitch. Coventry City has new ownership and so does the CBS. The Sky Blues appear to be as stable as they've been at any time in the last twenty years and comfortable in their own skin, not to mention in the stadium they call home. Their situation off the field is vastly improved, albeit neither perfect nor proven, and Coventry supporters are bouncing, rightly revelling in their fresh optimism.
Sixfields is only around 35 miles away but there's an enormous difference between playing in another county and being able to draw 22,000 for a second-tier fixture against Bristol City on a Tuesday night in late January or more than 24,000 for a Sunday noon kick-off that's on television.
Coventry is a place where football club leisure wear and training gear sells. Take a stroll through the city and its suburbs and you'll seldom be more than a few metres from a Sky Blues badge. That evergreen pride now comes laced with defiance and served with a twist of arrogance.
It's become the norm to support City with a mischievous smile and a twinkle in the eye, and little wonder. At the time of writing they’ve lost once in fourteen matches in all competitions, an uncharacteristically tame performance at Carrow Road costing them dear against Norwich City. Their previous defeat came at Ipswich Town at the start of December.
They’re in a play-off position in the EFL Championship, having beaten leaders Leicester City and drawn with both Southampton and Leeds United. Over the last six matches, the Sky Blues are top of the form table. They’re also in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup after demolishing Sheffield Wednesday in a replay in the Fourth. Maidstone United lie in wait.
If these appear meagre pleasures then consider Coventry’s recent history as well as what came before. After missing out at Wembley in May, they lost two of their most potent players. Viktor Gyökeres, the Swedish striker, scored 38 times in the previous two Championship seasons and moved to Sporting CP in the summer of 2023. He’s scoring for fun in Portugal too.
Gustavo Hamer’s transfer was more protracted and dragged frustratingly into August. The Brazilian has enjoyed a couple of moments in a dismal Premier League return for Sheffield United. There’s no doubt his departure and its timing made for a stuttering start to 2023/24 for the Sky Blues.
City’s form through the winter was a triumph of both talent and character. Gyökeres could never have been replaced like-for-like by a Championship club but manager Mark Robins is masterfully exploiting a combination of Haji Wright, Ellis Simms and Matt Godden. Between them, they’ve scored twenty league goals.
Josh Eccles, Ben Sheaf and new signing Tatsuhiro Sakamoto are in tremendous nick in midfield. Kasey Palmer, so often in the headlines of late, has been a thorn in the side of his opponents since the turn of the year in particular. Newcomer Victor Torp has made a promising start and already demonstrated an eye for goal.
But the talk of the town is Callum O’Hare. The former Aston Villa youth player is in sensational form and hit full speed after returning from a serious knee injury without missing a beat.
O’Hare has scored six goals and made two in the Championship, seeing off Birmingham City and Leicester in two of the season’s most memorable days at the CBS Arena. He’s playing entertaining, strutting, productive football and soaking up the admiration of the Sky Blues supporters. He’s out of contract at the end of June.
None of this would have been possible – not the rehabilitation of the club, not the resurgence of the team, not the revitalisation of the support – without Robins, who's been at the club much longer and indeed on more separate occasions than owner and chairman Doug King.
What Robins has achieved at this most dysfunctional of football clubs is nothing short of astounding. His legend might be unrecognised nationally thus far but in a future Coventry the townsfolk will sing and dance around a statue of him naked on a horse.
There’s a lot going in Coventry’s favour at the moment. Stability off the pitch is a big part of that and navigating the choppy post-Gyökeres seas in the wake of Wembley probably wouldn’t have been possible without it.
But Robins and his team have given the city its City back. That’s about much more than just where they play.
If you enjoyed the main piece, please share this week’s newsletter using the button below.
For non-football writing and collage art, visit my website.
“Every other sport is trying to declutter. All we’re trying to do is go the other way for some bizarre reason.”
Salty beef extracts
A Story of Football in 30 Episodes, Part Three (Unexpected Delirium)
Snus: The dangers of football’s hidden drug problem (i)
Not just the ‘Korean Guy’ – the rise of Wolves’ Hwang Hee-chan (i)
Grassroots football club boycott cup tie over opponents’ ‘horrific misogyny’ (The Guardian)
The story of Sunday Mba, Nigeria’s unexpected hero at the 2013 Nations Cup (Football Paradise)
The business of football increasingly defines what fans consider success (Sporting Intelligence)
Dessert
This is the adidas ‘Black Pack’ Predator 24 and this is already the year of the Three Stripes.
By the way…
High Protein Beef Paste is a free newsletter.
However, if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the years you might consider purchasing a Systematic Decline art print.
I’m open to writing commissions and artistic collaborations. Get in touch if you’d like a chat.
That’s your lot. Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you enjoyed it and haven’t done so yet.
Don’t be shy when it comes to sharing the newsletter. If I can get a decent handful of subscribers I can sack off Twitter and isn’t that the dream for all of us?
Have a week.