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How Uno and Ludo fired up the real Man City vs Arsenal rivalry – at Coventry
Brooke Norton-Cuffy and Josh Wilson-Esbrand have been moulded by Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta to the Championship side’s benefit
www.telegraph.co.uk
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Josh Wilson-Esbrand and Brooke Norton-Cuffy have the big game on their minds. The Coventry pair, on loan from Manchester City and Arsenal respectively, light up visibly when they speak of it. They tingle audibly, exchanging jovial jousting. And they disagree about the technicalities. The imminent Premier League title decider between their parent clubs? No.
“When I came here, I was so shocked about how they play UNO,” declares City loanee Wilson-Esbrand, caught between real and faux fuming: “You can’t put a ‘plus four’ on a ‘plus two’ here. That is…”
“The normal game is a bit boring, so we raz it up a bit,” offers Norton-Cuffy, on loan from Arsenal. “We’ve got three decks, so there’s loads of crazy cards floating about.”
The loan duo, together with Tyler Walker, Gus Hamer, Kasey Palmer and Luke McNally - recent victim of a 32-card penalty pick-up - are the core of the Coventry UNO alliance. Fankaty Dabo is “iffy,” whatever that means.
Wilson-Esbrand and Norton-Cuffy have been dragged away from a lunchtime session at Coventry’s Sky Blue Lodge to speak to Telegraph Sport. They play all the time. That, and Ludo. Those games occupied the entirety of a five-hour Tuesday night coach journey from Blackburn last week.
If it seems trivial, it is not. It shows team spirit. In an age of mobile phone addiction, this Coventry dressing room has a special bond: “One of the best places I’ve been for team spirit,” says Norton-Cuffy, previously a loanee at Lincoln City and Rotherham United. “The boys are together. There aren’t any bad relations here. We all do things together. There is no one left out. Everyone is in.”
Wilson-Esbrand and Norton-Cuffy have worked with Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta (more on them later), but under manager Mark Robins – Coventry’s long-serving manager – they are helping move Championship mountains. The club has lost just once in 15 league games. It sits, with two matches left, in the play-off positions. That feat is remarkable given Coventry’s budgetary constraints, the financial turmoil of recent years, and the emotional toll that has taken on a fanbase dragged to Northampton and back. But while there are still hurdles to overcome, most notably the future occupation of the Ricoh Arena, the sky is turning blue again. On Saturday Coventry face Birmingham City in front of a first sell-out crowd in yonks.
Wilson-Esbrand and Norton-Cuffy have been all-in since their January arrivals. The former is almost horizontally relaxed – no criticism there, it is simply his method – while the latter prefers structure but is learning to let that go. Both emphasise the importance of joy and football combining. They speak highly of Robins, both as a tactician and as a man manager. And while their positions as left and right wingback are opposites, they are also inextricably linked.
Josh Wilson-Esbrand (left) and Brooke Norton-Cuffy both have ambitions of playing for Man City and Arsenal respectively CREDIT: Telegraph/Andrew Fox
“We are very astute at knowing what each other is going to do,” explains Wilson-Esbrand. “If Brooke starts to drift in, I can roll forward more because he might see that pass. Or if I'm driving into the pitch, I know that he's gonna be free. Even from opposite sides of the pitch, there is a link.”
And there is healthy competition too: “I feel like when Josh is doing something, I think ‘let me step up now’,” says Norton-Cuffy. Robins has clocked that edge and is harnessing it. “They always make sure we are against each other in training as well,” admits Wilson-Esbrand laughing.
“Me and him have a little competition,” adds Norton-Cuffy. “It just builds the game up and we make each other better.” The 40-minute chat is punctuated with smiles, the duo relaxed and still in their purple training kit from the morning session. Who had the better of it?
“Team wise, we got bopped,” admits Wilson-Esbrand. Some light back-and-forth on individual performance follows, ending only with Wilson-Esbrand sighing: “I know when to admit defeat. It might take a long time, though!”
'Arteta's detail is a different level. He sees everything'
Coventry and Robins are clearly trusted allies of title chasers City and Arsenal. It is Wilson-Esbrand’s first loan spell, he made a pair of substitute Champions League appearances pre-Christmas and started an EFL Cup trouncing of Wycombe in Sep 2021. His eyes dance as a memory is jogged: “After my debut, I went on Instagram and saw ‘Kevin De Bruyne is following you’. I thought it was one of these fan pages, but clicked on it and saw 15 million followers and was like ‘ahhh right!’ I followed back as quickly as I could!” How many people did you tell? “I screen-shotted it to bare group chats!”At City, Wilson-Esbrand has largely trained with Pep Guardiola’s first team since signing from West Ham in Oct 2019. “It’s a joy: you learn bucketloads. Being around the way we play becomes addictive. It becomes something that you love. The way we play, Arsenal play, Burnley play, it’s like artwork.”
For Norton-Cuffy this is loan spell number three. He did, though, get to work with Mikel Arteta in pre-season, fresh from helping England lift the U19 European Championships. “His detail is a different level,” he says of Arteta. “It is the small things that you don’t think will make much difference. He stopped a session a few times and said ‘listen, it’s not much, but if you move left just one space, you’ll be free and have so much time.’ He sees everything.”
Coventry wingbacks have a very different role to the inverted full-backs deployed by both City and Arsenal. It is a methodology drilled into Wilson-Esbrand and his current coaches are savvy enough to tap into his schooling: “Obviously here, and in general, wingback is a lot more up and down. But the coaching staff acknowledge our background, and the style of play we’ve been exposed to. At times, when it is needed, they say we can come into that role because we are used to it. They will acknowledge that we are comfortable and able to do it.”
Norton-Cuffy has that ability, but can also draw on a wider range of experience: “I’ve changed style of play three times now. You’ve got to transition, transition, transition,” he says. “Learning different ways to play is very helpful, because now when you do come up against it, or when you do have to do it again, you’ve already got that tool in your locker.” Fundamentally though, both love nothing more than a one-on-one battle, than beating a man “...or two or three” in Wilson-Esbrand’s case.
The pair speak on the eve of what is effectively a title play-off between their parents. Wilson-Esbrand is enjoying asking all those who will listen how many times City have won the title in the last five years: “They say ‘four’ and I’m like ‘ahhhh, good odds then.”
Naturally, Norton-Cuffy, a Hale End graduate, is hammering different colours to the mast: “I’ve got to back Arsenal. I’m an Arsenal boy. You see the whole mood of the squad’s changed. The boys are buzzing. Everyone is fighting. You’ve got to be proud of them really.”
But that is the extent of the title talk. Neither is entirely sure what time the game kicks off, and they certainly won’t watch it together. Their focus is solely on Coventry and a potential top-flight return for the first time in either of their lifetimes. They are growing as players and as people. And they have a tantalising carrot dangling in front of them.
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