Conor Coady played every minute of 84 straight Premier League games
Between 2018 and late 2020, Conor Coady did not miss a single minute of Premier League football for Wolves, 84 matches and 7,560 minutes in a row. The streak ended only when he had to isolate after contact with someone who had COVID-19. It ranked third among outfield players in the league's history.
Coady was born in St Helens and grew up in nearby Haydock supporting Liverpool, joining the club's academy in 2005. He captained its under-21s and won the European Under-17 Championship with England in 2010, making the team of the tournament. Yet chances at Anfield were scarce, and he played only twice for the first team, debuting in a Europa League game against Anzhi Makhachkala in November 2012.
A loan to Sheffield United in League One proved the making of him. He skipped Liverpool's pre-season tour of Asia and Australia to join the Blades, fought his way into the side and played 50 games, including an FA Cup semi-final defeat to Hull. Huddersfield then signed him for around £375,000 in 2014, and a year later Wolves paid roughly £2 million.
At Molineux he was transformed by the coach Nuno Espírito Santo, who moved the former midfielder into the centre of a three-man defence. Coady became captain, lifted the Championship title in 2017–18 and led Wolves to back-to-back seventh-place finishes in the top flight. He played every minute of their run to the Europa League quarter-finals in 2019–20 and was named in UEFA's squad of the season. His first England cap came in 2020, and he was part of the squad that finished runners-up at Euro 2020.
Goals were rare. His first Premier League strike, a header, arrived in a heavy defeat at Manchester City in March 2021, and his first league goal at home took until his 298th Wolves appearance. After more than 300 games for the club he spent a season on loan at Everton, where the new manager Sean Dyche dropped him, and later joined Leicester.
Source: Conor Coady
