Micky Quinn spent the weeks after this season’s Premier League fixtures were released impatiently checking his phone and waiting for the Sky Sports booking that never came.With Coventry City back from a 25-year exile and launching their campaign at Arsenal no less, the defending champions, live on Sky on the opening Friday night, he would have been the perfect studio guest.Picture Quinn regaling an armchair audience with tales of his hat-trick for the Sky Blues in a 3-0 win at Highbury on the opening day of the 1993-94 season and his expertise in the art of scoring goals with his polished comic timing.’Can’t believe they haven’t called,’ quips Quinn, only half-joking. ‘Their loss.’His roguish wit will instead be available on Friday at Mr Shenanigans in Coventry for a pre-match Q&A followed by a live screening of the game and a late bar until 3am, which sounds like more fun than a night on Holloway Road with Roy Keane and Gary Neville.’I’m looking forward to seeing how Coventry go,’ he says. ‘They play a lovely brand of football, there’s a harmony at the club and a great spirit under Frank Lampard. Are they going to be strong enough? I don’t know. They can take heart from Leeds and Sunderland staying up last season. Hopefully, they can surprise a few.’ Micky Quinn spent the weeks after this season’s Premier League fixtures were released impatiently checking his phone and waiting for the Sky Sports booking that never came It is 33 years since Quinn scored an opening-weekend hat-trick at Highbury, as Coventry ran out 3-0 winnersThat’s what Coventry did 33 years ago with Quinn in his pomp. ‘Arsenal weren’t ready for us,’ says the 64-year-old. ‘They’d won the FA Cup and League Cup the season before and didn’t expect Bobby Gould to go 4-3-3 against the England back five.’I was up front with two fantastic players, Peter Ndlovu and Roy Wegerle. They were so mobile, dropping deep, going wide. The likes of Tony Adams couldn’t handle them.’Ndlovu won a penalty for the first after being brought down by Lee Dixon, which was converted by Quinn in front of a Clock End closed for renovation. Wegerle set up the other two on the break in the second half.’Roy backheeled one to me and it was one of the best finishes of my career,’ says Quinn. ‘I guided it, left foot. Just passed it into the top corner past David Seaman. Ian Wright came up and said it was one of the best finishes he’d ever seen.’The hat-trick goal wasn’t too shabby neither. Bit wider this time and I hit it with enough power. It swerved a little bit. He got his fingers to it but couldn’t stop it going in.’I was told I was the first (visiting player) to score a league hat-trick at Highbury for more than 70 years. I don’t know if anybody has done it since because they knocked the ground down.’Online footage includes Quinn and team-mate John Williams celebrating this momentous occasion with a chicken dance.’I took the lads on a bonding session,’ Quinn explains. ‘We were in a ’70s disco night in a club outside Coventry and this song called Funky Chicken came on. We were laughing and said whoever scored the first goal at Highbury we’d all do the funky chicken dance. Arsenal goalkeeper David Seaman is helpless as Quinn fires in his second goal – ‘one of the best finishes of my career’ Quinn celebrated with a chicken dance when he completed his hat-trick’They either forgot because they were too p***ed to remember or they were too embarrassed because when me and John Williams attempted this stupid dance no one else did it.’Arsenal boss George Graham was not impressed either, although for different reasons.’Paul Merson always says George had a go at him for going out on Thursday night and not preparing right,’ says Quinn. ‘Merse’s response was, “Well, Quinny was out on Friday night and he scored three goals”. I wasn’t really. He was just trying to get himself out of the s***e.’Pre-season wasn’t all disco chickens for Gould’s Coventry. They had done their fitness training with the army in Aldershot.’Assault courses, night manoeuvres, everything,’ says Quinn. ‘Camping out in the woods, pitching tents in the woods in the dark, building campfires. The army lads were skinning rabbits.’Quinn joined Coventry at the age of 30, a £250,000 snip from Newcastle in November 1992, and started with a spectacular eruption of goals, setting records for a new competition which stood for years until Erling Haaland stormed into Manchester City.’Bobby Gould was great for me,’ says Quinn. ‘We got on like a house on fire. He said I reminded him of himself, an aggressive goalscoring centre forward.’When I signed, he said, “We’ve got a decent team here but we can’t score any f***ing goals. That’s why you’re here. So don’t come back for corners or free-kicks, conserve your energy and get in the box”. And I did. I exploded.’ Quinn joined Coventry at the age of 30, a £250,000 snip from Newcastle in November 1992 He scored ten goals in his first six games for the Sky Blues, a record that stood until Erling Haaland arrived at Manchester CityQuinn scored ten goals in his first six games. ‘Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa got to nine in six, but then Haaland came along. I’m not one of them who says records are there to be broken.’They survived nearly 30 years. I remember being in a pub one Saturday when Haaland arrived and he’s scored again and the graphics come up showing you the records with all these world-class players and there’s me among them.’There is one he didn’t break. I scored in all my first six Premier League games from debut. No one else has done that. Haaland didn’t score in his second game against Bournemouth. That’s the only one left.’Manchester City were a very different club back in 1984, when they tried to sign Quinn after his 39 goals in 63 appearances for Stockport, where he won the first of his three Golden Boot awards in the old Division Four.’Oldham, Man City and Blackpool came in,’ he says. ‘I spoke to Blackpool who were in the same division as Stockport. City and Oldham were in the second, but the chairman said I couldn’t speak to City. The fee was £52,000 and City wanted to pay catalogue style, over two or three years. They were that skint.’Oldham and Blackpool fronted up the money. I went to Oldham with Joe Royle and he took me under his wing, nurtured me and got rid of the rough edges. Between Joe and Alan Ball at Portsmouth they crafted a striker.’I just dreamed about goals, like every goalscorer. I didn’t sleep in the summer if I hadn’t banged in 20 league goals.’He had a predator’s instinct like other strikers of his era and does not see it when he watches Viktor Gyokeres, the former Coventry striker who scored 14 Premier League goals in his first season at Arsenal after moving for £64million from Sporting Lisbon. ‘Not a huge fan, to tell you the truth,’ says Quinn of Viktor Gyokeres, who scored 40 goals in 97 games for Coventry before joining Sporting Lisbon in 2023 ‘Workmanlike at Arsenal but doesn’t get the goals he should. If you’re the centre forward in an Arsenal team you need to be getting 20-plus a season”Not a huge fan, to tell you the truth,’ says Quinn. ‘Workmanlike at Arsenal but doesn’t get the goals he should. If you’re the centre forward in an Arsenal team you need to be getting 20 a season minimum with the chances they create.’The one thing they need if they are going to cement their status among the very best and go on and win a Champions League is a goalscorer. If they get Julian Alvarez he is different class and I think they’ll win the Premier League again.’In the main, Gyokeres has been massively disappointing. I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt me on the night.’Quinn’s opening goal spree in Coventry colours included two against Liverpool.’My family are all Liverpool supporters, so I got them five or six tickets and some passes for the players’ lounge,’ he recalls. ‘Their psyche was: “We’ll go down and see our Mick, hopefully Liverpool batter Coventry and he has a good game and scores.”‘We beat them 5-1 and I got a couple. I went in the players’ lounge and found them all with faces longer than Ruud van Nistelrooy. You could’ve picked their jaws up off the floor. They didn’t even say well done!’Back at his dad’s pub on the Cantril Farm estate in Liverpool though, Quinn was the toast of jubilant Evertonians. He didn’t buy a drink. Not until he scored twice against Everton later in the same season.He had 17 by the end of the campaign and when he started the next with a hat-trick at Arsenal, there was talk of an international call-up. England’s fading World Cup hopes were resting on an eight-goal winning margin against San Marino, though still requiring a favour from elsewhere. Bobby Gould motivates his Coventry players during their 5-1 demolition of Liverpool in 1992, in which Quinn scored twice on an electric start to life in the Midlands ‘Coventry were never a sexy club compared to some and there was a lot of bias – that’s the closest I came to an England cap but I never had a phone call”Coventry were never a sexy club compared to some and there was a lot of bias, but for once the Press were pushing me to play against San Marino because England needed to score eight,’ he says.’Some of the strikers were injured and they were all saying: “Play Quinny for a one-off game.” Graham Taylor was the manager. He totally ignored it. I knew then it wasn’t about talent. That’s the closest I came but I never had a phone call or nothing.’Some things never change.