Can Robins succeed with new-look coaching team at Stoke?

Happy marriage

Viveash joined Coventry on an interim basis initially, having worked at Chelsea’s Academy for the previous six years as their U18s and U21s Head Coach. Soon he struck up a special partnership with Robins.

The Manager described his number two as “the man who paints the pictures” and Viveash led day-to-day training at the club’s Ryton base. Thanks to his years of experience in youth football, he was particularly adept at developing players, which was crucial for a club on a modest budget.

Speaking at a Fans Forum in November, King said: “Mark and Adi Viveash were the heart and soul of this football club. Adi Viveash is a hugely skilled coach who develops players, which is my model and the model of the football club.”

Robins described Viveash as a difficult person to work with, but in a good way, because he was always challenging him.

In an interview in March 2024, Viveash responded: “Whether we’re two strong characters and that’s why it works, I don’t know. The gaffer has said that I challenge, but creating a challenging environment is one of my big strengths; how you get the culture, how you set up the training and how you demand in each session.

“Sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree, but he’s the manager and it starts there and ends there. I respect the fact that he’s the manager and the job he’s done. But I certainly don’t think I am difficult to work with. We are very different people with different outlooks on life. 

“We’re not moulded the same but we certainly want the same thing in terms of Coventry being back in the Premier League.”

Messy divorce

There was shock among the fanbase when they found out Viveash was leaving in July. The news was announced in a terse three-paragraph statement from the club that didn’t include words of thanks from either Robins or King. Coventry subsequently brought in First Team Coaches Rhys Carr and George Boateng and advertised for a Head of First Team Coaching, although this role wasn’t filled.

The start of this season was a struggle and Robins was sacked in November, with the club lying 17th in the Championship. There was anger from Coventry fans and beyond at the decision, but King explained that the decision to sack Viveash had effectively been the beginning of the end for Robins. 

“He (Robins) has dismantled the coaching staff at this football club,” King told the November Fans Forum. “I haven’t dismantled it, he has done that. That’s the thing people don’t realise, they think I am doing lots of things with my spider’s web and all these things and it’s strictly, absolutely, not true.

“It just seemed that in March/ April last year that something went down. You know a simple thing as an article in the (Coventry) Telegraph by Andy Turner about a certain marriage, and a difficult marriage. The guys have been together a long time and I don’t know, I think it provoked something.

“Adi gave another big interview and he wasn’t authorised to do it and then everyone got a bit excited and clearly, the fall-off after the Wolves game was pretty startling. I know everyone said we were knackered after the heroic semi-final but the reality was, it looked like something was wrong.

“I had a meeting with both of them individually at the end of the season and I said, ‘Look, I came in here and gave you four-year contracts, I want you together because you have shown me that as a team you make it happen here. 

“I am going to get you the deck and you, I hope, will hopefully out perform the way you have out-performed with this deck. I told them to take time out, go away, have a holiday and come back recharged because we have got our recruitment in order and we have got pre-season sorted. 

“We have got a Performance Director, the facilities (at Ryton) with a new gym coming in and we want to really hit the ground running. And effectively, I had a phone call from him about two weeks later, where he said, effectively, he could no longer work with Adi Viveash.

“I was very upset by that, because that was the team that had done what we wanted to get done for the football club. It was therefore at huge risk of, ‘Am I going to get a better coaching set-up to take us forward with the money that I have invested, and with the dreams of where we want to take the football club?’

“Obviously, I was particularly angry about that because I did not want to break that up. And so, weirdly, I was trying to keep it together whereas Mark had made the call that after seven years a divorce was what was needed.”

King sacked Robins because he saw him as part of a double act and didn’t want one half without the other. The intrigue now is whether Robins can prove him wrong with his new-look coaching team at Stoke.