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10 hours ago
12
Guardian writers’ predicted position: 18th (NB: this is not necessarily Ben Fisher’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)
Last season’s position: 1st (Championship)
Prospects
“We are back”, as the banners proudly state. It is 25 years since, after relegation was confirmed, Match of the Day cameras lingered on a message held aloft by a Coventry City supporter named John Mullaney. “We’ll be back,” were the words he inked – in sky blue, of course – on a scrap of wallpaper. When Coventry celebrated returning to the top flight and lifted the Championship trophy in front of a capacity crowd, thousands of supporters held aloft new-look signs with a tweaked slogan to symbolise the journey coming full circle: “We are back”.
It has not been without pain along the way; nine years ago they were preparing for their first season in the fourth tier for 59 years, and from 2019 to 2021 they had to share St Andrew’s with the landlords Birmingham. That was not even their first spell of homelessness; in 2013-14, they played “home” games 35 miles away in Northampton. Many supporters will recall those harder times when Frank Lampard’s side kick off the new season in the Premier League curtain-raiser at champions Arsenal a week on Friday. Many will also remember the work of Mark Robins, who across two spells spent more than eight years in charge, en route to this point.
The biggest challenge will be adapting to the level. Lampard is a Premier League great but only seven of his squad count experience of the division on their CVs, the returning maverick Gus Hamer boasting the most starts among them (34) from his season in the top flight with Sheffield United. “Part of that is a good thing: we’re excited, hungry and the players want to show they deserve to be here,” Lampard said. “But we also have to work to help the squad to bridge the gap.”
Coventry’s recruitment has been superb under the sporting director, Dean Austin, and the club-record £23m arrival of Ghana midfielder Caleb Yirenkyi from the Danish side FC Nordsjælland is particularly exciting. Some of those who flourished upon joining in the second tier also look capable of stepping up, including Milan van Ewijk, Jack Rudoni and Carl Rushworth, who has signed permanently after a successful loan from Brighton. Goals were no problem last season: Coventry were the highest scorers in English football’s top four tiers with 97.
Aside from a playoff semi-final defeat to Sunderland last year and a bumpy start to this one, it has been largely smooth sailing since Lampard succeeded Robins in November 2024. Coventry lost seven league matches last season, only two at home, and the going will be tougher in the top tier. “We’ve won a lot of games at this club in the last year – it’s going to be much harder to do that in the Premier League,” Lampard said. “I’m not scared of that. We have to be excited by it.”
Off-field picture
Coventry launched a “storytelling space” at the club’s stadium to celebrate promotion and the path to this point. The first exhibition in the club’s museum is titled The Journey Back, which tells the club’s story from homelessness to the Premier League and showcases artefacts donated by supporters, players and managers and the owner, Doug King, opened last month. Promotion means abiding by Premier League regulations and the Coventry Building Society Arena, as it is now known, has dropped in capacity by about 300 seats in order to accommodate camera gantries and other changes to ensure compliance.
Owner-fan relationship
King angered supporters when sacking Robins but his decision was ultimately vindicated. King is never too proud to get involved: see him fist pumping the crowd, belting out the Enemy’s We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, the club’s de facto pre-match anthem, from the directors’ box, or swaying to Take That, who performed a trio of gigs at the stadium he bought 12 months ago – another big tick. Such is King’s popularity, supporters chant his name and a couple last season donned fancy dress to masquerade as him, wearing lanyards, sky-blue ties and bouffant wigs. “They tried to blag themselves into the boardroom ... but I’m way more handsome than them,” King said.
The manager
Promotion to the Premier League, Lampard says, marked the proudest moment of his managerial career. He went to work on his coaching badges after retiring and, 12 months after taking charge of Derby, he achieved his ultimate goal in double-quick time: managing Chelsea. A lot has happened since, including a stint “babysitting” the Blues when put in interim charge in April 2023. That seven-week period was his last exposure to the top flight as a manager but the familiar voices of his assistants Joe Edwards and Chris Jones remain. After 20 months in charge, he is comfortably the longest-serving of the three English managers in the division (Michael Carrick, eight months; Gary O’Neil, three months). Fresh from being named the League Managers Association manager of the year, an award presented to him by Thomas Tuchel, this summer Lampard signed fresh terms until 2029.
Star signing
Never fall in love with a loan player? Coventry did not just score goals last season, they kept them out, too, Rushworth claiming the Championship golden glove for 17 clean sheets. An ever-present in the league, his performances earned him three end-of-season club awards. On Coventry’s open-top bus parade, Rushworth, handed a pen by the captain, Matt Grimes, signed a placard that read “Sign here Carl” in block capitals. Then, this month, he signed a real contract to join permanently from Brighton, who inserted a buyback clause. “He was this close to getting kicked out of the group chat,” the defender Jake Bidwell joked after embracing Rushworth on his return. Before his season at Coventry, he had enjoyed loans across the league pyramid with Walsall, Lincoln, Swansea and Hull, but now the highly-regarded 25-year-old will test himself at the highest level.
Stat attack
Arsenal were not the only champions to make good use of dead-ball situations last season. Coventry led the Championship for set-piece goals, with 29. Only Bayern Munich (0.65 goals per game) bettered their average (0.63) in the top divisions in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The issue is whether they will win enough corners and free-kicks in the Premier League to exploit this ability.
Set for a breakthrough
Promotion makes the jump from the academy to the first team that little bit bigger but Kai Andrews has at least made a dent in the senior squad. The 20-year-old, who made his debut aged 17, made seven substitute appearances last season before being loaned to Hibernian. Competition has only got fiercer since but Andrews has plenty of admirers. “There’s just something more about this kid; he has a presence – and that excites me,” said Craig Bellamy, who played for Coventry at the beginning of his career and handed an 18-year-old Andrews a shock call-up to the Wales squad approaching 18 months ago.
World Cup impact
Did Yirenkyi have an inkling that he would soon call Brandon Thomas-Asante a clubmate after the striker set him up to score his first World Cup goal for Ghana? Thomas-Asante, one of five players to reach double figures for Coventry last season, made inroads down the left flank and then squared the ball to the six-yard box, where Yirenkyi was on hand to strike a 95th-minute winner against Panama in their opener in Toronto. Haji Wright, Coventry’s top scorer last season, made two late substitute appearances for the USA, while Aurèle Amenda was part of the Switzerland squad that reached the last 16 but did not play a minute.
