3/3
“From that point on, it’s been really good,” Robins says. “We’ve managed to build season on season, and this season has been exceptional – in terms of the start we were handed and all the other issues we had. The fact I remained in post when others didn’t when we were bottom of the table in October, that’s something you look back on. We managed to navigate our way through a difficult period.”
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By early February, before hosting
Luton in a game that finished 1-1, Coventry had escaped the relegation zone. But they were 15th that morning. Luton were fourth.
“We’re under no illusion, they’re the favourites,” Robins says of Saturday’s play-off final, which Luton fans will find amusing – they are hardly giants and were in League Two themselves five years ago. “We definitely weren’t expected to get there (Wembley). The change of ownership has helped to change focus and the five-year plan we spoke about has been accelerated by five years. We’re ahead of the curve on that front.
“When I say we have achieved incredible things over six years, and certainly this season, I think we’ve not achieved anything tangible yet. We’ve got to go and try to finish this off. But to be in a position to try to do that is in itself incredible. We’ve got to enjoy it.”
Another detour: back to the first game of Robins’ managerial career. It was with
Rotherham United in 2007, when he moved from being Alan Knill’s assistant to being his replacement as they sat bottom of League One.
Robins was 36. He had a playing career that began, famously, under
Alex Ferguson at
Manchester United in 1988 and finished off the radar with Nigel Clough as his boss at Burton Albion in 2005. What was his managerial plan?
“There was no plan for me to be a manager,” Robins says. “I’d done my coaching qualifications when I was 32. I organised to do a level two coaching qualification. It was two years before I finished playing. I carried on doing the qualifications and was invited onto the course at Warwick University. It was more management than coaching, but I really enjoyed it. I went and did the A licence the same summer, so it was a heavy schedule. But it was really good.
“I’d started to do that and was asked to go and assist Knilly (Alan Knill) when he was manager before Mick (Harford) came. Looking back on it, I had zero impact on Knilly. I had no experience and it was difficult for Knilly in his first role. Then Mick came in and I became the youth-team coach, a baptism of fire, not really had much experience. But in terms of the managerial and coaching side of things, it was brilliant.
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“I still didn’t think about the managerial side of things at all. Then Mick left, Knilly took over, he left, then they asked me to take over. It was difficult, a 10-point deduction, then administration, coming out of administration, not satisfying the creditors and ending with a 17-point deduction.
“I’d got the job and when you’re sat in the chair… I remember my first game. It was against Bradford City, I was caretaker manager and we won 4-1. I remember the elation from winning, but they had three goals disallowed. So you know you’ve won by a brilliant margin, but it’s lucky.
“I went to watch Port Vale, our next opponents, and thought, ‘OK, we’re in a decent place’. Rubbish. We lost 5-1.
“I went home, went to bed and pulled the cover over my head. I remember it and how I felt – the lowest I’d ever felt in football – and then literally after about 15 minutes of reflecting on it, I got up and set about what I wanted to do. That was the point where I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this’.
“You just don’t know until you’re in the seat if you can do the job. Sometimes I go back to that, infrequently. There’s been so much adversity in my managerial career – the turbulence here – that first job at Rotherham stood me in good stead.”
In January of this year, Doug King completed his 100 per cent purchase of the club, restoring the official company name to ‘Coventry City Football Club Limited’. It is a detail that matters to supporters, as does the fact there is no debt and the CBS Arena – formerly the Ricoh Arena – will be home for the next five years.
The Sky Blue Lodge training ground is already having its pitches and facilities upgraded and, in the week of that play-off victory at Middlesbrough, there was also a new four-year contract announced for Robins.
A successful local businessman based in Stratford-upon-Avon, King has not been in the idiosyncratic football industry long, but as Robins says: “He’s brilliant, he finds his feet quickly.”
Coventry’s new owner Doug King (Photo: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
And even if Luton win at Wembley tomorrow, Coventry fans will hardly complain about their club’s trajectory. As Robins says: “The club feels in such a good place, it’s ready to take-off. With the right backing, which I know we’re going to get, we can change this for the foreseeable future.”
Having said that, Robins swiftly notes that “next season’s Championship is going to be ridiculously difficult. You’ve got teams coming up with a lot of financial clout, you’ve got teams coming down which will have an awful lot of financial clout. And they will spend. They will do what
Burnley did in terms of getting top, top players for the level, which gives them a chance of bouncing back.
“That’s the difference with the two teams, Coventry and Luton; it remains to be seen what would happen next.
“Ultimately, if you go up (to the Premier League), the expectation from outside is that the team will struggle and return to the Championship. So whatever you do, you’ve got to put things in place to try to remain competitive without killing the club. Those are things we’ll certainly be addressing and have addressed to a degree.
“We’ve got to stick to what we do. If you get to that next level, you can think about the level of player you’re going to need, allied with the ones you’ve already got.”
Coventry City’s finest day came at Wembley in 1987, when they defeated
Tottenham 3-2 in a dramatic
FA Cup final. Their gregarious, gifted manager was John Sillett and Robins references him when saying his players on Saturday “will be heroes” should they beat Luton and rejoin a top flight the club have not been part of since 2001. They will have “cult status”.
“One of the biggest things I’ve noticed,” Robins says of that 1987 side, “is John Sillett’s biggest legacy – the fact that team remain together, still get together, play golf, go for drinks, fundraise, come to the games; they are always together and they are a brilliant set of people.
“All those former players I’ve met are fantastic and synonymous with this club. That’s something that sticks with me.”
He is a grounded individual, Robins. But he can see
the romance in Luton versus Coventry in a play-off to reach the Premier League five years after the clubs met in the fourth division. He allows himself to feel pride at the “reconnection” between the supporters and his players. “Their humility helps,” he says of his squad. And he feels the value of friendship among that 1987 team.
“Fingers crossed, if you’ve got that spirit, it can take you a long way.
