“Respect Coventry, please,” said Pep Guardiola on Saturday evening when a presumptuous TV reporter asked Manchester City’s manager about the prospect of another all-Manchester FA Cup final. Guardiola knew Coventry City would be no pushovers for Manchester United in Sunday’s semi-final, yet even he couldn’t have envisaged how close they would drag Erik ten Hag’s side towards ruin in the most scintillating and sickening football experience of my life.
I’ve watched plenty of Coventry defeats down the years – enough to become desensitised to it, I thought. I cried at Villa Park when we were relegated from the Premier League in 2001; I watched from the press box with weary resignation as Doncaster consigned us to League One in 2012; and I experienced mixed emotions when Luton denied us a Premier League berth last May. But watching us lose to United at Wembley after a preposterous three-goal comeback was an entirely new kind of trauma.
