"Straight back down" - Coventry City sent clear Premier League warning | OneFootball

Coventry City are in the Championship play-off picture - but it has been predicted that they would struggle in the event of promotion

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 would have to spend big and replace huge swathes of their squad if they want to have any chance of Premier League survival if Frank Lampard leads the Sky Blues to Championship promotion, it has been claimed.

Heading into the final month of the campaign, Coventry are embroiled in a battle to finish inside the Championship’s top six, hoping to earn the right to win promotion to the Premier League.

But Football League World's resident Coventry expert believes his side would struggle to better Derby County’s infamous 11 points, the current record for lowest points tally in the Premier League.

Coventry City “would be going straight back down” if they win promotion this term

With six games remaining, Coventry City sit seventh in the Championship table, with victory over Portsmouth tonight at the CBS Arena enough to take Frank Lampard’s Sky Blues back into the play-off spots.

Whilst promotion is still on the table for Coventry, albeit the Sky Blues having to fight their way through the play-offs, FLW's Coventry City fan pundit Chris Deez is wary that going up could be disastrous for his side.

Asked if he felt Coventry would be able to compete in the Premier League in their current state, Chris told Football League World: “Any Coventry fan with even half a brain must know that if we went up this season, we would be going straight back down next season.

“If you look at the teams we went up last season, Southampton, Ipswich, Leicester, all three of them are coming straight back down.

“Ipswich, they invested heavily in their squad and they are the best of those three, but they’re still coming straight back down.

“Off the top of my head I can't really remember when the last time that a team went up from the Championship and stayed up and established themselves.

“I want to say it was Newcastle, Aston Villa, Wolves, maybe Brentford, but it's few and far between.

“It's very rare that a team goes up and actually manages to stay up these days.”

Claim made that Coventry City still have “League One quality players”

Not only does Chris believe that the Sky Blues would be chewed up and spat back out by the Premier League, but FLW’s Coventry fan pundit believes that there are players in the side that are not cut out for the Championship.

On top of his assessment of Coventry needing to improve their squad for life in the Championship, Chris shared his belief that no matter their division come the summer, the Sky Blues will likely lose key players.

“We've still got quite a lot of League One quality players in our team,” Chris restarted.

“We've got the likes of Jamie Allen, who don't get me wrong, fans absolutely love, but he's barely cut out for the Championship.

“Same goes for Jake Bidwell. We would need to be bringing in pretty much a whole squad of players, like Nottingham Forest did a couple of seasons ago.”

“I just don't think we're that type of club.

“I don't think we've got that type of owner that's gonna just randomly splurge £100million.

“Obviously, you look at it from the other perspective of if we go up, we get a load of money for going up, the prize money for going up through the play-offs is massive, come straight back down.

“We get the parachute payments and we can then, maybe the season after, start looking at rebuilding and strengthening and going back up again, but it's such a long process doing it that way.

“Looking at the teams that are likely to go up this season, Sheffield United they’re a yo-yo, team Leeds again a yo-yo team, probably the strongest of the bunch, but still a yo-yo team regardless.

“Burnley certainly are going to come back down because they don't score goals.

“We've got a great manager that's trying to prove himself, but we have got such a weak defence, even if we went up, we would most certainly lose the likes of Hadji Wright, Jack Rudoni, Ben Sheaf, all of our star players.

“I cannot imagine a world where we would get more points than Derby got all those years ago, when they set the record-low points tally.

“It would be great for the fans, it would be great to see us go up and be able to say we are a Premier League team again, but really, at the end of the day, what's the point?”