Sunday’s final at Wembley will be well attended but that has been far from the norm since the Football League allowed under-23 teams to competeDespite vastly reduced numbers going through the turnstiles for the early rounds of this season’s revamped Checkatrade Trophy, more than 72,000 tickets have been sold for the final, between Coventry City and Oxford United. Sunday’s crowd at Wembley will fall short of the record for a Football League Trophy denouement – 80,841 watched Wolves beat Burnley in 1988 – but it is a significant increase on the 59,230 supporters who attended last year’s decider, when Oxford lost a thriller 3-2 to Barnsley.The Football League is likely to see Sunday’s attendance as vindication for its much-maligned overhaul...
Mark Robins’s second coming at the Ricoh starts badly with 2-0 defeat by Bradford City which leaves League One’s bottom club 14 points from safetyThe second coming of Mark Robins at Coventry City began with a home defeat, 2-0 by Bradford City. As omens go it was not totally bad. So did his first, in September 2012, and he left in 2013 as the best manager the club has had with a league win percentage of 52%. In 25 games he took them from 23rd in League One to eighth in February. But the situation is more desperate now. Even Messiahs need time – not Easter. Coventry, still in League One by a thread, are 14 points from safety with...
The catalogue of mismanagement at City over the past 15 years is so extensive and so warped that even as a fan it sometimes feels impossible to keep trackIn October 1991 I went with my dad and cousin to Edgar Street, the rickety home of Hereford United, to watch them play Aldershot in the old fourth division. The match itself was a forgettable experience but afterwards we at least got the autograph of Greg “he’s got no hair, but we don’t care” Downs. The former Coventry City full-back and FA Cup winner, who would go on to become the Bulls’ player-manager, had been signed for Hereford by John Sillett, the architect of that most unexpected of triumphs for the Sky...
Soaring Southampton’s lucky escape from a proposed takeover in 2007 put the Sky Blues on the road to years of pain and fans fear for their Football League status in the near futureThere are times in football when you hear a story that sounds so daft, so utterly inconceivable, that if it happened in just about any other sport you would probably think it might be too far-fetched to be true.Unfortunately, this is football, land of the absurd, and it all fits into the narrative to learn that Coventry City, under the permanently bewildering Sisu regime, briefly discussed the idea – no kidding – of being the first club in England to introduce a “text‑a‑substitute” option during matches. Supporters would...
The FA Cup glory of 1987 is a distant memory for the club lying bottom of League One with angry supporters blaming the owners and demanding they sell upThirty years ago next May, Keith Houchen stooped to conquer. A journeyman striker with Coventry City, who had nearly missed the 1987 FA Cup final against Tottenham Hotspur because of food poisoning, Houchen scored the defining goal of the match with a diving header of acrobatic grace. It was a goal that lived on beyond that game and helped seal a glorious chapter in the history of Coventry, who lifted the Cup for the first and only time. Today fans of the beleaguered club may be forgiven for thinking it was a...