COVENTRY CITY: BACK AT LAST

“It never happens for people like us, you know.” 

After 25 years, with one in League Two and three in exile from their city, the Sky Blues are in the top tier again under Frank Lampard. Skipper Matt Grimes and their last Premier League boss, Gordon Strachan, share their joy 

Words Joe Donnohue 

Additional reporting Ed McCambridge, Chris Evans

So reads the third line of We’ll Live And Die In These Towns, by The Enemy. The Coventry band’s 2007 single has been the unofficial anthem of the city’s football club for several years now. 

After 25 years outside of the top flight, Coventry City fans could be forgiven for self-indulgently attributing that one particular line to their plight of recent decades. This season, those fans will sing it to a worldwide Premier League audience for the first time. 

Coventry romped to the Championship crown with 95 points and deservedly earned their spot in the top tier once more, under the management of Frank Lampard. Following spells with Chelsea, Manchester City and Everton, blue was the colour for him yet again. 

The Sky Blues finished 11 points clear of runners-up Ipswich, scoring 97 goals. They spent 40 of the 46 game weeks in the automatic promotion places and, save for a mid-season wobble, the overwhelming majority of that was in top spot. Keeping the rest of the division at arm’s length, without the benefit of parachute payments, is no idle task. 

It has been an arduous journey. The club today is unrecognisable from the one that succumbed to relegation from the Premier League in 2001. Back then, they played at Highfield Road and had spent 34 consecutive seasons in the top flight – one of the longest-serving sides at that time, in fact, behind only Arsenal, Everton and Liverpool. 

Even the current iteration of Coventry City is much changed from the one that was playing League One football as recently as 2020. It’s a team that has evolved, shed its skin, morphed into something else entirely and finally rid itself of the financial deadweight that had, at one stage, dragged them down to the fourth tier. 

In recent years, the trajectory has been upward, but plotting a way back from League Two is rare – nigh-on impossible, in fact. They’ve managed it in eight years, though there have been a handful of false dawns along the way. 

The club came agonisingly close to a Premier League return in 2023, only to be defeated on penalties by Luton in the play-off final. In 2025, the decisive blow to their redemption hopes came in the last minute of extra time in their semi-final second leg at Sunderland. In between those campaigns, Coventry came within a hair’s breadth of making an FA Cup final appearance, too, but for a tight VAR call denying them when they had seemingly battled back from 3-0 down to lead Manchester United 4-3.

Considering that the club had also spent the latter part of their previous top-flight existence circling the drain year after year, it hasn’t been easy being a Coventry fan.

“There are signs up – even on the road signs – saying, ‘We’re back’,” Gordon Strachan tells FourFourTwo – the last man to manage Coventry in the Premier League was in the city this summer, and saw what the club’s return to the big time meant to everyone. He continues: “The community, football-wise, took a battering for 25 years. It’s a different world now in Coventry.” 

He’s not wrong. The Scot understands better than most what plights the club has been through over the past quarter of a century. He also knows what it went through before that. Strachan joined the club under his former Manchester United gaffer, Ron Atkinson, in 1995, and then became player-manager a year later. He hung up his boots in 1997 but stayed in charge for another four years, until four months after Coventry’s relegation from the top division.

Strachan’s family are still among the club’s season ticket holders. While football ended up taking him elsewhere, it’s a place that he returns to often.

“The eyes of the world are now on Coventry, which is great, and they’re actually talking about the football,” he says. “For 20 years, it was, ‘Who owns the stadium? Who’s got the shares in it? Where are we playing? Are we at Northampton or Birmingham? Who is the owner?’”

There were times when fans genuinely pondered whether the slide would ever end. Disputes over rent, administration, points deductions, Sisu, League Two, Mike Ashley, Frasers Group, Sixfields, St Andrew’s… finally, though, the Premier League beckons.

“UP THERE WITH JIMMY HILL”

We’ll Live And Die In These Towns is a song about the realities of post-industrial Britain, urban unemployment, and getting by despite the weight of it all. Coventry was a hub for the automotive industry and the base of many leading car manufacturers before the turn of the 21st century. Such was the city’s industrial might, it was even targeted in a Luftwaffe bombing raid during the Second World War. No longer is it an industrial powerhouse, but there are reminders of its past.

