A new CBS attendance record for the Middlesbrough game

A CBS record crowd of 31,452 for the Middlesbrough game.

The West Brom game on Good Friday attracted 31,167, the largest ever league crowd at the CBS - the third 30k plus crowd in the last five home games. Until the Middlesbrough game only the 31,407 for the Chelsea FA Cup quarter final game in 2009 has topped this crowd 

 

The top ten attendances for Coventry games at the CBS since it opened in 2005 are now as follows:

1.          31,452 Middlesbrough (League) 2024-25
2.          31,407 Chelsea (FA Cup) 2008-09
3.          31,167 WBA (League) 2024-25
4.          31,054 Crewe (EFL Trophy) 2013-14
5.          30,232 Leeds (League) 2023-24
6.          30,219 Sunderland (League) 2024-25
7.          30,175 Birmingham (League) 2022-23
8.          30,011 Stoke City (League) 2024-25
9.          29,914 Leicester (League) 2023-24
10.          29,420 Plymouth (League) 2024-25

It was also the largest home league crowd for Coventry since January 1980 when 31,644 watched the Sky Blues end Liverpool’s 19-match unbeaten run courtesy of a sixth minute headed goal from Paul Dyson. City were inconsistent back then too - seven days later they were dumped out of the FA cup by Third Division Blackburn at Ewood Park.

The Boro attendance takes the average home attendance this season to 27,817 and  the highest since the 1969-70 season. In fact this season’s average has only been bettered four times in the club’s history. Unless the capacity at the CBS is increased with ground developments the top three seasons (City’s first three in the top flight) will never be topped.

Top seasons for average attendances (League only)

34,705 1967-68

33,223 1968-69

32,043 1969-70

28,269 1966-67

When you consider that only seven years ago as the Sky Blues struggled to get out of League Two via the play-offs the average was 9,255 it has been an amazing turn around in the club’s fortunes.

Red Cards influence the play-off race

Today the Sky Blues aim to win a place in the Championship playoffs by beating Middlesbrough at the CBS arena. A draw may be sufficient depending on the results at Turf Moor and Bramall Lane. Many City fans believe that the team should have secured their place before now but away defeats at relegation threatened Plymouth and Luton have thrown a spanner in the works and left fans sweating on the final day. Let’s hope the team can get it over the line and qualify for the play-offs for the second time in three seasons which, after the position when Frank Lampard took over in November is a not inconsiderable achievement.

Controversial refereeing decisions have seriously affected the two away defeats and made City’s job harder than it should have. Plymouth’s Mustapha Bundu should have been sent off for a vicious challenge on Jamie Allen when the score was 0-0 at Home Park on Easter Monday and the striker went on to score two goals and make another. At Luton Jay Dasilva’s red card for a clip on Millenic Alli’s heels seemed harsh to me and left the Sky Blues in an uphill battle against a desperate Luton team who ironically were kept out until the final minute and when the Hatters were also down to ten men.

Dasilva’s red card was the first City sending off this season and the club almost achieved the record of not having a red card in a single season for the first time since 1986-87 season, almost forty years ago. In 1992-93 Mick Quinn was the only player sent off, for an alleged foul on Manchester United’s Peter Scheichel which was later reversed and Mick didn’t serve a suspension. Saturday’s referee Oliver Langford also showed a red card to Liam Kitching in the home game with Sheffield Wednesday last season and he’s the first ref to send two City players off for a good few years.

Former City loanee Liam Walsh, a key figure in the 2019-20 League One promotion success, was also red carded by Langford, his third expulsion of the season. Walsh, whose red card was reversed this week, is only the third former Coventry player to be red carded against the Sky Blues. The others are Steve Hunt and Gary Deegan. Hunt, who played almost 250 games for Coventry, was sent off playing for West Brom in a 0-3 defeat at Highfield Road in 1985-86. Deegan, who played 43 games for the Sky Blues, mainly in the 2011-12 relegation season, was red carded playing for Southend United in a 3-0 victory over City at Roots Hall in 2016. 

Some fans have highlighted the fact that City have not won an away game in the white away kit this season and compared the results to the disastrous away record in 1999-2000 when City also wore a white away kit. The results in the white kit this season have been no wins, three draws and three defeats. In 1999-2000, the season that Sky referred to as ‘The Entertainers’, based on outstanding away form, we played in white on nine occasions, drawing four and losing five. 

