"Always going to go for big money" - Coventry City: James Maddison named in player sale debate | OneFootball

The England international came through the ranks at the Sky Blues before joining Norwich City.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

Coventry City's rise back to the Championship in the late 2010s and the early part of the 2020s was extraordinary.

A club that had suffered a huge demise due to poor ownership came back from the brink, all the way to the second tier of English football in just a matter of seasons, and even came close to a Premier League return in the 2022/23 campaign.

The Sky Blues had more than a handful of players who helped with that rise, and they have gone on to have a very special place in the hearts of supporters young and old.

Nevertheless, Coventry's league placements during that time did see them miss out on some of their greatest talents, with those from higher divisions pinching them for relatively low fees.

James Maddison identified as Coventry's biggest sale regret

Coventry are one of few teams to have seen the entirety of the EFL in the last decade, and have provided the league with a lot of talent during that time.

Mark Robins, in particular, worked extremely well with those players, seeing them through from League Two up to the Championship. However, he did miss out on one of the greatest players to have graced the CBS Arena pitch.

Football League World asked their Coventry Fan Pundit, Ryan Murphy, which player he believes was sold too early by the club's hierarchy and why, with a current Premier League star his number one choice.

He told FLW: "There are two players that I can think of one being Callum Wilson, who was sold way too early, and then he went on to Bournemouth to smash the league with them and then got to the Premier League and went for big money to Newcastle.

"But the other one would be James Maddison. Tony Mowbray was the manager at the time, and he said James Maddison had many scouts watching him week in week out, and that this was not the time to sell him.

"He had signed a four-year deal at Coventry City and then in the last hour of transfer deadline day he cashed in on James Maddison for peanuts. Because they loaned him back for the rest of the season, they tried to make out that it was a great deal, which it wasn't."

Ryan continued: "He was always going to go for big money. He ended up being an England international and went for £25m, I believe, a few years later. If he had stayed at Coventry City, we could have probably gone up the leagues with him and cashed in for a lot higher than what we sold him for.

"So, James Maddison would be the standout one, especially when the manager was telling the board to not sell him at this point and just a matter of days later, he was sold, and we got no money to reinvest into the squad. We just got him back on loan until the end of the season."

Maddison has gone from strength-to-strength since leaving Coventry

Few would have imagined the career that the plucky teenager would go on to have when he first made his debut in 2014, but his talent as a goalscoring midfielder has taken him extraordinarily far.

After leaving for Norwich City in February 2016 for just £2.5m, he would excel, scoring 14 goals and registering eight assists in his first full Championship campaign after loan spells with the Sky Blues and Aberdeen.

He earned a £25m move to Leicester City in 2018, helping the Foxes to the FA Cup three years later, becoming a full England international during his time at the King Power Stadium. But relegation to the Championship at the end of the 2022/23 campaign saw him move on once again.

Tottenham Hotspur tabled a £40m bid for the now 28-year-old, with Coventry benefitting through sell-on fees. Maddison is a regular in the Premier League, and one of the most exciting players in the division. However, supporters of his boyhood club may always feel as though he left too early before his impact could be truly felt.