Coventry City travel to Brighton for a free hit in the FA Cup

Mark Robins says he does not want to use the word but it keeps coming up: Coventry City, according to their manager, are “desperate” to climb back up the divisions in the Football League. Desperate to match the expectations of their support. Desperate that a squad of young players, many of them graduates from the club’s academy, prove themselves capable of achieving success. Perhaps the only thing he is relaxed about is facing Brighton in the FA Cup.

“There’s no better game for us really,” Robins says before Saturday’s south coast encounter. “Honestly, I wish I could play, I really do. We know Brighton are a good team. Just to put it in a little bit of perspective they’re going to start their record £14.1m signing [Jürgen Locadia]. So the difference between the sides is there for everybody to see; we all know that. But that’s where the interest and the excitement comes from. Our players don’t get to play in these stadiums very often. This is one chance to go away and play in a top, top stadium against a Premier League team.”

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The fifth-round tie is a free hit for the Sky Blues. They are the lowest-ranked team left in the competition and have knocked out top-flight opposition in the shape of Stoke City. If they go one better and beat Chris Hughton’s team then great, but the priority remains as it has always been: promotion from League Two and one step back along the path to restoring the club to the higher echelons of English club football.

“The thing for me,” says Robins, “is that while everyone is desperate to do well – desperate might not be the correct word to use – we’re professional enough to know that just because you click your fingers it doesn’t mean that you get success. You’ve got to build for that. Success will happen, but it will happen when everything comes together and everything aligns.

“There’s been a lot of challenges for us this season in terms of the mental side. But also physically. We’ve lost key players when we were building the squad in the summer. We’ve lost players to injury and to illness. So then you’ve got to try and change things and find another way to win.”

That other way has been to draw on the academy players. In a division that can put a premium on physicality, it is unusual for a League Two team to try to play passing football with teenagers. But that has been the Coventry way this season. Robins estimates there may be as many as eight graduates in the squad that travel to the Amex Stadium, foremost among them the midfielders Tom Bayliss, 18, and the 20-year-old Jordan Shipley.

Bayliss caught the eye against Stoke and scored in midweek at Colchester but Coventry went on to lose 2-1, a third defeat in succession that has taken the steam out of their promotion effort. With 14 games to go, they are ninth, three points behind last year’s FA Cup sensation Lincoln, who occupy the final play-off place.

“I thought after Tuesday night we would have to work hard to get them up, but they’ve been brilliant,” says Robins. “They have stepped up and are doing a fantastic job in the circumstances. So whatever happens for the rest of the season we will be having a right good go to try and achieve our objectives. Nobody would expect any different, and obviously there’s realism there as well. But these lot are capable of doing what they want to do and achieving what we need to achieve.”

Robins says the club are in a much healthier position than they were a year ago, during an unsuccessful battle against relegation from League One. That change in atmosphere, and the blooding of youth, appears to have also energised the support. Long in decline since a crass intervention by the club’s owner saw Coventry temporarily relocate to Northampton’s ground, gates at the 32,000-capacity Ricoh Arena average 8,800 (the highest in the division). And when the Sky Blues travelled to MK Dons in the fourth round they took 7,833 fans, more than the home side could muster. Their allocation for the Amex is sold out too.

“We want to – I was going to use desperately again – we want them to be proud of the team,” Robins says. “That’s basically what the club is, the support. So we’re trying to do everything within our power to move forward and we’ve got a platform for that now. Sometimes we’re falling short – that’s the nature of where we’re at. There’s also a challenge in playing for Coventry because there is a level of expectation there.

“I think desperation is part of that, and we’re desperate to get back up to where the club belongs.”