United Against The Odds (Jay Bradford interview)

Four pages with Coventry United’s head coach at the end of the hardest season of her career and the announcement of her departure. In December 2021 the owners said the club would be liquidated; staff went unpaid over Christmas, and Jay Bradford describes a mortgage to pay, an honest conversation at home, and four or five days in which she thought about the players and staff rather than her own job. A takeover followed, then a ten-point deduction in January that left them ten adrift. What happened next was remarkable: eight unbeaten league games conceding twice, wins over Lewes, Crystal Palace and Blackburn, an FA Cup quarter-final, and survival by a single point after Mollie Green’s ninety-seventh-minute free-kick at Watford relegated their opponents instead.