Richard Williams has been a Sky Blues fan his whole life. He spent more than three months speaking to fans, former players and ex-club executives to produce Back Where We Belong: 25 Years of Sky Blue Heartache and Hope, a six-part documentary for BBC CWR available on BBC Sounds. “It’s been a labour of love,” Williams said. “It’s brought back events that I’d forgotten.” The series begins with the 3-2 defeat at Villa Park in May 2001 that confirmed relegation from the Premier League. It ends with the 1-1 draw at Blackburn Rovers on the evening of 17 April 2026 – the result that confirmed promotion back to the Premier League after a 25-year absence. In between: enough heartbreak to fill several documentaries.
Episode one: The Fall
Villa Park, final day of the 2000-01 season. A 3-2 defeat under Gordon Strachan. The result that sent Coventry City out of the top flight for the first time since 1967 – thirty-four years of unbroken Premier League and First Division football, ended on an afternoon in Birmingham.
Fan Jo Chamberlain was there. “It was the day before my 20th birthday,” she told the documentary. “We didn’t win enough games that season and I remember it was a few seasons on the bounce where we had relegation battles. It felt like the end of the world.”
The confidence among supporters that the Sky Blues would bounce straight back turned out to be misplaced. The 2001-02 season ended in 11th place in what was then the First Division. The journey back had barely begun.
Episode two: Goodbye Highfield Road
Highfield Road had been Coventry City’s home since 1899. Leaving it was never going to be straightforward. The club signed off at the old ground with a 6-2 win over Derby County – a send-off that could not have been scripted better – before moving to the purpose-built, 32,500-seat stadium that would become the Ricoh Arena, now named the Coventry Building Society Arena, in 2005.
The opening match at the new ground saw Coventry beat Queens Park Rangers. Life-long fan Jugjit “Juggy” Chima recalled the feeling: “Leaving Highfield Road, perfect way. Coming to our new ground, perfect way of doing it. If we’d gone there and lost, the stadium might have been a little bit of a curse. But it didn’t feel like that at the time.”
It would, in time, come to feel like several things. But not yet.
Episode three: The Dark Years
The arrival of London-based hedge fund SISU Capital at a club on the verge of administration was the beginning of the most contested period in Coventry City’s recent history. The club, under Chris Coleman and then Andy Thorn, failed to recover its position in the Championship and were relegated to League One after a 2-0 home loss to Doncaster in April 2012.
Fan James Penny remembered the moment clearly. “I remember talking to my dad and saying, when we went down, ‘this was a different turning point. It’s not going to be an optimistic, we’ll bounce straight back up, because a lot of the core players we had would have left.'”
He was right. And worse was coming.
Episode four: A club with no home
Andy Thorn was sacked three games into the League One season in 2012. Mark Robins came in for his first spell in the Sky Blue dugout. And then – almost unthinkable for a club that had played in the Premier League a decade earlier – Coventry City signed a three-year deal to play their home games at Northampton Town’s Sixfields Stadium, 34 miles from the city, after a dispute over unpaid rent at the Ricoh Arena.
The exile became one of the defining episodes of SISU’s ownership. When the dispute was eventually resolved and the club returned to the Ricoh, 27,000 fans turned up for the first game back – a reception that said everything about the relationship between this club and its supporters.
The end of the episode brought more unwelcome news: the Ricoh Arena had been sold to rugby club Wasps, leaving the Sky Blues as tenants in the stadium built for them. There was, however, an unexpected bright spot. Coventry won the Checkatrade Trophy final under Robins, who had returned to the club in 2017.
Episode five: When belief returned
The club fell further – League Two, the fourth tier – before it began to rise. A 3-1 win over Exeter City in the League Two play-off final at Wembley brought promotion back to League One. Then another relocation: a dispute with Wasps led to Coventry playing at Birmingham City’s St Andrew’s for the 2019-20 season.
They were top of the League One table when the Covid-19 pandemic halted the season. The title was awarded on a points-per-game calculation. They were promoted to the Championship. The 2020-21 season brought a return to the Ricoh on a ten-year deal. Belief, after years of its near-total absence, was beginning to return.
Episode six: A club reborn
The final chapter covers the turbulent conclusion of the SISU era. Pitch problems at the CBS Arena following the Commonwealth Games rugby sevens in 2022. Wasps going into administration and then liquidation. The emergence of rumours that SISU were considering selling. In November 2022 they did, to Warwickshire businessman Doug King, who completed his acquisition in January 2023.
The season that followed ended in agonising fashion: a Championship play-off final at Wembley against Luton Town, lost on penalties. An FA Cup semi-final at Wembley against Manchester United, also lost. The sacking of Mark Robins after seven years and two separate spells. His replacement by former England and Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard.
In August 2025, the club confirmed it had bought the CBS Arena from Frasers Group – ending years of groundsharing, disputes and exile with a single transaction.
And then, on the evening of Friday 17 April 2026, at Ewood Park in Blackburn, a 1-1 draw confirmed promotion to the Premier League after a 25-year absence. The circle, begun at Villa Park in May 2001, was closed.
As we reported in our Sky Blues fansite piece, the return to the top flight prompted Jonathan Barton to relaunch Letsallsingtogether.com after 19 years offline – the site he started in 1996, killed by SISU’s takeover in 2007, and kept paying for throughout a two-decade hiatus. As we reported in our Doreen parade piece, 93-year-old Doreen led her own parade through the city to celebrate. The documentary captures the full arc of what both stories represent: a fanbase that stayed, endured and came back.
Back Where We Belong: 25 Years of Sky Blue Heartache and Hope is available now on BBC Sounds.
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