Coventry City play-off news from CoventryLive as Sky Blues boss responds to two very different scenarios next season
Coventry City’s total focus is getting through one last match of the season with a successful outcome that could change the course of the club’s history.
After 22 long years out of the top flight of English football, Luton Town stand in the way of the Sky Blues making a triumphant return to the Premier League and the biggest cash prize in the game – an initial estimated £135million.
The contrast between winning and losing couldn’t be greater. So has Robins dared to allow himself to think about what promotion would mean for him and the football club?
“Umm… I think fairly briefly, but ultimately you’re getting ahead of yourself if you do that,” he said. “There’s every point in having a plan for every eventuality. There’s nothing wrong with that but you have to bring the focus back to the game.”
Asked if, regardless of the result at the weekend, he’ll be sitting down with owner Doug King next week to discuss the plans moving forward, whichever division City find themselves in, he said: “I’ll probably sit down and have a coffee with him and talk about other things; how things have gone this season, depending on how the result goes. But other than that, everything is all in place, you’ll be pleased to know. “We have a strategy and way of doing things that means we don’t have to react on the hoof. So we’re getting on with things and what we will do is carry on doing what we’re doing, regardless of what may happen next. And then, obviously, we have some differences if things go really well. But we have a nice structured plan that we’ll stick to.”
What Coventry and Luton have achieved to reach the play-off final shows that it doesn’t have to be all about money if clubs can get everything right in terms of coaching, recruitment and scouting; that teams can achieve a heck of a lot without huge finances, not to mention everything the club has been through off the pitch.
“Next season’s Championship is going to be ridiculously difficult,” said Robins. “You have got teams coming up with an awful lot of financial clout, you will have teams coming own with financial clout as well. And they will spend and do what Burnley did this year in terms of getting top, top players for the level to give them every chance of bouncing back. Not only that, trying to stay up the following season.
“I think that is the difference between the two teams of Coventry and Luton at Wembley. It remains to be seen what will happen next. The plans are one thing, and the ability to spend without killing yourself because the expectation from outside is, generally, that the team will struggle and return to the Championship.
“So whatever you do you have to try to put things in place to try to remain competitive without killing the club, so those are the things we will be addressing, and have been addressed to this point. If you get to the next level you have to think about what you do and the players you are going to need, allied to the ones you have already got. But ultimately, it’s a misnomer at the moment and there’s nothing to think about other than we’re one game away from achieving a dream and then changing the club’s future very, very quickly.”
