The very lowest ebb is difficult to locate. ‘There’s been a few,’ admits Steve Ogrizovic, and this living legend of Coventry City exhales deeply as he begins to file through his mind in search of them.There was administration in March 2013 and a year in exile at Northampton, but he settles on the relegation season of 2016-17, somewhere before Mark Robins returned as manager and Coventry won at Wembley. ‘Going down into League Two, that was probably as low as it could get.’Ogrizovic should know. Few have traced the fall and rise of the Sky Blues quite like the goalkeeper who made a record 601 appearances during 16 years as a player, then joined the coaching staff for 19 years and has analysed them for CWR, the BBC radio station, for the last seven years.For 42 years, he has been at close quarters. ‘The full circle,’ as he tells Daily Mail Sport ahead of Coventry’s return to Premier League action at Arsenal on Friday.’I’ve seen the good and the bad. The road has been tough, particularly for fans and the people of the city. After being in the Premier League for so long, they didn’t expect to be away for 25 years.’So, it’s nice to see the good times back again. It is really exciting and it’s been exciting for the last seven years. The club has found its feet again off the pitch and that’s helped managers to present a decent side on it.’ ‘It’s nice to see the good times back again,’ says Coventry legend Steve Ogrizovic. ‘The club has found its feet again off the pitch’ Ogrizovic, an FA Cup winner in 1987, is Coventry’s record appearance-maker, playing 601 times for the Sky Blues between 1984 and 2000If rock bottom remains an elusive concept, the crux of the problem is easier to identify as the move from Highfield Road to the stadium now known as the CBS Arena in 2005.’It wasn’t thought out or financed properly,’ says Ogrizovic. ‘You could soon see there were going to be problems. There was a delay in the opening, it cost the club a lot more money than they expected and they needed a bail-out from the council. That’s where it all started.’By 2007, the financial struggles had prompted a takeover by hedge funders SISU, who ran the club badly and endured a terrible relationship with the fans. Every twist of the story forced Coventry deeper into the mire.’Administration was a low point,’ recalls Ogrizovic. ‘We were cut to the bone. Cutting staff, less money spent on players, very little money spent on facilities.’Every year there was a rallying call to say things will change and this season will be better than the last. And working at the club you wanted to believe that was going to be case, but it didn’t happen and every year seemed to get worse.’By April 2017, with Coventry plummeting into League Two, 43,000 Sky Blues fans made a trip to Wembley as their beleaguered team beat Oxford and won the Checkatrade Trophy, less than a month after Robins returned for his second spell in charge.’It surprised a lot of people outside Coventry,’ says Ogrizovic. ‘It showed the fanbase was still there and people still cared about the club and wanted to get behind them. We’d been in decline to the point of relegation to League Two and that was a significant turning point.’ Ogrizovic and Coventry enjoyed some good times at Highfield Road, but the club’s decline started when they moved to what is now the CBS Arena in 2005 ‘Football is only exciting and enjoyable because of what the fans bring to the occasion,’ says Ogrizovic, who is full of praise for the Coventry fans who have been through the millOgrizovic joined Coventry in 1984, a point halfway through the club’s 34 years in the top flight, and was surely the best £72,500 they ever spent.He came from Shrewsbury, who were then in the second tier, having spent five years as understudy to Ray Clemence at Liverpool learning his trade from the best team in the world and acquiring good habits, not to mention a couple of medals as a non-playing substitute in the European Cup finals of 1978 and 1981.His two years with the Shrews enabled him to enjoy another passion, playing cricket for Shropshire and the Minor Counties. Ogrizovic was a medium-quick right-armer who talks just as affectionately of his cricketing achievements as his footballing ones.Among them, beating Geoff Boycott’s Yorkshire in the NatWest Trophy of 1984 and playing against a Somerset team featuring Viv Richards, Ian Botham and Joel Garner, in the previous year.’I’ve got a picture at home of the great man’s leg peg cartwheeling out of the ground,’ says Ogrizovic. ‘People see it and say, “Is that Viv Richards?”, and I say, “Yes”. What I don’t tell them is it was a no ball!’From his debut, Ogrizovic played a then-record 246 consecutive games for Coventry until an injury in September 1989. Together with two ever-present seasons for Shrewsbury, he did not miss a game for more than seven years.And there is one game during those seven years which attracts more attention than the others. ‘Not a day goes by without someone coming up to talk to me about the FA Cup final in 1987 (a 3-2 win over Tottenham),’ says Ogrizovic.’People tell me where they were and what they were doing. I know there were 100,000 in the stadium but I’m sure I’ve spoken to more than 100,000 people who were there and that’s great. I’ll never tire of it. Ogrizovic and his Coventry team-mates celebrate winning the 1987 FA Cup, beating Spurs 3-2 in a classic Receiving the PFA Merit Award alongside Michael Owen (Young Player of the Year) and Dennis Bergkamp (Player of the Year) in 1998’Football is only exciting and enjoyable because of what the fans bring to the occasion. They were incredible on that FA Cup run. It’s all about the journey, how we got there, what we went through, an exciting final… but if anyone asks for a defining moment it’s the relief at the final whistle when you’ve achieved a boyhood dream of winning the FA Cup.’Similar emotions were involved when Coventry escaped relegation, proving those wrong who wrote them off. In 1985, winning the last three games. In 1997, with a last-day win at Tottenham.There were plenty of other examples across 34 years in the top flight. They finally succumbed to the drop in 2001, a year after Ogrizovic had retired from playing at the age of 42 and joined the coaching staff.’It can feel almost as good as winning something,’ he says. ‘We weren’t always at the bottom but never had a lot of money compared to others so had to be clever in the transfer market, get recruitment right and develop players.’Coventry is a proud club with a brilliant fanbase and relied on team spirit and cohesion to punch above their weight. I see the same traits now. Connections between the players and fans. Connections among the players. You see it and feel it, but nobody can measure it.’Sports scientists can’t measure it. They can measure lots of things with data but not the strength of team spirit and what those bonds give you. You can’t convert that into points, but you know and feel when it’s there and anybody who plays sport will understand the value of that.’Ogrizovic, who will be at the Emirates on Friday on broadcasting duty, has savoured the climb back from League Two. Promotion via the play-offs in 2018 and up as League One champions in 2020, then the near miss at Wembley, beaten on penalties by Luton in 2023, a year before they lost on penalties to Manchester United in an FA Cup semi-final. Along the way came Doug King’s takeover from SISU and his decision to sack Robins and install Lampard. ‘Mark Robins did a brilliant job,’ says Ogrizovic. ‘He had taken us from League Two to the brink of the Premier League and a toenail from an FA Cup final and when he was sacked it wasn’t a popular decision, and it can’t have been easy to take over. ‘Frank Lampard has done incredible things,’ says Ogrizovic of the man who will lead Coventry out when they make their top-flight return at the Emirates on Friday’Frank Lampard has done incredible things. He’s carried the baton, made some slight changes but has been committed to attacking football – as we were under Robins. We’ve gained momentum and become more consistent and it’s got us to the Premier League. He’s a god in Coventry at the moment.’King’s status is not far behind. ‘A breath of fresh air,’ says Ogrizovic. ‘One of the greatest things was to give Coventry City ownership of its stadium again.’ That move came last year and was followed by Lampard’s team winning the Championship title.’Coventry’s story is unique,’ says Ogrizovic. ‘It’s a good one but there are clubs with similar stories, look at Leicester 10 years after winning the Premier League are in League One. They’ll be back. ‘Football has a habit of turning full circle. This is what football does, this is why it’s so exciting, this is why we love it because if you’ve been through the pain of the bad times, you will enjoy the good times.’