Most
City fans are aware of City's poor recent record for headed goals but
Geoff
Moore has been researching it and has come up with some frightening
statistics. He tells me that City have scored only two headed goals
in league games this season. Both were scored by Marcus Tudgay (v
Northampton and Bolton) and came from open play rather than from a
set piece. According to Geoff this is the lowest number of headed
goals in the league.
Last season we scored
with six headers, all from set pieces and none from open play. Geoff
tells me
that before Tudgay's
efforts this season you have to go back to April 2015 and Marcus'
header at Crawley for the last one. By Geoff's reckoning that is two
headed goals from open play in 72 league matches!
On the flip side City
are very vulnerable to headers. Last season we conceded 13 headed
goals, but surprisingly only two of them were in open play (Fleetwood
at home and Doncaster away). This season there have not been as many
but I can recall at least three or four.
Geoff puts this in
context by saying that you would expect about one in six goals to
come from headers, although it obviously varies according to style of
play. He adds, 'Sobering to note that Dion Dublin scored 45 headed
goals in his Premier League career, many of them for the Sky Blues'.
Over the years Coventry
City have had some superb headers of the ball – attackers and
defenders – who scored dozens of headed goals, from Ted Roberts and
George Lowrie in the 1940s through to Neil Martin (1960s), Mick
Ferguson and David Cross (1970s) and the diminutive David Speedie who
on two separate occasions netted a hat-trick of headed goals. What
would we give for a header of the ball like those?
Keith Ballantyne wrote to ask
questions about the original Premier League members in 1992-93 and
how many of them have been ever present members. He also wanted to
know if any of those original members had fallen to the fourth tier
(Obviously anticipating a relegation for the Sky Blues this season).
Of the 22 original members the
following six have never been relegated:
Manchester United, Liverpool,
Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea and Everton.
Only four other original members are
in the current PL: Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough, Manchester City and
Southampton.
Nine clubs have fallen to tier three
at some stage: Norwich, Sheffield Wednesday, Manchester City,
Sheffield United, Southampton, Leeds United, QPR, Oldham and City.
None of the original members of the
Premier League have fallen below the third tier so if the Sky Blues
and/or Oldham get relegated this season it will be a first.
Wimbledon, PL founder members in 1992-93 no longer exist in the same
form. Two teams who were in the First Division in the last season
prior to the formation of the Premier League have been lower. Notts
County are now in League Two as are Luton Town, who have been out of
the Football League.
Since 1992 three clubs have been
promoted to the PL for the first time but never relegated:
Stoke 2008 (now in 9th season)
Swansea 2011 (6th season)
Bournemouth 2015 (2nd season).
Steve Pittam is a long
suffering City fan – he was one of the 30 or so supporters who
travelled to watch the Sky Blues in Plovdiv in their Fairs Cup
campaign in 1970. He's spent many years working and living in Dubai
only managing to catch the Sky Blues once a year if that. He emailed
me last week to say he is retiring and hoping to get to see his team
play a bit more often. He liked my article last week about Christmas
games and wrote:
'your piece brought
back huge memories for me. I had never heard of football until the
vide-printer was on at my grandparents house on Boxing Day 1958.
Torquay 1 Coventry 1 printed and I was hooked - all I knew was that I
lived in Coventry, I didn’t have a clue about football (still
don’t some would say!) and pestered my Dad until he took me in
March to see us play Workington.'
Happy retirement Steve
and look forward to seeing you in the near future.
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