{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Sky Blue Time Machine","title":"Manchester United, Old Trafford & the Checkatrade Trophy | The Cup Roads Begin","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":5092,"description":"23 September 1986. Highfield Road. League Cup second round, first leg. Coventry beat Rotherham 3-2. Two weeks later, away leg, 1-0. Aggregate 4-2, through. Nobody knows this is the squad that will lift the FA Cup at Wembley in May. They're a top-flight club doing a routine cup tie against a Third Division side in the autumn.\n9 November 2016. Wycombe Wanderers vs Coventry City. Adams Park, away. EFL Trophy group stage. Nine hundred and twelve people in a ten-thousand-seat stadium. The Trophy that year had been opened to Premier League and Championship under-twenty-three sides for the first time, was unpopular, and the gates collapsed. Nobody pretends this is the squad that will lift a trophy at Wembley in April. They're a third-tier club doing a controversial group-stage fixture, on the road, in front of a three-figure crowd.\nSame club. Same badge. Same colour. Same destination, eventually. Almost nothing else in common.\nDanny and Sarah open both cup roads at the same time. They start with the fixture list as narrative — what the schedule actually said about who mattered. They sit with the Sillett-Curtis benchmark — the impossible standard every Coventry manager since has been measured against — and ask whether it's fair. They put September 1986 next to September 2016 and find a side under Mowbray with ten league games, no wins, six draws, four losses — gone by 29 September. They walk Cyrille Regis through carefully — the senior pro who anchored 86/87, signed from West Brom in October 1984, one third of the Three Degrees — and ask who the equivalent was in 2016 (mostly: there wasn't one).\nAnd they put both grounds side by side. Danny on Hillfields in 1986 — Primrose Hill Street into King Richard Street into Thackhall Street, terraced car-workers' houses end-to-end, the Mercers Arms and the Hand and Heart at lunchtime, the away coaches at the Coach and Horses. The football club, as Danny puts it, structurally downstream of the factory. By 2016 the Ricoh is a...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/secpsAMtdjwK-l1sjc9ARua-Q3RVUrKsquKxsw4n67g/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lZDY3/ZjRjODZmMDdlYmQ4/NTI1YmRjMjVkMmEy/YTlhNC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}