‘Getting by’ is what Coventry City have done for much of the last 25 years. While the club’s previous owners sustained a loss-making enterprise, supporters did their best to keep the spirit of a well-supported side alive.

“It’s been painful for these people, absolutely painful,” Strachan tells us. “But the younger ones, who are 12, 13 – that’s the catchment area. Coventry have captured another group of kids now, which they couldn’t do for years.

“The three main people in this have been Mark Robins, Doug King and Frank Lampard. Frank’s had to take them over the line, but between the three of them, that’s some group. I think Mark Robins is up there with Jimmy Hill, Noel Cantwell and people like that for the club.” It was Hill who managed Coventry to their last top-flight promotion, in 1967. Cantwell succeeded him and, three years later, led the club to sixth in the First Division – their highest ever finish.

To tell the story of Coventry’s return to the top without reverence for Robins would do the experienced manager a great disservice. While Lampard will lead the team in the Premier League, he may never have taken the reins if not for Robins’ promotion successes.

The former Manchester United striker brought Coventry back from the brink. He arrived at the club for a second spell as manager in March 2017, when they sat 10 points adrift of safety in League One and doomed for the fourth tier.

Yet they spent only one season in the basement division. Robins’ charges confirmed their play-off place with a 0-0 draw at home to Morecambe on the last day of the 2017-18 campaign, then defeated Notts County and Exeter to go up. Promoted alongside Coventry that season were Luton, who, five years later, would beat them at Wembley to reach the Premier League.

The Sky Blues lifted the League One title during 2019-20’s Covid-affected campaign, despite being forced to play their home matches at St Andrew’s in Birmingham. They were seven points clear of third place with 12 fixtures left to play, having lost just three matches, when the season was cut short and settled on points per game.

Robins almost led the club all the way back to the Premier League, but for that shootout defeat in 2023. When the decision was made 18 months later to replace him with a big-name, big-time Charlie, there was consternation among fans and pundits alike. Robins was EFL royalty. He’d had a transform effect on a beleaguered club. Lampard, meanwhile, had flattered to deceive in his second Chelsea spell and scraped by with relegation-dodging Everton.

It was a bold call – but one that paid off, to the tune of hundreds of millions.

FROM BLACKBURN TO LAS VEGAS

Shortly after Lampard’s arrival, Coventry made the mid-season signing of Matt Grimes from Swansea City. At 31, he has made 485 appearances across the EFL’s three divisions, but only four in the Premier League, all as a young player for the Swans more than a decade ago.

Given that 383 of the midfielder’s EFL outings were in the Championship – and included three failed play-off campaigns – the term ‘glass ceiling’ felt appropriate. Grimes freely admits that after two or three years with no concrete transfer interest, coupled with Swansea’s hopes of promotion waning over the course of his 10 years with the club, the chance to play in the Premier League seemed to have passed him by.

“I’m getting older,” Grimes tells FFT. “I gave a lot of years to Swansea and I’m very thankful for what they gave me in return, but I felt it was the right time to have a crack somewhere else. And it’s turned out as well as it could have done. I thought to myself, ‘If I don’t go and Coventry get promoted, I’d be gutted’. But then I thought, on the flip side, ‘If I go to Coventry and Swansea get promoted, I’d be just as devastated’.

“I remember my agent saying, ‘Just have a chat with Frank Lampard.’ I was very settled at Swansea – I was very happy. We were like, ‘Let’s just have a conversation and see how it goes.’ As a midfielder, I don’t think there’s anyone you would rather play for than one of the greatest English midfielders of all time, if not the greatest. That was huge. It was a massive compliment that he wanted to sign me.

“I’m not sure exactly how many seasons I’ve played in the Championship – seven or eight, I think – but I’ve had three play-off campaigns and eventually won the league. The painful moments make the good ones even sweeter.”