The Sky Blues are the Added-time experts

The Sky Blues did it again on Wednesday night- scoring an added time winning goal. Jamie Paterson’s 94th minute winner was the sixth post-90th minute deciding goal for the team this season, a remarkable feat. The scenes at the CBS Arena when Paterson’s bicycle kick hit the back of the net to finish Portsmouth’s stubborn resistance were truly memorable and the vast majority of the 28,000 crowd stayed to celebrate the victory and applaud their heroes.

The big six winning goals which set a new club record are:

Haji Wright 96th minute v Oxford (home)

Haji Wright 92nd minute v Luton (home)

Bobby Thomas 95th minute v QPR (home)

Ellis Simms 92nd minute v Sheffield Wednesday (away)

Bobby Thomas 97th minute v Stoke (home)

Jamie Paterson 95th minute v Portsmouth (home)

Last season we just had the one (Haji Wright at Molineux in the FA Cup) and there were none in 2023-24. The record season before this season was in 2021-22, the first season back at the CBS when there were four such victories:

Kyle McFadzean v Nottm. Forest (home)

Matt Godden v Reading (home)

Matt Godden v Bristol City (home)

Dom Hyam v Barnsley (home)

An interesting point about the nine home victories after the 90th minute is that all nine winning goals were scored at the South End of the stadium, in front of the noisiest section of the home fans. Having said that however 21 of this season’s 36 league goals have been scored at the North End with 15 at the South End.

Prior to the return to Coventry in 2021 late winning goals for the Sky Blues were very rare. Between 2005 and 2021 (excluding the three seasons at Northampton and Birmingham) I can only find three instances of added-time winning goals at the CBS. In the 2011-12 relegation season Gary McSheffrey scored a 92nd minute penalty winner over Leeds. The following season James Bailey got a late winner over Oldham and Leon Clarke scored a famous winner against Preston in the EFL Trophy. This season’s achievements therefore are unique in the club’s history.

The Sky Blues have now gone 16 league games without a draw since the 1-1 at Cardiff on New Years Day, the longest such run since 1984-85 season when they had a run of 21 games without a draw. The longest run in the club’s league history is 25 set in 1926-27. Four of those late winning goals have come during that 16 game run and without those vital goals the Sky Blues would be in mid-table now with 54 points and play-off hopes gone. 

Haji Wright is one of only six

Coventry City pulled off another home win two weeks ago against Sunderland with Haji Wright scoring all three goals in the 3-0 victory. That makes it six home league wins out of seven and eleven league victories in total at the CBS Arena. There are positive factors to glean from this improved home form. Firstly home wins are vital if a team are going to reach the play-offs; last season none of the top six teams in the Championship won less than 15 home games with Leicester winning 17. City won nine and drew eight and if five of those draws had been wins they would have finished sixth and been in the play-offs. The importance of turning draws into wins cannot be understated. This can be seen with Burnley this season; they have only lost two games all season but their 15 draws could be crucially fatal in the final promotion reckoning. If only a few of those draws were turned into wins the extra two points would have virtually assured them of an automatic promotion place already.

Haji Wright scored his first hat-trick for the club against Sunderland and Coventry City’s 128th league hat-trick since they entered the Football League in 1919. It is only the sixth home league hat-trick for the club since the move from Highfield Road twenty years ago. The other five are:

2009-10 Freddy Eastwood v Peterborough

2015-16 Jacob Murphy v Gillingham

2017-18 Jodi Jones v Notts County

2017-18 Marc McNulty v Grimsby

2023-24 Ellis Simms v Rotherham

The attendance was 30,219, the biggest crowd at the stadium this season and just 14 short of a new league record. It was also the second successive 30,000 plus crowd - the first time this has been achieved by the club since 1970. During the 1969-70 season City averaged 32,043 for home games and last had consecutive 30,000 gates for the visits of two London clubs. On 31st January 1970 there were 31,661 for the 2-0 win over Arsenal and four weeks later the 0-3 defeat to Chelsea was watched by 37,454.

