Aston Villa face Coventry City competitively for the first time since 2001 and Dan Bardell looks back at a rivalry which was a regular part of growing up as a Villa supporter in the 1990s, but has almost completely disappeared from the consciousness of a new generation.
There will be Aston Villa supporters heading to Coventry City on Wednesday night who have barely given the opposition a second thought during their entire lives, which makes it quite remarkable to think that for those of us who grew up watching Villa during the 1990s, Coventry were effectively the only local Premier League rivalry we had.
Birmingham City were elsewhere, West Bromwich Albion were elsewhere and Wolverhampton Wanderers were elsewhere, so while none of us would ever have placed Coventry in the same category as Blues, they were a familiar part of the fixture list and there was always something extra around those games. The extraordinary part is that Villa have not faced them competitively since 2001, when Coventry were relegated at Villa Park, meaning an entire generation of supporters has grown up without really having any reason to consider them a rival at all.
The feeling from the other direction appears to have survived rather more successfully.
Frankie Maguire (All Villa, no filler podcast) grew up close enough to Coventry supporters to understand exactly how they viewed Villa and, speaking on 1874 ahead of the game, he described the level of dislike he encountered as "comparable to Birmingham City". That will probably surprise younger Villa supporters in particular because Coventry barely register in conversations around our traditional rivals these days, but geographical proximity and decades of sharing a division created something which clearly ran far deeper on their side than many Villa supporters realised.
There is something quite interesting about a rivalry becoming so dormant that one side almost forgets it exists. Football has changed enormously since Villa and Coventry last met, both clubs have travelled very different paths and Villa have played games against Blues, Albion and Wolves in the years since, while Coventry disappeared from the Premier League and eventually had to fight their way back through the divisions. The relationship which existed in the 1990s was effectively frozen in time.
Wednesday night thaws it out again.
That is important when considering the game itself because Villa and Coventry are unlikely to approach the occasion with exactly the same emotional temperature. For Villa it is a Carabao Cup third-round tie sandwiched into a schedule containing Champions League football and a Premier League game against Tottenham, and everything we know about Emery suggests there will be significant rotation. For Coventry it is a first competitive opportunity in 25 years to beat Aston Villa, at home, at a time when they could desperately use something positive after a difficult beginning to the season.
That does not automatically mean their manager will pick his strongest possible XI, particularly when Coventry have their own Premier League priorities, but I would be surprised if the identity of the opposition did not influence the way they approach it. If this were another Carabao Cup game against a side with whom they shared no history, perhaps the temptation to rotate heavily would be greater, whereas Villa arriving in Coventry gives their supporters and players something different to feed off.
Villa need to be prepared for that because a heavily rotated team can sometimes drift into these games expecting the difference in individual quality to eventually tell, only to discover that the opposition are playing the evening at a completely different intensity. There will be Villa players coming into the side who need minutes and are trying to impress Emery, which should help in that respect, but understanding the occasion is important as well.
I will admit that Coventry have never particularly bothered me as a rival in the way that Blues do, and after 25 years without playing them it would be difficult for it to feel any other way. There is, however, something about discovering how much another club dislikes you which naturally adds a little more spice to the occasion, particularly when you know how much satisfaction they would take from knocking Villa out.
Perhaps that is what makes Wednesday more interesting than the average League Cup third-round tie. For some Villa supporters it will be a reminder of a fixture they grew up with, while for others it will be their first proper experience of something that disappeared from the calendar before they were even born.
For Coventry, you suspect they have been waiting rather longer for it.