After last year’s play-off semi-final defeat to Sunderland, the squad rallied, using their near-miss as motivation to start fast in 2025-26. “The message from the gaffer was, ‘We need to start quick,’” Grimes explains. “In my past experiences, when Swansea made it to the play-offs under Steve Cooper, I think we won five of the first six matches. Our form for the rest of the season wasn’t great, but you’re always just a couple of wins away from where you want to be – top two, top six.”

Coventry went a dozen league games unbeaten, and by the time their first defeat came at Wrexham at the end of October, they were top of the table with a goal difference of +25 – fully 16 goals better than anyone else. In their first dozen games, they’d won 4-0 away at Millwall, 5-0 at Sheffield Wednesday and 5-3 at Derby, while beating Birmingham 3-0 at home and dispatching QPR 7-1.

Forward Brandon Thomas-Asante tells FFT: “The QPR and Sheffield Wednesday matches were pivotal points when we sent out a message and made people respect us more, as well as beating Middlesbrough at home in February.

“Then when things weren’t going so great, like in the winter when people were asking, ‘Is this when the wheels fall off?’, we had the quiet confidence and humility to grind out a result or turn things around when the hype wasn’t there. That was important. Over the past 18 months, we gained those minerals.”

Minerals were needed, as Coventry picked up only two wins from eight in mid-season. By the middle of February the Sky Blues had also lost back-to-back games away at Norwich and QPR, then drawn 0-0 at home to struggling Oxford. 

“If we’re having a stinker and I come in screaming and shouting at half-time,” says Grimes, the club captain, “then the lads aren’t going to take me seriously, because they know that’s not the type of person I am. I think the days where you need to be the loudest, and scream and shout, are gone.” 

His approach proved to be the correct one. Coventry picked themselves up, secured a vital 3-1 home triumph over Middlesbrough in their next game and regained top spot from them, as well as momentum. Having led the league for four months, they had been knocked off the summit for all of seven days. 

“We dominated at the start, had a wobble, then recovered and won again,” Grimes says. “We won eight out of nine to cement our place at the top. Seasons like that don’t happen often. Even now, I don’t think it’s fully sunk in.” 

Coventry secured their long-awaited return to the Premier League with a 1-1 draw at Blackburn, courtesy of Bobby Thomas’ 84th-minute header. They went up with three games to spare. 

“It was funny after Bobby scored,” Grimes recalls. “That was probably one of the strangest feelings on the pitch. I was going to the gaffer, ‘Should we go and win it? Should we not? Do we want to go for the title tonight?’ There were 7,000 fans there, something daft, which was a testament to them. It was more relief than anything at that point, because we knew it was going to happen. We were glad to get it done. 

“The club have been down to League Two, had to groundshare and all of that, so I feel like an imposter talking about it because I haven’t endured it the same way the fans have. But to give that back on that night, when we got the club promoted in front of 7,000 away fans, who travelled all the way to Blackburn on a Friday night, was very, very fitting.” 

Coventry rounded off a title-winning campaign in style by putting 12 goals past Portsmouth, Wrexham and Watford over their final three league fixtures. Then the squad headed off to Las Vegas for a celebration. 

“When teams come down from the Premier League, it’s normal that all of the bookmakers have them to be in the top two or top six,” Grimes says. “So to win the league like we did, 11 points ahead of second – I don’t think people will realise the magnitude of it until maybe a couple of years down the line. 

“It was a season where most of what we touched turned to gold.” 

COSMIC FRANK? 

Patently, Lampard knows how to win  football matches. “You can’t have too  big a long-term plan at a club, because in football, the only thing that really matters is winning,” Strachan explains.  “Frank’s picked it up and added to it. It’s nothing cosmic – it’s good players, with a good understanding of what they’re doing, doing what they’re best at.” 

The 69-year-old’s view may be a  simplified version of what it takes to  manage a club, but it served him well  for much of his Highfield Road tenure. 

“Five years before relegation, we beat everyone – Liverpool away, Manchester United, Arsenal a couple of times, Chelsea three or four times, Aston Villa – so there were a lot of great moments,” he recalls with a smile. “I spent most of my life laughing. I had a great time.” 

