Coventry, 25 October, 2008

Off, then, in more than one sense, to Coventry. The Ricoh Arena is a peculiar place, young but seemingly aged, its sense of dislocation only exacerbated by Coventry City's inability to produce a team capable of clawing their way back to the Premiership. Football somehow seems but an inconvenient sideline. But, hey, the press box desks are huge, they serve a mean cup of tea with a smile and huge, if not entirely unclaggy, pasties.
Alas it's impossible to get a mobile signal from the press room, but Coventry City v Derby County (nb somewhat truncated from the original, ahem, masterwork) isn't actually a bad game, although City's crowd are already looking for scapegoats and, in the shape of the far from impressive Leon Best, finding one. I've got empty seats to the left and right of me and I don't really know anyone beyond nodding.
A goal behind shortly before half-time, Coventry weren't inspired until Robbie Simpson came on. Then they looked worldbeaters. Or at least capable of beating Derby. There's still something lacklustre at their core though and playing in a stadium two sizes too big can't help.
Afterwards, Chris Coleman was uninspired too. He's a bit of a droner but I don't know whether he's pretending to be dull (that strange incident at Real Sociedad when he seemed to confuse an evening's nightclubbing with a plumber's visit suggests an interesting hinterland), a la Nigel Worthington, or whether he doesn't actually have any answers. We'll see.
Derby, under Paul Jewell (and speaking of being under Paul Jewell, did he ever discover who supplied the News Of The World with those old pictures of him having sex with someone who wasn't Mrs Jewell? He certainly didn't know at the time, but I'll bet he knows now) are finally beginning to look like they train between games. Miles Addison looks the part, their defence looks reasonably solid and they may yet make the play-offs.
I do like Jewell. Whereas Coleman did his conference in a nearly empty theatre, Jewell does it in a corridor outside. We close around him like he's just come out of court. I ask him about Coventry's equaliser - it began from a throw-in which should have been awarded to Derby - and he's impishly sanguine about it, even generously going on to claim Coventry were the better team. But there's the rub: when you're robbed, you're either impishly sanguine or you dwell, you become bitter and you end up taking hemlock.