For Mark Robins and Coventry City, surely the happiest marriage in the EFL, it all started at Wembley. Less than a month after his return had been confirmed, Coventry upset Oxford United in the EFL Trophy final in April 2017. The bulk of the 74,000 attendees had travelled down by car and train and coach from the West Midlands, a Sky Blue river flowing towards the national stadium.
Then, Wembley offered a day to temporarily pause the mourning and their abject grief. Coventry had lost their first three games in a week under Robins without scoring, a team sliding into the fourth tier for the first time since 1959. The Sisu ownership had failed and then kept on failing. Coventry had been forced into the role of unwilling nomad, playing seasons in Northampton and Birmingham.
Look at a list of teams who beat Coventry over a run of league non-form that constituted 17 defeats in 22 matches: Southend United, Oldham Athletic, Chesterfield, Scunthorpe United. All four played in non-league this season, a trail of destruction and attempted redemption songs, Make no mistake: that could have been Coventry’s fate.
And yet Robins saw something different, a reason for pride, defiance and, dare he say it, hope. “It means everything to the supporters,” he said then. “It was really important for us as a football club to show the world that we are still alive and kicking. It gives everybody a reminder that we have a really good fanbase and there’s so much potential at this place.”
Seven years on, another April day in the sun. In 2017, Coventry played at Wembley for the first time since their finest hour, their 1987 FA Cup final victory over Tottenham Hotspur and the only major tournament success in the club’s history.
Now they get another shot at the FA Cup. Now there is only hope and pride and no sense of it being used as a tool of emotional self-preservation. One half of Wembley will be sky blue again.
Robins’ permanence is his greatest asset and it speaks of his magnificence. The EFL is a lurching mass of slumps and peaks, of impatience by owners desperate to claw after the extra revenue that promotions inevitably provide. Since Robins took the job, there have been 134 changes of manager in the Championship alone. Of the list of managers continually serving in the EFL, Robins is more than three years ahead of anyone else.
It helps that he knows that the grass isn’t always greener. Robins left Coventry after just 33 matches in his first spell. Huddersfield Town and Scunthope returned 23 wins in each job and the longest he lasted in either was 71 matches. Last weekend, he made it a full 365 back home. He made mistakes and everything since has atoned for them.
Because Robins has been given no favours. He is still employed at this club because he has overachieved ever since he walked through the door. Before that first full season, 2017-18, Coventry’s malaise was like no other club in England: 47 years without a top-six finish.
The last Coventry manager to do it, Joe Mercer, had passed away 28 years earlier. Robins has managed one top-six place in each EFL division across the last six completed seasons.
That is nothing short of a miracle. If Coventry City are now in safer hands generally thanks to the takeover of Doug King and, more importantly, the absence of Sisu, Robins took Coventry through the divisions when he was the only distraction from the noise. His budgets were low, still easily in the bottom half in the Championship. He bought low, developed and sold high.
The last trip to Wembley hurt like hell. The play-off final defeat on penalties last May was the first significant step backwards of the Robins era and he concedes that the team failed to produce in the first half. Still, they were two kicks away from taking Luton’s fairytale off them and they deserve just as much praise for the similarities of the journey.
Last season also marked the start of a new era here. Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer, the two individual stars and the highest-value assets, were sold on. In their place, Robins was able to rebuild the squad. Coventry signed eight players for around £2m or more this season, having broken that fee once in the previous 22 years.
As a result, this season started slowly. New players, half a new team, requires a period of acclimatisation and Coventry won only three of their first 16 league games to sit 20th in the league in late November. Their pronounced surge since will likely not end in playoffs this time. So how do you react? By reaching Wembley via a different route.
Sunday offers a chance for something deeply special for this Midlands city and its league football club. They may not beat Manchester United, Robins’ old club; they do not expect to and that is not the point anyway. They will stand in those red seats and they will proclaim the saviour of something that they feared had been lost, perhaps for good. Once, they saw no escape. Now this is their escape.
We would allow Robins to take a moment by that vivid green turf, a long look towards the Coventry end as he takes in the magnitude of all that he has achieved. He is not the type to rule a club as his fiefdom, but he is still their king. All of this – the promise of young players, the dependability of the senior faces, the joy that he has brought to so many – is his work. No gratitude can repay him enough, although his people will try their best.
It’s easy to get caught up in the hoopla of football management, a desperate conveyor belt of dreams and ambition. Robins surely wants to face United as divisional peers, with Coventry or after them. There has been interest and there will be offers. Every now and then, someone will opine that Robins is being unfairly overlooked for big jobs.
That misses the point: this is his big job because this is his club now. There is much to malign about English football in 2024: financial inequality, desperation culture, the forced austerity of clubs who merely want a fair swing at fulfilling their potential.
But you can still find stories that are enough to fill your heart, whether you support the team in question or not. Robins is the best of his breed: loyal, savvy, realistic and emphatically overachieving. On Sunday, Coventry City get another day in front of the entire nation. Nobody deserves it more than him.