Lampard will likely say something similar when the time comes for him to hang up his, er, notepad – but that’s a long way off for now. His uncle, Harry Redknapp, was a manager until the age of 70, which suggests that 48-year-old  Lampard has at least two decades left. 

“He has surprised me – I didn’t see them going up at the start of the year,” Redknapp says. “I didn’t see Coventry in it at all. I thought if they could finish sixth, maybe make the play-offs, it’d be a great season for him. 

“He’s got to make sure he goes into the Premier League prepared. Are they going to be good enough to stay up? That’s the problem. We’ve seen it so many times: good young managers, who have done an excellent job and know the game quickly watch all their hard work unravel.” All right, Harry, let him enjoy it, will you? 

“When results aren’t going your way, you have people calling up the radio,” Redknapp continues. “Idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about come on and say, ‘Well, yeah, we’re losing because he’s a Championship manager.’ What a load of rubbish.” 

This year will be a test of Lampard and Coventry’s mettle. Before Sunderland and Leeds’ sterling efforts in 2025-26, all of the previous six freshly promoted sides had gone straight back down. Grim reality greets aspirational Championship clubs once they’re in the promised land. 

Redknapp thinks the Sky Blues need six quality players to stay afloat. Grimes is giving nothing away. “For any promoted team, the first goal is to stay up,” he says. “If you stay up, maybe then you can start to think about other things. We don’t want to get carried away.” 

Asked what stadium he’s most looking  forward to playing at, Grimes’ answer is simple. “It’s a cliche answer, but the big stadiums: Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man United,” he admits, having grown up in a Liverpool-supporting family. One of those fixtures is first up. Coventry will go to reigning champions Arsenal in the 2026-27 Premier League’s curtain-raiser on Friday, August 21. 

After progressing from League Two to the top flight in just eight years, it will be quite the baptism of fire, before a first home game against fellow promotees Hull at the Coventry Building Society Arena a week later. The Premier League will require each to be agile, adaptable, cunning and clever. Do either have that in their locker? We’ll soon find out. 

For 25 years, it didn’t happen for teams like Coventry City. Finally, though, after a quarter of a century, it has happened. The Sky Blues are back – now, it’s all about staying put. 

Strachan was speaking to FFT as an ambassador for Coventry Building Society. 

Visit thecoventry.co.uk for info

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A DRAMATIC QUARTER-CENTURY

Plenty has happened to the Sky Blues since they were last in the top flight

May 2001

Coventry are relegated from the Premier League after 34 consecutive seasons in the top flight

Aug 2005

The club move into the new Coventry Arena (then called the Ricoh Arena), but don’t own the stadium

Apr 2012

After six years spent finishing in the bottom eight, Coventry are finally relegated to League One

Mar 2013

The club go into administration and are landed with a 10-point deduction for the 2012-13 campaign

Jul 2013

A rent dispute means all home games move to Northampton’s Sixfields for 13 months (average gate: just 2,242)

Aug 2013

City are deducted 10 points again, for exiting administration with no Company Voluntary Arrangement

Nov 2014

The Coventry Arena is bought by rugby union club Wasps (previous home: Adams Park in Wycombe)

Apr 2017

Under three different bosses, Coventry are relegated to the fourth tier for the first time since the 1950s

May 2018

The Sky Blues are promoted back to League One via the play-offs, with Mark Robins at the helm

Jun 2019

City begin two years playing at St Andrew’s, due to dispute between Wasps and unpopular club owners Sis

Jun 2020

Coventry are promoted to the Championship, having been top of League One when Covid ends the season

Oct 2022

Stadium owners Wasps go into administration and stop playing at the Coventry Arena, or indeed anywhere

Nov 2022

The Coventry Arena is bought by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, with Doug King’s offer to own it coming too late

Jan 2023

Sisu sell City to businessman Doug King, from Warwickshire, who owns the club, if not the stadium

May 2023

Coventry, having been 24th in mid-October, are beaten on penalties in the Championship play-off final

Aug 2025

Doug King buys Coventry Arena from Frasers Group – the club finally own the ground, 20 years after it opened

Apr 2026

Now led by Frank Lampard, Coventry City are promoted to the Premier League after 25 years away