For the second year in a row, a promising Coventry City season has ended in penalty shoot-out heartbreak at Wembley Stadium, this time with some added VAR foolishness thrown in for good measure – Neil Littlewood (@littlewood88) and Dominic Jerrams (@SideSammy) explain.
How has Coventry’s season progressed overall? Highlights and Lowlights?
DJ: After losing Gustavo Hamer and Viktor Gyokeres, as well as all of our loanees from the previous season, this was almost certainly going to be a transitional season as we incorporated an almost entirely new-look group. The campaign got off to a sluggish start, with back-to-back defeats to West Bromwich Albion and Preston North End in November making us look like a complete soft touch.
The run over the Christmas period, when Callum O’Hare returned from injury and Tatushiro Sakmoto and Haji Wright found form, was the team’s best period of the season, but we’ve struggled to maintain it in the following months, with the squad probably three or four players too small to manage an increasingly hectic fixture schedule.
That stunning triumph over Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup Sixth Round was one of the club’s most memorable outcomes in a generation, part of a seven-year run of notable results since being relegated to League Two and then returning. It demonstrated that this club is capable of competing at a higher level, but we haven’t been consistent enough in the league to do so, as seen by a terrible run in April.
Of course, the semi-final at Wembley Stadium, which came within a toe nail of completing the ultimate FA Cup comeback, is likely to be remembered as the highlight of this season. Otherwise, it has been an erratic effort of bringing in new players.
NL: We knew it would be a difficult task this year before a ball was kicked; Gyokeres was gone, and Hamer was bound to leave as well. Given that we were only one kick away from the promised land, there was bound to be a hangover. We also never start well, which is a topic I shall address later. With such a high turnover of playing staff, it was always going to take time for them to gel and get into their stride, and I believe our early form reflected this.
Individual highlights include beating Leicester and Leeds at home, which demonstrated what we are capable of when things go right, but the horror side reappeared when we lost decisively at Cardiff, Rotherham, and Birmingham. Coupled with late equalisers at home to Huddersfield and Swansea, it’s only made worse by Preston’s crushing defeat. Despite a disappointing League Cup run with a humiliating defeat at AFC Wimbledon, which proved to be Gus Hamer’s last in a Coventry shirt, a fairytale run to the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley included some brilliant goals, beating of underdogs, and the infamous comeback away at Wolves to book our place at Wembley, which I thought at the time could never be topped….
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