The sun is up on a sky-blue day and no one in Coventry feels remotely inclined to wait until the weekend before breathing in the full FA Cup semi-final experience.
It’s Thursday morning at Upper Precinct, on the pedestrianised walkway leading out to the city’s cathedral, and Wembley scarves are flying off the stalls set up to sell Cup merchandise. By lunchtime, cars with flags draped out of windows have started heading down Jimmy Hill Way, perhaps getting the journey south done early.
With fully four days left to string out its match previews, the Coventry Telegraph’s talk has turned to GOATs and the question of whether Mark Robins is Coventry City’s all-time greatest manager. ‘Yes’, says Gordon Strachan, one of his predecessors. There are certainly other contenders, but this is a very popular opinion.
Those purchasing flags emblazoned ‘Coventry City marching up Wembley Way’, declare this weekend in the spotlight to be nothing less than an existential triumph, even though the club reached Wembley for last season’s Championship play-off final. ‘We’re back where we belong,’ says Dave Bunn, beaming in the sunshine. ‘People only came to write about Coventry because of bad stuff,’ says Moz Baker. ‘We’ve finally got good stuff to say.’
The ‘bad stuff’ was the club lurching from crisis to crisis after relegation from the top-flight in 2001 ended 34 consecutive years at that level. The club being so broke that the council had to take ownership of their new stadium a few years later.