Paul Brucculeri posed an interesting question recently. His brother had been down to Devon and went to see a Torquay United home game. He wondered when City last played Torquay in a competitive game. The Gulls, as Torquay are known, were relegated from the Football league in 2007 and though they bounced back two years later were relegated again in 2014. They are currently playing in the National League South.  They did however spend 78 seasons in the Football League without ever going higher than the third tier. City and Torquay met regularly in Division Three South during the 1930s and 1950s and the Gulls were City’s opponents on the final day of the 1935-36 season when City clinched the title. Their last meeting with the Sky Blues was in the FA Cup in 2009 (when Torquay were in the National league) when a late Elliott Ward goal gave City a 1-0 win at Plainmoor. The clubs also met in the FA Cup in 1988 when a Brian Kilcline penalty and a Cyrille Regis goal gave City a 2-0 victory at Highfield Road. There was a also a 4-1 home League Cup win in 2004 (goals from Stephen Hughes, Patrick Suffo (2) and Andy Morrell.

The last league game with the Gulls was in February 1962 just after Jimmy Hill arrived as manager. City lost 0-1 at Plainmoor with Ernie Pym scored in front of 3,458.

Bobby Thomas sets a new scoring record

Coventry City’s amazing run of 9 wins in 10 league games came to an end at Derby’s Pride Park on Tuesday night in a game they dominated for large periods but were unable to turn their superiority into goals. The 3-2 win against Stoke had extended the sequence to create a new club record for a 10-game run in a season, beating the record of Noel Cantwell’s 1969-70 team in Division One. There was a 9 wins in 10 run in 1954 but that was over two seasons with victories in the last three games of 1953-54 and six wins and a draw in the opening seven games of 1954-55. In 1954 the club was managed by Jack Fairbrother, an oft forgotten manager who took over from Harry Storer in January 1954 but stepped down nine months later following the tragic death of his wife. At the time Jack resigned City were fourth in Division Three South and probably as close to winning promotion back to Division Two during the miserable period from 1952-58.

The Sky Blues had central defender Bobby Thomas to thank for Saturday’s victory over a Stoke side that gave City a few frights in the second half. Bobby’s late goal was his third in consecutive home games. I can find no previous instance of this other than Elliott Ward in 2008 but two of Ward’s goals were penalties. Bobby has now scored five league goals this season and equals George Curtis’ record of most goals by a central defender in a season (excluding penalties). George only scored 11 league goals in 487 games but in 1965-66 he netted five.

I recently received an email from a Dundee supporter, Dale McDowell who wrote:  I recall going to a Dundee v Coventry friendly match in 1999 as a child however my memory of the night is quite vague. A colleague and I were talking about Gordon Strachan and my subconscious is telling me that despite him being retired as a player and was the manager of Coventry City at the time, he came on as a substitute and played. Am I going crazy?

Dale is not going crazy. Gordon, who had started his playing career at Dundee, came on as a substitute in the 86th minute in a game played on 25th March 1999 (during the international break). City won 1-0 with an early goal from Trond Soltved in front of a 2,500 crowd inside Dens Park. 

The City line up was: 

Combe *: Edworthy (Gordon Strachan 86), Burrows, Telfer, Clement, Shaw, Delorge, Soltvedt (Mooney 80), Whelan, Huckerby, Froggatt (Gioacchini 45). Unused sub: Shilton

*Alan Combe was Dundee’s reserve goalkeeper and played as a guest

The incredible Sky Blues winning run continues

Another away win, the fourth in a row, extended the Sky Blues’ current run to eight wins in nine league games. The latest victims were Oxford United who fought hard but ultimately were unable to stop the Coventry steamroller.

As the media have pointed out it is 55 years since Coventry had such a good run - an incredible record, especially considering where the team sat two months ago. It’s worth looking back to 1969-70 when Noel Cantwell achieved an identical run.  In mid-November 1969 after a 0-0 draw at Burnley in which centre-half Roy Barry had made his first start in a City shirt, the team sat twelfth in Division One. At Turf Moor that day the man Barry replaced club legend George Curtis who came on as an 87th minute substitute in what would be his final appearance for the club.

                                                                     Roy Barry

Seven days later another new signing, John O’Rourke, partnered stand-in striker Maurice Setters up front at home to Newcastle United and a late Ernie Hunt penalty secured the points. After a strong Tottenham side were defeated 3-2 at home City travelled to newly promoted Crystal Palace and, with two Brian Joicey goals, triumphed 3-0. A 3-1 Boxing Day home victory over Ipswich was followed by a 1-1 FA Cup home draw with Liverpool before Manchester City were put to the sword 3-0 with the striking partnership of Neil Martin and O’Rourke clicking into gear.

