Coventry City's 'formula for misery and failure' versus 'recipe for excitement and success'

Mark Robins’s sudden departure from the CBS Arena caused something of a stir in the football writers community, the vast majority of commentators baffled and/or dismayed by Doug King’s decision.

It even moved my long-time Telegraph team-mate, former Sports Editor Alan Poole, to abandon his daily routine of audiobooks and TV antiques shows and dig out his trusty laptop

Alan writes ...

Thursday morning I was 30-odd hours into a self-imposed media blackout – shocked and sickened by the most depressing sequel in modern political history, I just couldn’t stomach the sight or sound of analysts earnestly poring over the entrails as if it was all somehow normal.

READ MORE: What Jake Bidwell told Mark Robins after hearing the news that he'd been sacked by Coventry City

READ MORE: Jake Bidwell lifts lid on Doug King meeting and how players feel about Mark Robins' sacking

But around 11.00am I received two texts in the space of 30 seconds from old Cov Tel colleagues, the first inquiring “what are City doing – absolutely classless” while the second provided an answer of sorts: “City are ungrateful ******* idiots.”

Now I’m not as sharp as I used to be but I can still make a reasonable stab at two-plus-two and, sure enough, there was breaking-news confirmation that the Sky Blues had sacked Mark Robins.

Shocking? Definitely. Sickening? You bet. Sad? Stupid? I’d certainly say so. But surprising? Not so much really because, as with US democracy, English football has long since abandoned any shred of self awareness, let alone common sense.

A little later it struck me that I retired in 2017, a fortnight before Robins began his second spell as City manager. And, if you’ll pardon the egotistical yardstick, that coincidental overlap exposes a fascinating timeline.

I arrived at Corporation Street in 1990 shortly before bona-fide legend John Sillett was unceremoniously dumped – the board somewhat bizarrely justifying their decision by citing his reluctance to accept a three-year contract extension.

The Sky Blues achieved 10th (twice), seventh and 12th positions in Sillett’s four years at the helm – not to mention that whole Wembley ’87 thing – but once he’d left they never once breached the top half of the table before surrendering their cherished Premier status in 2001.

By the time I’d grabbed the redundancy money and done a runner, City had worked their way through 19 managers in 27 years, a turnover all the more frantic when you factor in Gordon Strachan’s five years in charge. And their reward for those endless reboots – three relegations rounded off by their descent to the fourth tier which was done and dusted before Robins’s return.

Of those 19, 14 were sacked, three (Bobby Gould, Gary McAllister and Tony Mowbray) resigned while Ron Atkinson was shunted upstairs for a brief stint as general manager. Robins alone was head-hunted by another club, Huddersfield meeting SISU’s buy-out clause which, depending on who you chose to believe, was either in the five or six-figure bracket.

CEO Tim Fisher declared himself furious on behalf of the City supporters but Robins left with a win percentage of 51.5 – by some distance the best ratio in the club’s history – and so most of them were content to welcome him back just four years later.

And how did that turn out? Well, he “oversaw the resurrection of Coventry City from the depths of League Two to Champions of League One and to a hairs breadth away from both the Premier League and a second FA Cup Final whilst competing in the Championship for a fifth consecutive season.”

Furthermore, he “masterminded and built several teams over that time that outperformed their budget, outperformed their infrastructure and brought back a playing style, credibility and belief to our City that had been lost and eroded over many years.”

Not forgetting to mention, of course, “these achievements will never be forgotten by those who witnessed such deeds and the broader community that once again began to rekindle their affection for our club.”

Which begs three questions: (1) why would any owner in his right mind choose to dispense with such a treasure; (2) why do clubs invariably add back-handed insult to injury by stapling a glowing testimonial to their departing gaffer’s P45; and (3) why did Doug King attribute Robins’s character reference to ‘The Club’ instead of putting his signature to it?

Looking back on those 19 managers I reported on and interviewed, most were high-profile individuals with every credential you could ask for and nearly all were thoroughly decent blokes who loved their football, relished their challenge and did everything they could to take the club forward despite operating against, as ‘The Club’ might put it “a backdrop of uncertainty and financial restrictions.”

But to be honest I feel something of an interloper here – I’m a lifelong Spurs supporter who, like my texting mates (Everton and Manchester United respectively), was introduced to City through work and came to cherish them as adopted sons.

So instead let’s chart this sequence in Andy Turner years because he’s been covering them for 26 and, more importantly, followed them for 52 (he’s older than he looks, you know – I sometimes suspect he’s got a supernatural self portrait tucked away in the attic.)

In his first 19 seasons on the Sky Blues beat, Andy dealt with 14 managers as he chronicled a dismal decline from the top tier to the fourth. In the last seven, however, he’s watched them make Wembley Stadium something of a second home as it took two painful penalty shoot-outs and one agonising VAR shout to deny them promotion to the Premier League and a place in the FA Cup final.

Now it’s theoretically possible, perhaps, that Pep Guardiola has tapped up City for the chance to prove he can work on a budget; just-about conceivable, in these AI times, that Jimmy Hill’s DNA has been utilised to clone the ultimate version of Football Manager 25.

Back in the real world, though, it’s almost as if replacing your manager every 15 months or so is a formula for misery and failure whereas finding a good one and sticking with him through the tough times is a recipe for excitement and success.

But then that’s just statistics, precedent, rationality. Why plump for woke concepts like that when you’re offered the opportunity of change, even when ‘change’ almost invariably consists of repeating those mistakes which proved so disastrous in the past…