Coventry City Championship Odds: Sky Blues 5/1 to be promoted

Back-to-back top-ten campaigns should encourage Coventry City fans to believe that they can have a third successive flirt with promotion in 2024/25.

Coventry Championship Odds

(Odds will display when markets are available).

Mark Robins, the man who dragged Coventry City from League Two to the verge of the Premier League, looks to be better equipped than ever to make that final jump up to the top-flight.

Beaten play-off finalists two seasons ago and right in the mix again until an end-of-term stall in the campaign just gone, the Sky Blues look well set for another promotion tilt.

They may come with less fanfare than the likes of Leeds, Burnley and West Brom, but at 16/1 for the title and 5/1 to be promoted they are very definitely respected.

After a good summer in the transfer market it would almost be a surprise if Robins' men weren't in the thick of the promotion battle in nine months' time.

Former Manchester United striker Robins certainly has plenty of positives to build upon.

Last season could have been difficult having seen star men Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer walk out of the CBS Arena within weeks of their heartbreaking Wembley play-off final defeat at the hands of Luton.

Three wins in their first 16 matches didn't help, a start which left them in 20th place in mid-November and just four points above the bottom three.

But then the script and the mood changed with City embarking on a run of just one loss - at Ipswich - in 14 matches. This sequence, which included draws against Southampton and Leeds and a 3-1 win over Leicester, catapulted them into the promotion frame.

Allied to their improved league form was a memorable FA Cup run which ended in a luckless semi-final loss to Manchester United, beaten on penalties at Wembley for the second time in less than a year.

Maybe the emotion of that occasion took its toll because they failed to win any of their last six league matches, losing five, running out of steam at just the wrong time to miss out on a second successive shot at the play-offs.

But they go again at odds of 7/4 for a top-six finish and it's easy to understand the enthusiasm.

Robins appears this time to have held on to key figures from last season, the likes of Ben Sheaf, 13-goal Ellis Simms and Milan van Ewijk.

But he has also improved the team with the additions notably of Jack Rudoni from Huddersfield, Brandon Thomas-Asante from West Brom and Ephron Mason-Clark from Peterborough.

Thomas-Asante is an option if Simms goes quiet, Rudoni has starred in an attacking midfield role and Mason-Clark is another dangerman out wide who looks born to play at this level.

If Robins can finally deliver the potential in Victor Torp and Haji Wright enjoys another 16-goal campaign then the signs are promising.

Critics could wonder if they are thin in central midfield - especially if Sheaf, as is currently the case, is injured - and the Sky Blues perhaps need more cover in defence.

But those are areas Robins will almost certainly address and in any case such concerns will have been drowned out by the positivity from a pre-season campaign which featured a 0-0 draw with Spanish outfit Getafe and a 3-0 drubbing of Everton.

It is only six years ago that Coventry were plying their trade in League Two. Six years on and they look like a club primed to challenge for a place in the Premier League.