Coventry City pulled off a remarkable 3-2 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup 6th Round. The win saw the Sky Blues take their place in the FA Cup semi-final, the lowest-ranked team left in the competition.
The win also sparked off talk of that age-old question that fans of the Sky Blues hate hearing. Why don’t the bigger clubs ever come knocking on Coventry’s door for manager Mark Robins?
Robins continues to bring success to the Sky Blues
Mark Robins has led Coventry City to the semi-finals of the FA Cup. The Sky Blues will take on his former club, Manchester United, where Robins is widely regarded as having scored the goal that kept Sir Alex Ferguson in a job when he was under big pressure in 1990.
In the betting to win the FA Cup, Coventry are massive outsiders. The Sky Blues are 25/1 with the bookmakers. The Sky Blues are also outside of the playoff places in the Championship. In the latest Championship betting, they are 17/10 to finish in the top six and 15/2 to be promoted.
Last season, Robins took the Sky Blues to the brink of the Premier League. From almost nowhere, he got them into the top six. And they were within a couple of penalty kicks of beating Luton Town to the final place in the Premier League for the 2023/24 season at the 2023 playoff final.
So with all this success on his CV, why don’t the Premier League clubs take a chance on Robins?
Tried and tested is preferred
When the Premier League clubs hire a manager it seems to always be a guy who has been there and done it. It’s almost a closed shop. When Forest sacked Steve Cooper from his role at the Premier League club earlier this season, the name of Robins was briefly linked.
Robins has never managed in the Premier League. So that talk soon ended, and former Wolves manager Nuno Espírito Santo got the job instead.
The fact Santo failed so miserably at Spurs seemed irrelevant. Forest just seemed to want a manager who had been successful at keeping a team in the Premier League. Santo had done that with Wolves, and that was good enough for the hierarchy at the City Ground.
Integrity
It might seem hard to believe in this day and age of professional football, but there is still some integrity.
Fans and pundits don’t always know the goings on behind the scenes, despite what is reported in a newspaper or online.
When a manager is linked with a job, maybe it is the case that the manager’s agent has let it be known their client is interested in so-called bigger and better things. It could be this nod and wink that leads to the speculation and the talk in the media.
Just maybe it is the case that Robins has instructed his agent that he simply isn’t interested in the so-called bigger jobs, that he is happy where he is, and feels he has unfinished business.
There are no doubt jobs out there that would interest any manager. But maybe in the case of Robins, it would take something extraordinary to tempt him away from the CBS.
