What Coventry City can expect from the Premier League

For many Coventry City fans, stepping up to the Premier League will be a whole new world in terms of the spectacle of elite level football every week and big away days.

The club will be visiting grounds like Tottenham’s new stadium, Everton’s Hill Dickinson and Manchester City’s Etihad for the first time, while many fans will be chalking up plenty of new venues if they’re lucky enough to get tickets.

For the older members of the Sky Blue Army, they’ll be reacquainting themselves with familiar old haunts like Villa Park or Forest’s City Ground.

It’s a far cry from Accrington Stanley, Barnet and Morecambe, that’s for sure. So as we move from the ridiculous – in terms of contemplating the fact that City dropped so low – to the sublime, what can the Sky Blue faithful expect next season? How does the top flight differ from the Championship and what are the best and worst bits ahead?

CoventryLive spoke to Sunderland fan Dean McDonald of the Roker Report podcast to get a flavour of all things Premier League from a supporters’ perspective.

Having enjoyed their first season back in the top flight, unfortunately at the painful expense of Frank Lampard’s lads in the 2025 play-offs, we’d all love a year like the Black Cats have enjoyed.

Facilities wise, I’d have to say the Hill Dickinson from where I’ve been. Immediately one of my favourite stadiums I’ve been to; the system to buy drinks is smooth and relatively quick, the outside area has plenty of food and drink options and the stadium itself is just amazing. It’s a shame it doesn’t have the atmosphere of Goodison yet but I think it’ll get there.

Atmosphere wise, I think I’d have to say Elland Road. Bit of a boring answer but it’s probably unmatched for atmosphere, whereas a lot of the regular Prem stadiums become more and more touristy with less proper fans, places like Elland Road and the Stadium of Light will manage to avoid this, in my opinion.

The best opposition fans I think I’d say Arsenal for away support. Probably surprising but they travel in numbers, they’re loud and they don’t stop for the whole 90 minutes. The online section are probably up there with the most hated but the match going fans were great to talk to and just wanted to support their team.

As for the worst, other than the obvious (them up the road), I’d have to go Chelsea. The way they’ve gone on over the Granit Xhaka situation and the entitlement of their fanbase really rubbed everyone up the wrong way and has left a sour taste. Honourable mentions for Fulham and Bournemouth for me here, although that’s mainly due to numbers which isn’t the fault of the fans.

In my opinion it doesn’t affect how you react to a goal in the moment, like some people mention, but the wait times for a verdict can be the most infuriating thing in the world.

The difference is night and day. Nearly every single player in the Premier League is at peak physical ability, very few are slow or weak, even the ones you don’t expect. I didn’t realise just how fast people like Declan Rice and Alex Iwobi are, for example, but it’s a good few levels above the Champ.

It can be annoying moving away from 3pm kick-offs so often, and the amount of Sunday games is ridiculous compared to the EFL. You get used to it pretty quickly to be honest and things like booking early finishes at work for the Monday night games etc soon just becomes normal before you even realise it.

I fully went in to the season expecting to be battered every week, at least in the game if not on the scoreboard. I was pleasantly surprised as we had an amazing season, but even when the Forest 5-0 home defeat happened, it felt like that was the kind of thing we expected week in, week out.

It is a bit of a mindset change but being a Sunderland fan you generally learn to just expect the worst from the years of seeing it. Over the season the mindset changed as we realised we were at the level, but it didn’t feel difficult to change to expecting losses at the beginning of the season.

The fans played a huge part in our success. There’s no chance we’d be a Europa League team now without that. We had the longest unbeaten home run in the league and I think in the whole Football League other than Bromley. That’s not a coincidence. The fans pulled us through games, all the last minute winners or equalisers. They don’t happen if the fans don’t believe and pull through til the end.

Just enjoy it. Enjoy seeing the likes of Declan Rice, Erling Haaland etc as you never know when it could happen again. Trust in your club to do the right thing, and stick with the players and the manager because you have a good one, and you never know what could happen.

Every day, the CoventryLive football desk strive to deliver all manner of news, features and transfer-related stories as a part of our overall package of Coventry City content.

Social media: Our dedicated reporter Andy Turner - who you can follow on X by clicking here - follows the Sky Blues home and away and offers you comprehensive coverage from matchdays, press conferences and everything that happens in between.

We also have a Facebook page updated throughout the day, every day, and is a place where you can share your views and reactions with other fans - click here

There's a our Coventry City account on X, too - click here

WhatsApp: You can also get all your favourite content from CoventryLive's Sky Blues team on WhatsApp. Click here to sign up for breaking updates about the biggest stories in and around the club.App: If you prefer reading our stories on your phone, consider downloading the CoventryLive app, in which you can personalise the content you see by selecting Coventry City as one of your designated topics. You can get it from Apple here and for Android here.