Coventry City begin their final five matches of the league season in Sussex on Saturday when they travel to face Crawley Town.
City’s last visit to Crawley came on the final afternoon of the 2014/15 season when goals from James Maddison and Marcus Tudgay secured a comeback victory that also ensured the Sky Blues’ safety in League One.
With Tony Mowbray having been at the club for just a few months there was some optimism that that escape would lead to better times ahead and, for the next nine months things did get better as Maddison was joined by the likes of Adam Armstrong and Jacob Murphy in an attack-minded side that set the early League One pace in the 2015/16 campaign.
Fast forward to the current time and a more sustained challenge for the play-offs has been maintained, albeit a division lower, and hugely boosted by the midweek failure of either Mansfield or Swindon to overtake City in the table.
Reaching the end of season shoot-out for the first ever time in the Sky Blues history is now firmly in the hands of Mark Robins and his players but they will know that an improvement is needed from the performances against Yeovil and Notts County.
Mathematically still in with a chance of making the play-offs, Crawley arrested a run of poor form with a win at Port Vale last time out.
Harry Kewell is approaching the end of his first full season in senior management and will have learned plenty about the previously unfamiliar landscape of League Two after a campaign that is a hard slog of 46 matches with little respite or scope for the rotation of players.