FA Cup semi-final: Coventry City aim to go from League Two to FA Cup finalists in six years

Moz Baker has travelled the country watching Coventry City for 49 years.

He saw his hometown club win at Manchester United and Liverpool during an unbroken 34-year stint in the top flight before relegation in 2001.

More recently he has seen the Sky Blues lose at Morecambe and Accrington Stanley after relegation to League Two during a troubled period on and off the pitch when the club’s future was in doubt.

“I’d been to Old Trafford and Anfield and now I was watching Forest Green do the double over us in League Two,” says Baker, former chairman of the Sky Blue Trust.

“I couldn’t see how we were going to escape this decline. A couple of times that season [2017-18] I remember thinking to myself ‘how on earth have we ended up here?'”

By then, Coventry’s fanbase had already been divided after a rent row forced the team to play home games at Northampton throughout 2013-14.

Many supporters refused to go and watch – including Baker. “That whole period was toxic,” he recalls.

“Coventry City should play in Coventry. I felt I would be endorsing the move if I paid to watch my team play at ‘home’ in Northampton. I couldn’t go along with it.

“We didn’t own our ground, we were in decline on the pitch. The question many fans were asking was ‘could the club go out of existence?”

Steve Ogrizovic, Coventry’s FA Cup-winning goalkeeper 37 years ago, believes the club’s problems stemmed from leaving their old Highfield Road ground – now a housing development – in 2005 to move three miles to the Ricoh Arena.

“That never really worked, they got themselves into debt,” says Ogrizovic.

“Each season I thought things would get better but they got worse. There have been points deductions, relegation to League One, relegation to League Two.

“The time it all changed was the day Mark Robins walked back into the club for his second stint.”