In the experience of Football Daily, encountering Mark Robins is akin to meeting a completely normal, down-to-earth individual—an intelligent, reasonable, and honest man. In a world filled with boastful claims and buzzwords, Robins speaks sensibly and realistically. For Coventry City, he was the humble savior, guiding the club through its most challenging times, bringing them to the brink—mere minutes, even inches—of the promised land. Visiting the Coventry City Building Society Stadium reveals a kind of faded grandeur. The glory days were at Highfield Road. Its successor, the Ricoh, initially known at the start of a tumultuous history that continues with Mike Ashley as landlord, is modern, sleek, and cashless, with a statue of Jimmy Hill at its entrance. Perhaps one day, Robins will be honored with a bronze tribute for shouldering the floodlit dreams of a city striving to rejuvenate itself. Without him, the sun-bleached sky-blue seats of the stadium might now be entirely vacant.
However, in the modern football landscape, where money flows uphill and out of the game, even a civic hero pays the price for a slump. Robins led the club to the Championship playoff final in 2023, only a VAR-assisted offside goal away from defeating Manchester United and reaching the 2024 FA Cup final. Sorry, mate, you’re 17th in the Championship, and thus, as a club statement monotoned: “Mark’s achievements at the Sky Blues, often against a backdrop of uncertainty and financial constraints, will see him remembered and celebrated as one of the club’s greatest ever managers, who was able to unite players, staff, fans, and the club itself to achieve incredible feats.” Robins, as a football man, understands the game better than most, and just like Paul Hurst, who returned to Shrewsbury to relive past glories but was sacked last week, or Erik ten Hag, now an overlooked figure as Robins’ former club goes mad for Rúben Amorim, and Marks Kennedy and Robinson, who were let go by Swindon and Burton, knew that the end could always be near. Doug King, the chief executive and local businessman behind the decision, stated in a September newspaper interview: “I have been successful at making things work in my life, which is why I am in this position now. I’ve backed myself to do the right things. I’m also aware that things can change.” If King doesn’t make the next decision correctly, things will certainly turn.
Next? Catch a Championship match, meet a new generation of fashion-conscious coaches, a must-have for provincial clubs. Hull have Tim Walter’s green cagoule, Stoke have Narcis Pelach’s designer jeans. There’s Martí Cifuentes at QPR, Carlos Corberán at West Brom, Régis Le Bris, Danny Rohl, Johannes Hoff Thorup. Robins, a tracksuit manager from the fading tradition of a country that can’t find an English national team coach, became a man out of time, falling victim to the sport’s self-destructive nature. “Welcome to Copenhagen. You’re [eff]ed now” – a tifo at Parken Stadium displays quite possibly the biggest F-bomb Football Daily has ever seen at a match. It turns out that their Tin Pot rivals Basaksehir weren’t effed at all, drawing 2-2 before responding in playground-style on their socials.
Source link: https://www.theguardian.com
