The fixtures don’t get any easier with a very confident Coventry City the visitors this Saturday at the Swansea.com Stadium. The Sky Blues got their Championship season underway with a 3-0 win against Middlesbrough last weekend. They lost their opening fixture 2-1 at Leicester City.
Those opening two fixtures for Mark Robins side illustrate just how difficult this league will be to navigate this season, and the successful sides who get to the premier league will most certainly have deserved it. The Swans have just the one point after drawing at home to Birmingham City on the opening day, however there will be some positives from the 3-2 loss at West Bromwich Albion last time out.
The Swans romped home 3-0 in the first round of the league cup last week, Northampton really didn’t get a look in, and it’s that form the side need to reproduce if they are to take anything in two days time. Coventry City went out of the league cup 2-1 to AFC Wimbledon despite fielding a number of first team players, ex Swan Ali Al-Hamadi missing a penalty for the Dons.
Later today the press conferences from both Mark Robins and Swansea City head coach will be reported on the Indy but it’s a meeting of old team mates as well this weekend. Joel Latibeaudiere who signed for the sky blues just before the season started, and of course Jake Bidwell will feature within the Coventry squad for sure.
Those with older heads and minds will remember well Tommy Hutchison playing for the Sky Blues, and going on to defy old age - playing for the Swans until the age of forty three. Not content with that the Scotsman signed for Merthyr and played for another three years for the Martyrs, retiring at forty six. Tommy played 178 games for Swansea City and 314 for Coventry City. He was seventeen games short of a thousand appearances on retirement. His 165 games for Blackpool were enough to see him inducted in to the clubs hall of fame in 2006.
Tommy for Coventry - and inset for Swansea City
Back to the present day and remarkably Mark Robins has been at the Sky Blues for six years, that’s some feat in this day and age. A forty percent win rate over three hundred and twenty games is not to be sniffed at either. However, this is Robins second stint at the club. He was manager in the 2012/13 season for thirty three games winning over half of them. He is the longest serving manager in the championship and fifth overall with only Klopp at Liverpool, Guardiola at Manchester City above him and Simon Weaver at Harrogate and John Coleman at Accrington below. He has guided Coventry to the brink of the premier league from league two since 2017. And all this with a recent history of ownership mismanagement, being banned from their own ground, and playing home games at first Northampton and then Birmingham City.
Few clubs have been dealt the cards the Sky Blues have which makes their rise to where they are now even more incredible.
Last season ‘Robins’ Sky Blues reached the Championship play off final only to lose out to Luton Town and are hotly tipped to go one better this season. A weird fact is that Sunderland have an ongoing rivalry with Coventry City, and that has erupted again in crowd trouble in recent seasons. The reason being that when Sunderland were relegated from division one in 1977 after losing at Everton, Coventry played Bristol City the same day. Both Coventry and Bristol City could also go down. The Sky Blues on police advice delayed the kick off due to crowd congestion - kicking off five minutes later than Sunderland. With the score at 2-2 between Bristol City and Coventry, and with those five minutes left to play the final score from Goodison Park was shown on the scoreboard. Both Coventry and Bristol City players could see they were safe and allegedly ‘colluded’ to play out the last remaining minutes as both sides were safe from relegation. And of course Sunderland went down. An inquiry would later clear Coventry and Bristol City confirming the Black Cats relegation.
Both Sunderland & Coventry City fans have little love for each other
As we know football fans do have long memories. And that rivalry has been pretty intense and marred by crown trouble at both stadiums in recent times. The usual arrests and banning orders have ensued, but have in reality failed to dissuade a minority of fans from both clubs.
Coventry have sold out their 1,971 allocation for Saturdays game and will travel with hope that they can take all the points in what promises to be a competitive and exciting game at the Swansea.com.
Managers press conferences to follow