1998–99 Coventry City F.C. season 1998–99 Coventry City F.C. season During the 1998–99 English football season, Coventry City competed in the FA Premier League. Coventry City finished 15th in the Premiership – four places lower than last season – but were never in any real danger of being relegated, despite the loss of key striker Dion Dublin to local rivals Aston Villa. The biggest news of Coventry's season was the announcement of a move to a new 45,000-seat stadium at Foleshill, which was anticipated to be ready by 2002. Manager Gordon Strachan then signed Moroccan international football star Mustapha Hadji, knowing that it would be
History of Aston Villa F.C. (1874–1961) were back in the top-flight of English football. Their Aston Villa reserves (or seconds) team enlisted in the army and were captured at the Dunkirk evacuation in June 1940. In December in an Eastern German camp, a German Guard regiment challenged British prisoners of war to a game of football; the guards were being defeated 27–0 when they stopped the game, only then learning these prisoners were Aston Villa's second team. For Villa, as with all English clubs, the Second World War brought about the loss of seven seasons, and several careers were brought to a premature end by the