July 7, 2025
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Swansea City faithful will be revelling in Matt Grimes, Coventry City situation.

Coventry City were left heartbroken after a stoppage-time winner sent Sunderland to Wembley for this season’s Championship players, but Black Cats supporters may not have bee the only set of fans celebrating this dramatic result.

Dan Ballard’s 122nd-minute goal brought Sunderland level on the night at 1-1 and put them through 3-2 on aggregate following their 2-1 win at The Coventry Building Society Arena the previous weekend.

It marked a second play-off defeat inside three seasons for Coventry, who lost out on penalties at Wembley to Luton Town two years ago.

Sunderland will now play Sheffield United on the 24th May for a place in the Premier League.

Swansea supporters will be revelling in Matt Grimes, Coventry play-off defeat.

Matt Grimes in action for Coventry City

But supporters of one Championship club will be particularly relishing Coventry’s current discomfort, and in particular that of one of their former players.

The departure of midfielder Matt Grimes after ten years with Swansea City in the January transfer window for a fee reported to be between £3.5 million and £4 million left a bitter taste in the mouth in South Wales, and to see him returning to the Championship next season rather than reaching the Premier League with Coventry will have appealed to Swans fans’ sense of schadenfreude.

It wasn’t so much the departure of Grimes from the Swansea.com Stadium that annoyed Swans supporters, as the manner in which it happened, and because of the place that he held in their hearts.

Coventry’s Matt Grimes had a Swansea City legacy.

Matt Grimes

Matt Grimes was Swansea’s club captain, and he’d been with the club for ten years since signing from Exeter City.

He’d had spells out on loan before – with Leeds United, Blackburn Rovers and Northampton Town – but over the course of that decade he made 333 appearances for the Swans, of which 301 came in the Championship and four came in the Premier League.

Following the Swans’ relegation to the Championship in 2018, Grimes became a fixture in the Swansea first team, and over the next six seasons he missed just four League games for them. He was named their captain before the start of the 2019/20 season.

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