Players.bio is a large online platform sharing the best live coverage of your favourite sports: Football, Golf, Rugby, Cricket, F1, Boxing, NFL, NBA, plus the latest sports news, transfers & scores. Exclusive interviews, fresh photos and videos, breaking news. Stay tuned to know everything you wish about your favorite stars 24/7. Check our daily updates and make sure you don't miss anything about celebrities' lives.

Contacts

  • Owner: SNOWLAND s.r.o.
  • Registration certificate 06691200
  • 16200, Na okraji 381/41, Veleslavín, 162 00 Praha 6
  • Czech Republic

Parallel lives: Coventry and Luton’s long roads collide in playoff final

I n an era of chronic overspend, transfer embargoes and points deductions for breaking financial rules, how refreshing that two teams who live within their means will contest the Championship playoff final, the English Football League’s showpiece event and a game worth at least £170m to the winner. Not so long ago Luton Town and Coventry City, clubs with a rich tapestry of top-flight moments, were black and blue – it is only five years since they were lining up against each other in League Two – but now they are on the verge of the bells and whistles of the Premier League.

It is the reason the Coventry manager, Mark Robins, described Saturday’s final at Wembley one for the romantics. Coventry spent 34 years in the top tier before being relegated in 2001. Luton were relegated in 1992 after a 10-year stay. Coventry lifted the FA Cup 1987 and Luton the League Cup the following year. Mick Harford was part of that Luton team in 1988. The club’s former manager, assistant manager and now chief recruitment officer says Luton’s story, from stomaching a 30-point deduction that brought relegation to non-league in 2009 to being this close to the big time, is fit for a film. But who would play Harford? “Who’s got a broken nose and dodgy knees?” he says, smiling. “It’s got to be Brad Pitt, hasn’t it?”

Too many Championship clubs have bet the ranch and lost, with Derby arguably best qualified to tell the cautionary tale. Others, such as Aston Villa, who won promotion via Wembley four years ago, have got away with it over the years. One chief executive recently declared the division a hellhole, so bleak is its financial picture. Some League One clubs have bigger budgets than Coventry and Luton. Both of their most recent starting

Read more on theguardian.com