The FA Cup replay at Anfield was lost and five days later the five game winning league run was ended at Elland Road but City were straight back on the winning trail with a 1-0 win at Hillsborough and a 2-0 beating of Arsenal. The eighth win in nine came in a night game at West Ham’s Upton Park with two Martin goals in a 2-1 win that took the Sky Blues to fourth place in the league table.

The run came to an end at Goodison Park when the league leaders Everton were held 0-0 in one off the finest away performances of the era. Against a rampant Everton side Cantwell set up to frustrate the Toffees and defended with their lives with Roy Barry marshalling his defenders in style. The quality of the performance and enormity of the result made the fans almost forget that the winning run was over. The fans were now dreaming of a European place.

The 11-game unbeaten league run came to a shuddering halt seven days later when Chelsea came to Highfield Road. After Everton Dave Sexton’s side were the outstanding English club side that season and would win the FA Cup. An 18-year-old Alan Hudson and a dazzling Peter Osgood helped the Blues to a 3-0 victory to give City a reality check.

There’s no question that the arrival of Barry and O’Rourke was a major factor in that incredible run and two weeks after the Chelsea game Barry tragically suffered a broken leg against Sheffield Wednesday. 

In his absence City never quite reached the heights of that nine-game run but still did enough to qualify for the UEFA Fairs Cup by finishing sixth at the end of an incredible season - the highest league position that the club has ever achieved. 

1969-70

Nov 22 Newcastle (h) won 1-0 (O’Rourke)

Dec 6 Tottenham (h) won 3-2 (Machin, O’Rourke, Gibson)

Dec 13 Crystal Palace (a) won 3-0 (Hunt, Joicey 2)

Dec 26 Ipswich (h) won 3-1 (Hunt, Martin (pen) Og)

Jan 10 Manchester C (h) won 3-0 (Martin, O’Rourke)

Jan 17 Leeds (a) lost 1-3 (Og)

Jan 28 Sheffield W (a) won 1-0 (O’Rourke)

Jan 31 Arsenal (h) won 2-0 (O’Rourke, Martin)

Feb 11 West Ham (a) won 2-1 (Martin 2)

Six wins out of seven following victory at Hillsborough

The Sky Blues made it six league wins out of seven with their injury-time winner at Hillsborough last Saturday. Ellis Simms, unlucky not to be on a hat-trick after what looked a perfectly good goal in the first half was disallowed, was on hand to pounce when the Wednesday ‘keeper James Beadle failed to catch a long punt. For the second game in a row the team scored an injury-time winning goal, a feat I can’t find a precedent for. Six wins out of seven is the best run by a City team since the League 1 championship season when the last seven games before lockdown yielded six wins and a draw. Saturday’s victory over the Owls lifted the side into seventh place in the table, their highest placing this season.

The performance at Hillsborough wasn’t brilliant and the team rode their luck a bit in the second half but as a friend said to me ‘It’s a sign of a good side to win when they’re not playing well’. I find some of the criticism of the last two performances strange - I remember City’s 1966-67 Division two promotion season and after Christmas, as Jimmy Hill’s team extended their unbeaten run, there were many close shaves with defeat and at times the football was pretty ugly. Opposition managers and some of the media criticised Hill’s tactics and physical approach but the history books record the club won the title and reached the First Division for the first time in their history.

Today Preston North End are in town and City will need to be at their best to end the dreadful run of 22 league games without a victory over the Lancashire team. The last win was in September 2007 when late goals from Dele Adebola and Michael Doyle gave City a 2-1 win.

Another sad passing to report this week. Former journalist and broadcaster Marshall Stewart died aged 88 last month. Marshall was the author of the first book written about Coventry City, ‘Miracle in Sky Blue’, published in September 1967. A thin, but fascinating book covering the club’s rise from Division Four to Division One. Marshall, a Cov kid who was later made a Freeman of the city, had covered the club’s affairs in the now defunct Coventry Standard from the 1950s and later joined the BBC where he was the editor of the Today programme. He continued as a senior editor in broadcasting with LBC, a further stint at the Beeb and with ITV in the Midlands. I remember purchasing his book outside Highbury where City were playing for the first time in September 1967 and my interest in the club’s history stemmed from that book. I got to meet Marshall some years ago and enjoyed his stories of covering Coventry City. RIP Marshall.