*Sky-high hopes end in shattered dreams*

So much for the great escape. While a pre-match snatch of music from the war film of that name seemed to remind Coventry City of what their life had mostly been about, they still finished hanging on the old barbed wire.

There were moments when the patches of blue sky above Villa Park mirrored the Sky Blue optimism down below. But for Gordon Strachan’s team the day quickly clouded over and the mortal blow to Coventry’s 34-year-old status as a top-league club was delivered by an angel of the Colombian, rather than the merciful kind.

The goal scored by Juan Pablo Angel to level the contest at 2-2 nine minutes from time was his first for Aston Villa since John Gregory bought him from River Plate in January for £9.5m.

More pertinently, it virtually ended the hope reawakened in Coventry’s soul once Moustapha Hadji had scored twice in eight minutes during the opening half-hour.

Paul Merson’s beautifully struck winner in the 86th minute, while it ended Villa’s last home match on the sort of high note for which their followers have pined for much of the season, was irrelevant so far as Coventry were concerned.

They had needed to win and for results elsewhere to favour them to go into their final Premiership fixture, at home to relegated Bradford City, still with a chance of staying up.

On Friday nights Strachan watches Frasier, the psycho-comedy show. This would explain why, after the game, the Coventry manager appeared to be in a state of denial.

He was prepared to talk only about the disappointment of losing the match. About the wider consequence of the result he had nothing to say. This was Mrs Lincoln intent on discussing the shortcomings of the second act.

All Strachan would concede was that losing 3-2 after leading 2-0 summed up Coventry’s season. The rewards of playing good football, he said, had been lost through individual and collective errors. True enough, but after all this is how most losing teams carry on.

Gregory was supportive. The Villa manager had a lot of sympathy for Coventry and thought the atmosphere at the end of the match had reflected this. Then again it could also have reflected the mood of Aston Villa fans as they pondered the possibility of next season being as barren of joy as the one just ending.

Coventry’s supporters must have suspected something was wrong when their team lay fourth in the Premiership last August. Sure enough, one win and nine defeats in the next 13 matches plunged them into the bottom three and only the recent arrival of John Hartson arrested the decline.

In the Premiership it always helps to have players who can really play and certainly Hartson belongs to this category. In the longer term Coventry’s presence in the Premiership was always going to live on borrowed time once the club acquired the habit of letting better players leave while signing lesser players to replace them.

For a time on Saturday it was possible to believe that Coventry were in a false position, so confident and positive was their football. Yet this had to be set against the fact that for the best part of an hour Aston Villa were comically bad, a team of strangers bent on being second to every ball when they were not giving it away.

The loose pass from Gareth Barry which led to Coventry taking the lead typified Villa’s end-of-season ennui. John Eustace gained possession and gave Paul Telfer the opportunity to provide the centre from which Hadji headed past David James. Then Hadji gathered a clearance from Paul Williams and outpaced Mark Delaney to increase Coventry’s lead with a rising, rousing drive.

Desperate circumstances require desperate measures, so Gregory brought on a real footballer. He had, he explained later, been planning to introduce David Ginola for the last half-hour but Coventry’s goals, not to mention “schoolboy errors”, had altered that.

It is hard to avoid the impression that Gregory keeps Ginola back as a reward for the supporters’ good behaviour. The way some of them were going on behind his back on the Villa bench it was a wonder the Frenchman appeared at all.

When he did, Aston Villa’s football made considerably more sense and Paul Merson became an increasing influence. But had Williams and Chris Kirkland not made such a mess of dealing with an innocuous low cross from Delaney, allowing Darius Vassell to score a simple goal in the 61st minute, Coventry might still have won.

As it was, the goal drained the confidence from Strachan’s side and now the earlier loss of Telfer with an ankle injury began to be felt. Angel’s equaliser was volleyed in after a centre from Gareth Southgate had brushed the head of Barry Quinn and Merson’s winner followed a free-kick from Ginola half-cleared by Williams.

The Premiership will miss Coventry in the way that a tallboy is missed after spending years in the spare room. It is noticed more when it has gone than when it was there.

Gregory pleaded eloquently for Strachan to be allowed to stay on at Highfield Road. “I’ve a tremendous admiration for Gordon as a person and as a manager,” he said. “I hope everybody stays calm over there. He’s the man to bring them straight back up.” For the moment, it seems, Strachan’s job is safe.

Gregory’s own future at Villa Park will depend on next season bearing considerably more fruit than the promise of an Intertoto Cup run. In the programme his end-of-season message of thanks mentioned everyone bar the stadium cat before it got around to the Villa chairman, Doug Ellis.

Barnsley, Burnley and Grimsby may beckon for Coventry next season but at least it will be different. Neither Gregory nor Villa can afford more of the same.