Really? After almost eight years, two promotions, an agonising Championship playoff final defeat on penalties and a toenail offside which cost them a place in last year’s FA Cup final, Mark Robins has been sacked as Coventry City’s manager.
In English football’s top two divisions, only Pep Guardiola has been in his job longer – and let’s be honest, he’s had it easy in comparison.
After Robins returned to the Sky Blues in 2017 for his second spell, he was a stabilising presence amid the surrounding tumult as the club became homeless and almost went bust. He operated under a vicious financial stranglehold at the hands of former owners Otium, but somehow brought triumph after triumph, navigating a return to the Championship from the depths of League Two, overseeing four trips to Wembley and reigniting a fanbase that had fallen out of love with the club.
He is rightly lauded as one of the club’s best managers, behind only John Sillett and perhaps Jimmy Hill.
As a Coventry fan my heart says his exit stinks of ingratitude, that Robins is the quintessential victim of his own success, but the unpalatable truth is that he oversaw a period of slow decay for the past 18 months.
Since Coventry sold the star players Viktor Gyökeres and Gustavo Hamer for big money in the summer of 2023 after missing out on promotion to the Premier League, the club’s recruitment has been expensive and underwhelming.
Haji Wright, a £7.5m signing from Antalyaspor, and Ellis Simms, a £3m buy from Everton, looked nervous early in their Sky Blues careers. And despite a brief purple patch, Simms remains bereft of confidence – he’s the kind of striker you fully expect to miss the simplest of chances, the Championship’s Darwin Núñez.
In the wake of their heartbreaking Cup exit to Manchester United at Wembley last season, City suffered four defeats in five to miss out on the playoffs. This term, seven defeats in 14 league matches – including Wednesday night’s abject reverse at home to promoted Derby – have left them outside the relegation spots on goal difference. It’s the third year running that City have looked hopeless at the start of a campaign.
Outsiders may have fancied us for the promotion spots this year but most Coventry fans knew differently. With Callum O’Hare moving to Sheffield United on a free transfer and Kasey Palmer exiting suddenly on deadline day to Hull, the injury-prone Ben Sheaf is the only outstanding midfielder left in City’s squad. The fact that Robins bought more attackers in the summer but neglected to fix the engine room was a baffling failure in a league as physical and intense as the Championship.
Recent victories over Luton and Middlesbrough had settled fears of an unexpected relegation scrap, but the performances which sandwiched those wins have been awful and the club’s owner, Doug King, was understandably vexed.
“No energy, passion or leadership,” lamented one fan on X (formerly Twitter) after Wednesday night’s loss. Another wrote: “If you watched that game tonight and don’t know what standard it was, you’d be being kind saying it was League Two. Absolutely dreadful.”
To be frank, Robins was never a master tactician and always seemed allergic to substitutions, but alongside Adi Viveash and Dennis Lawrence he formed a formidable coaching setup. The sudden departure of Viveash for mysterious reasons in the summer, so soon after Lawrence had left for Minnesota, rocked the club. Consistency was replaced by confusion; optimism by frustration.
Ultimately what stings about Robins’ sacking is not that it’s happened per se, but that it’s happened so hastily. Few supporters were mutinous and most would have accepted a season of underperformance. I wouldn’t have complained even if Robins had taken us down a division, for he might have reproduced the old magic to propel us upwards again.
Who knows what tier the Sky Blues will be in should Robins ever get the statue outside the ground that his exploits deserve.
