. In a world of bluster and buzzwords, Robins speaks sensibly, realistically. For Coventry City he was the shy Messiah, leading the club out of its darkest hours, taking them within minutes – inches even – of the promised land. Visit the Coventry City Building Society Stadium and encounter a kind of faded grandeur. The glory days were at Highfield Road. Its replacement, the Ricoh, as it was first known at the start of a torrid history that continues with Mike Ashley as landlord, is modern, glassy, a cashless society with a statue of Jimmy Hill at its entrance. Perhaps one day Robins will be afforded a bronze tribute as the man who took the floodlit dreams of a city trying to revive itself on his shoulders. Without him, the stadium’s sun-bleached sky-blue seats might now be entirely disused.
But this being modern football, where the money slides uphill and out of the game, even a civic hero pays the price for a slump. Robins took the club to the Championship playoff final in 2023 and was a VAR-assisted offside goal away from beating Manchester United to reach the 2024 FA Cup final. Sorry, mate, you’re 17th in the Championship, and so, as a club statement droned: “Mark’s achievements at the Sky Blues, often against a backdrop of uncertainty and financial restrictions, will see him remembered and lauded as one of the club’s greatest ever managers, who was able to galvanise players, staff, fans and the club as a whole to incredible feats.”
Robins, as a football man, knows the game better than most, and just like Paul Hurst, who returned to Shrewsbury to relive the glory days but was sacked last week, or Erik ten Hag, now a forgotten man as Robins’ former club go mad for Rúben Amorim, and Marks Kennedy and Robinson, shelled by Swindon and Burton, knew the end could always be near. Doug King is the chief …
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