We want five!” comes the cry from a long-suffering
Coventry City fan seated behind the press box at the Coventry Building Society Arena.
City are, to put it mildly, having a lot of fun this season and the top end of the Championship is much better off as long as Mark Robins’ disruptors are in the mix.
When
Fulham roll into town for the rain-soaked lunchtime kick-off on Jimmy Hill Day, it looks like it could be a tough afternoon for City having lost 5-0 away to
Luton Town in midweek. By the end of the match, they are joint-top of the league with just two points separating first and fifth and, at the end of Saturday’s fixtures, they still sit joint-second with
West Bromwich Albion.
For a club that has progressed from League Two in 2017-18 in the same amount of time as those around them have earned nine combined promotions and relegations from the
Premier League, this is remarkable form.
Coventry are good value for their 4-1 win on the day, too. Mark Robins is the man who has
hauled them from the depths of despair, when they have played their “home” games away in Birmingham and who you feel can do no wrong after achieving so much.
“He could murder someone in the city centre and I think everyone would turn a blind eye,” jokes Joey Crone, City fan and host of the Nii Lamptey Show podcast. “You can’t overstate how good a job he has done. For 20 years we had been terminally bad — like, where-would-it-ever-end bad. Then he took over just as we were descending into League Two and has overseen two promotions in three years and a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy win.
“He was given the absolute dregs to work with and at no point has anyone ever said to him, ‘Have some extra money’. He’s had the same restrictions that everyone else has had to deal with but has just made it work somehow.”
In the shadow of one club great, Hill, it looks as if another could be in the making in Robins. A return to the Premier League would be improbable, perhaps impossible, given Coventry’s budget and recent history — and yet they have overturned Fulham,
Middlesbrough and
Cardiff City in their seven wins so far this season.
They are a horrible prospect as opponents. They press hard and effectively, chasing every lax touch or misplaced pass, which is both dangerous and relentless. As they hassle and force Fulham into mistake after mistake, they concede against the run of play when
Aleksandar Mitrovic wrestles Kyle McFadzean into scoring an own goal.
City are not worn down; they’re unprepared to be humiliated after their thumping against Luton a few days earlier.
Viktor Gyokeres capitalises from a mix-up at the back to equalise and then Robins’ side start to move through the gears. They have flying wing-backs in Ian Maatsen and Fankaty Dabo, the wily creativity of Callum O’Hare and a midfield general in Liam Kelly — all of which are crucial as Coventry get a second from a Matt Godden penalty before a Maatsen stunner and a cherry on top with a scuffed finish from Gyokeres.
At the moment, practically everything Gyokeres touches turns to goals as the home support bellow Up the Football League We Go. It is 20 years since the club was last in the Premier League and the interim has been fraught with worry. In 2007, the club was 20 minutes away from going into administration before hedge fund SISU bought the club, but their relationship with fans has been far from smooth.
Crone says even the more sympathetic fans “will never fully forgive” SISU for the years
they have spent playing home games outside Coventry amid plenty of other disputes, but now there is a “genuine desire” to make up for past misgivings.
“Now we’re forward-facing with the potential of realistically a mid-table finish at least with the potential of a new stadium and it’s a club on the up. They have to have an enormous amount of credit for that,” he says.
And on Jimmy Hill Day, this is the first league meeting between his two former clubs in 53 years, an occasion his wife Bryony says “is keeping the spirit of Jimmy alive”. His presence is everywhere — in the way the game is covered in the lunchtime kick-off on Sky Sports, in the three points that Coventry will earn for their win, in Fulham’s very existence on this day against the club that adopted him as one of their own.
Coventry and Fulham fans greet each other pre-match under the Jimmy Hill statue (Photo: Nigel French/PA Images via Getty Images)
“It felt like he was watching,” Robins says post-match with his feet firmly on the ground despite Coventry’s lofty position in the league with 11 games played. And Hill is watching – his face is displayed on the electronic scoreboard (which he pioneered) during a minute’s applause in the 67th minute and from flags of him draped over seats in the stand (another innovation of Hill’s was the first all-seater stadium).
“Jimmy Hill is a legend in the truest sense of the word,” says David Eyles of the Sky Blue Trust. “That’s a word that gets bandied about with a lot of people in football, but in terms of what he did for Coventry City, the promotions we got in the 1960s, what he did as a manager and a chairman — he gave Coventry an identity. He has made us what we are today.
“We usually celebrate Jimmy Hill Day on the anniversary of his death in December, but it feels fitting that we are having it when we play Fulham. To have that opportunity to celebrate with the Fulham fans — football is all about coming together and celebrating the good things about life.
“Jimmy Hill represented most of those things to both clubs.”
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