SKY BLUES AT DOUBLE

Robins and Viveash partnership key to Coventry's great revival

- John Wragg

MARK Robins and his batman are converging on Wembley again for the second time in 11 months.

Robins and Adi Viveash, both 54, are a remarkable pair who met up for a season playing for Walsall and are now leading one of the most remarkable revivals in English football.

Robins has spent most of his 17 years in management scuffling around the lower end of the Football League. He’s been so successful with Coventry that he is currently the longest-serving manager in the EFL at seven years and eighteen days.

Simon Weaver has been at Harrogate longer, but 11 of his 14 years were outside the Football League.

In the Premier League, there’s Jurgen Klopp, eight years and finished with Liverpool, he says, this summer. And Pep Guardiola who says there is more Manchester City life left in his tank after eight years.

Robins is almost up there with them in longevity and could be facing Guardiola in the FA Cup final.

There’s enough on his plate with the day job at the moment, trying to take Coventry into the Championship play-offs for a second successive season, to be caught up in the hype this early.

But, if he beats Manchester United, 15 minutes from the family home in Ashton-under-Lyne, where his football career began 40 years ago, in the semis, it could be Guardiola next.

And 6ft 3ins white-haired Big Adi, his assistant and first-team coach, will be by his side.

Robins’ best description of Viveash is “the guy that paints the pictures on the training ground”.

In other words, he is key to how Robins wants Coventry to play. Robins says what he wants, Viveash gets it done.