Chris Kirkland is hoping more than most Coventry City can convert their outstanding start to the season into a Premier League return.

The former Sky Blues goalkeeper was part of Gordon Strachan’s team that was relegated from the top flight nearly 25 years ago.

Kirkland made his breakthrough in the 2000/01 campaign and played 23 times, ending the season as the club’s Players' Player of the Year, at the age of just 20. Later that summer he moved to Liverpool, where he spent four seasons – and then on to Wigan.

After he left the Latics football and life became a struggle as he became addicted to pain-killers – about which he writes so openly in his autobiography ‘Keeping it Quiet’ – and he retired in 2016.

Since 2022 he has turned things round and while he works for Liverpool’s LFC

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