As Frank Lampard formally reaches an agreement to bring two players from Man City to help bolster the club, Sam Allardyce says Mark Robins made a mistake for Coventry City and issues a warning to Lampard. DUE TO….

Coventry City parted with Mark Robins after more than eight years in charge and Sam Allardyce believes the outgoing boss could’ve been more selfish

Sam Allardyce believes Mark Robins made the mistake of staying in one place for too long after the heralded Coventry City manager took his leave after over seven transformative years at the club. The club parted with Robins earlier this month after a relatively slow start to the new season, ending one of the longest tenures in modern English football in the process.

Robins oversaw a rise from League Two to the Championship – and being within a penalty shoot-out of the Premier League – as well as clinching silverware in the EFL Trophy and coming within a whisker of claiming an FA Cup final place only just last year. It was a highly successful spell in charge, but former manager Allardyce is of the opinion that Robins should’ve struck while the iron was hot.

Robins was tenuously linked with moves away during his time in charge at the CBS Arena, such was the job he was carrying out across that period, but he remained loyal to the Sky Blues – something Allardyce doesn’t necessarily believe benefits you in the long run.

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“He should have moved,” Allardyce told Footy Accumulators’ Tippy Tappy podcast. “He should have got his agent when a job came up and got them to say, are you interested? It’s his responsibility to do that. Lots of managers make the same mistake. Take Karl Robinson, he’s at Salford. He turned down Leeds when he was at MK Dons – fool! You don’t do that

“If you lose your job at Leeds, you’ve gone and managed one of the biggest clubs in this country, so your next job is going to be in the Championship and you develop your career from there. When I got sacked by losing in the playoffs at Blackpool, I swore then that my loyalty would only be to me and my family.

“Mark Robins had been there what, seven, eight years, working on tight budgets, working on restricted budgets, rebuilding the side, picking up free transfers, loan players, and so on and so forth. It’s incredibly harsh, but of course, that’s what happens in the game of football – it’s cruel.”