Adi Viveash has revealed his ‘relief’ after Doug King explained the break-up in his Coventry City coaching marriage with Mark Robins.
Viveash left Coventry under a cloud last summer after two promotions and four visits to Wembley in his seven years as assistant manager to Robins.
The pair led the Sky Blues from League Two to the Championship and were within a penalty shoot-out of leading the club to the Premier League in 2023.
Viveash’s exit went unexplained until Coventry owner King sacked Robins in November and called a press conference. King explained that the reason for Robins’ dismissal was because ‘he has dismantled the coaching staff at this football club’.
King expanded: “I haven’t dismantled it, he has done that. That’s the thing people don’t realise, they think I am doing lots of things with my spider’s web and all these things, and it’s strictly, absolutely not true.
“What happened is that Mark and Adi Viveash were the heart and soul of this football club, they dragged us up through the leagues and were very successful in that. And then it just seemed that in March/April last year that something went down. You know a simple thing as an article in the Telegraph by Andy Turner about a certain marriage, and a difficult marriage. The guys have been together a long time and I don’t know, I think it provoked something.
“Adi gave another big interview and he wasn’t authorised to do it and then everyone got a bit excited and clearly, the fall-off after the Wolves game was pretty startling. I know everyone said we were knackered after the heroic FA Cup semi-final but the reality was, it looked like something was wrong.
“I had a meeting with both of them individually at the end of the season and I said, ‘Look, I came in here and gave you four year contracts, I want you together because you have shown me that as a team you make it happen here. I am going to get you the deck and you, I hope, will hopefully out perform the way you have out-performed with this deck.
“I told them to take time out, go away, have a holiday and come back recharged because we have got our recruitment in order and we have got pre-season sorted. We have got a performance director, the facilities (at Ryton) with a new gym coming in and we want to really hit the ground running.
“And effectively, I had a phone call from him about two weeks later, where he said, effectively, he could no longer work with Adi Viveash. Umm, I was very upset by that because that was the team that had done what we wanted to get done for the football club. It was therefore at huge risk of ‘am I going to get a better coaching set-up to take us forward with the money that I have invested, and with the dreams of where we want to take the football club.’
“Obviously, I was particularly angry about that because I did not want to break that up. Adi Viveash is a hugely skilled coach who develops players, which is my model and the model of the football club.
“And so, weirdly, I was trying to keep it together whereas Mark had made the call that after seven years a divorce was what was needed. As you know, Adi left the football club and we tried to replace him with a head of first team coaching.”
Now, speaking to That Cov Pod, Viveash has given his side of the story. The 55-year-old said: “From my point of view, the easiest thing to say is what the owner said in his press conference. I was very much planning to be at the training ground on the first day of pre-season. It’s done and things happen, that’s it, I wasn’t there. That is the narrative.
“I was pleased when the owner spoke because he told the truth. The truth is sometimes a difficult thing to hear but I’ve had to listen and still read non truths.
“I still have to be told that certain things are being said about me when this season I am nothing to do with the club. I haven’t been at Coventry for the whole season.
“But I’ve got to try and remember the amazing seven years I had. I’ve kept my class through it all and I will continue to do that because that’s the way I am.
“I’m a big strong man, I can handle it, but when I see other people really upset by lies and a lot of them, then that is very sad. It’s the one thing I wish had been handled very differently.”
On King’s press conference, Viveash added: “It was relief. The situation that was going on had nothing to do with me, in terms of the press conference, because I had already left the club. That press conference was certainly nothing to do with me. But there was a lot of relief when the owner spoke because he was able to talk about it.”
