They say you never forget your first love and presumably that ethos applies to football heartbreak.
Certainly, 39 years on, I can still recall how I felt as a 10 year-old boy when I first encountered such an experience.
For obvious reasons, the memory is a little bit sketchy but the sentiment is clear.
It was January 1987 when Coventry City went to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United, whose new manager Alex Ferguson had arrived two months earlier, in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
A player by the name of Keith Houchen scored the only goal of the contest and, just as I had willed on my team to equalise via the radio that afternoon, I can still recall watching Match of the Day in bed at my grandparent’s house that evening knowing what was coming but hoping that somehow we’d score.
I actually remembered being momentarily confused (it’s as easy to confuse me now as it was then!) when the highlights showed us scoring, only for the goal to be ruled out as the ball had gone out of play seconds earlier.
Yet again I had got my hopes up.
Anyway, to go back to the original point, I forgave (if not forgot) and sure enough was thrilled for them when they famously went onto win the cup four months later with Houchen a true Sky Blue hero with a number of goals on the road to Wembley, including that iconic header in their showpiece triumph.
Now as they prepare to return to the Premier League for the first time since 2001 (where has the last quarter of a century gone?), it’s fair to say the momentarily deflation for a young schoolboy in the Isle of Man that January afternoon is nothing compared with what Coventry City Football Club and its supporters have generally experienced over the past few decades.
Frank Lampard is the man who has overseen their ascent this season.
In my view though, the person who laid the groundwork and built the team up to the point where they were able to challenge (remember, it was only 2018 when they were in League Two) is Mark Robins.
He was the man who took over a struggling club and led them from the bottom of League Two to the Championship, winning the EFL Trophy and establishing a sustainable and competitive squad in the process and some memories to cherish.
He also took them within a penalty shoot-out of promotion to the Premier League in 2023 and the FA Cup Final in 2024.
That is superb management in itself following a period of one disaster after another which preceded it, including reduced investment, mounting debts, relegation to League One and a forced groundshare with Northampton Town (a 70-mile round trip from Coventry) for more than a year from 2013 which, at one point, was attracting crowds of only 2,000.
Following a rent dispute with the then owners, Coventry City Football Club Ltd actually dissolved but the team was allowed to continue playing.
Relegation to League Two followed – their first in the fourth tier since 1959 – but Robins had begun to work his magic by then, including an EFL Trophy success (their first trophy since the 1987 FA Cup) and the long journey back was underway.
Even when they were exiled from the ground once more from 2019 to 2021, playing their home games at St Andrew’s in Birmingham amid ongoing legal action over the 2014 purchase of the stadium by rugby club Wasps, Robins quietly got on with the job of rebuilding a football team and club now owns its own ground again.
Reclaiming a place at the top tier of English football (just three years after coming so close to the promised land) is just the latest move which has restored the belief that Robins oversaw and has been boosted by a new owner in local boy made good, Doug King.
Yes, the SBOTOP Premier League 2026 betting odds will make the Championship title winners among the firm favourites to go straight back down.
It is the same most years and, let’s face it, with the gulf between the top flight strugglers and the Championship growing by the year, it’s understandable (this season is the first in three that all three promoted clubs have not dropped out straight away again). But if they can build on a hugely successful campaign, then why can’t the Sky Blues – the club which brought us Jimmy Hill, George Curtis & John Sillett, Peter Ndlovu and the slaloming Darren Huckerby – make their mark again and deliver Premier League 2026 highlights next term.
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