Jim's column 28.10.2018

Two away wins in four days not only lifted the Sky Blues to eighth place in League One (their highest position since May 2016) but got two troublesome monkeys off their back. The deserved win at Roots Hall, with a late scrambled goal, was the first at Southend since 2006 and only the fifth in 25 trips to the seaside town. They then followed up with a comprehensive thrashing of lowly Bradford City, ending a 59-year wait for victory at Valley Parade. Although Mark Robins was not happy with parts of the Bradford game I thought it was a very impressive away performance and City could have scored more goals with Jonson Clarke-Harris, who was in imperious form, narrowly missing out on a hat-trick of headers.

The two victories mean they have won four league games in a row for the first time since November 2015 when under Tony Mowbray the team beat Peterborough (h), Barnsley (h), Colchester (a) and Gillingham (h) to go to the top of League One. Those four games harvested 14 goals with Jacob Murphy scoring five and Adam Armstrong four. Have the Sky Blues ever had two better loan players? Lots of readers have been asking when did City last win five in a row. I'm probably giving the kiss of death on matters but you have to go back to February 1998 and the Premiership days to discover the answer. 1998 was of course the golden spring when City knocked Liverpool, Derby and Villa out of the FA Cup and should have reached the semi final but it is easy to forget the impressive league form in that period. Between early January and early April the team were unbeaten in nine league games and by the end of the season had lost just once in 21 league and cup games (counting the Sheffield United cup replay as a draw!). Embedded in that incredible run was a run of five straight league wins and two FA Cup victories.

Michael Doyle achieved another milestone this week when he overtook Richard Shaw in the all-time list of most Coventry City appearances. He's now made 364 appearances in all competitions for the club and stands seventh in the list. This season he has overtaken Shaw, George Mason and Tommy Hutchison and is now closing in on Mick Kearns on 385 with Bill Glazier's 402 also under threat.

The top ten at the moment is:

1. Steve Ogrizovic 601
2. George Curtis 543
3. Mick Coop 499
4. Brian Borrows 488
5. Bill Glazier 402
6. Mick Kearns 385
7. Michael Doyle 364
8. Richard Shaw 362
9. George Mason 359
10. Tommy Hutchison 355

Jim's column 20.10.2018

After successive wins over Charlton Athletic and Wycombe Wanderers the Sky Blues now face two tough away games in four days. They have poor records against Southend, today's opponents, and Bradford City, who they visit on Tuesday evening. The Shrimpers have been a bogey club for City going back to the 1960s when they were unbeaten in three consecutive games at Highfield Road and put 11 goals in City's net – a 3-3 draw in 1961-62 followed by 4-3 and 5-2 victories in the next two seasons (they were the first post-war opposition to score five at Highfield Road).

City have no victories in the last five meetings with the Essex club and only four wins in 24 league visits to the seaside resort. Their last victory at Roots Hall was a Friday night game in 2006. Freddy Eastwood scored twice to cancel out goals by Stephen Hughes and Colin Cameron (a penalty) and looked to have earned a point for the home side until Dele Adebola popped up with the winning goal. City's last two visits there have ended in 3-0 and 3-1 defeats.

Valley Parade is another unhappy hunting ground for the Sky Blues. They have failed to win in their last 10 trips stretching back to the last win there in 1959-60 when George Stewart (2) and Ron Farmer gave City a 3-1 win. It's not just Valley Parade that City have a problem with the Bantams – they have recorded only one win in the last 12 meetings, a 1-0 home win in April 2016 when Andy Rose netted the solitary goal. Jordy Hiwula will remember the 2017 game at the Ricoh – he scored the second goal in Bradford's 2-0 victory, a result that left the Sky Blues 14 points from safety and virtually relegated.

Keith Ballantyne regularly corresponds with me on City's history and in the summer following Ernie Hunt's death he posed a couple of interesting questions. He wanted to know if Ernie had ever appeared at Highfield Road before joining City in March 1968.

He played at Highfield Road for Swindon in:

1960-61: a 1-1 draw and scored.

1961-62: City won 2-1

1962-63: City won 2-0

1964-65: City won 3-2 (he scored a pen)

And for Wolves in:

1966-67: City won 3-1

The other question concerned the 'Three Ernies' – Hunt, Machin and Hannigan. Keith wondered how many times all three played in the same City team. Ernie Machin joined City from Nelson in 1962, Hannigan joined from Preston in November 1967 and Hunty came from Everton in March 1968.

                                                                Ernie Hannigan

                                                                 Ernie Hunt

                                                             Ernie Machin

In 1967-68 all three appeared together in four games. All three started seven games in 1968-9 (Hannigan appeared in three more as substitute). In 1969-70 Hannigan only started seven games in total and Hunt started in six of them but Machin was absent in all of them. So in total there were only eleven games when all three started.

Keith also wanted to know if George Hudson played for Tranmere in the FA Cup games in 1967-68, after leaving City for Northampton in 1966. The Hud played for Tranmere in both FA Cup games v City in 1968. He scored one of the goals in Tranmere's 2-0 replay win, George Yardley scored the other.

Jim's column 13.10.2018

Coventry City's luck has not been in at times this season but it was definitely in at the Valley last Saturday. Trailing with ten minutes remaining the super sub Amadou Bakayoko struck twice to give the Sky Blues three points they had never looked like winning in the previous eighty minutes. Bakayoko joined an elite group of seven Coventry City players to score two goals from off the bench. The full list is:

1967-68 Bobby Gould (Nottingham Forest (away)) 3-3

2002-03 Jay Bothroyd (Rushden & Diamonds (LC) (home)) 8-0

2004-05 Patrick Suffo (Torquay (LC) (home)) 4-1

2013-14 Chris Maguire (MK Dons (away)) 3-1

2016-17 Ryan Haynes (Wycombe (FLT) (away)) 4-2

2017-18 Max Biamou (Yeovil (home)) 2-6

2018-19 Amadou Bakayoko (Charlton (away)) 2-1

The first, Bobby Gould's brace at Nottingham Forest after he came on for captain George Curtis who had broken his leg in only City's second game in the top flight, was the first time any City substitute had scored. The most dramatic brace was Chris Maguire's at MK in 2013. The scores were level at 1-1 with five minutes left when Maguire buried two sublime free-kicks in front of a large Sky Blue following. We have had some great moments at that stadium, it's a shame we won't be going there this season.

                                                  Gould nets at the City Ground (August 1967)  

In the 53 years that substitutes have been allowed only four opponent's substitutes have scored two goals, the most famous being West Ham's Tony Cottee in 1982-83, the last being in the Yeovil home game last season when Sam Sturridge came off the bench to score two against a red-faced City defence.

The Checkatrade Trophy (or EFL Trophy to give its proper name) continues to attract miniscule crowds throughout the country. There were less than 500 at the games at Cambridge and Gillingham on Tuesday night and City's pathetic 1,341 was in the top six highest gates of the night. From my vantage point the crowd looked to be under 1,000 which would have made it the lowest for a Coventry competitive home game since the club joined the league in 1919, held by the 1,111 for the Millwall Full Members Cup tie in 1985. However the final figure crept up to just beat the Crawley attendance (1,338) in the same competition two years ago. Despite the attraction of a Wembley final isn't it time for this competition to be put out of its misery. I fully envisage a Wembley final between two Premier League Under 21 sides that would attract a very low attendance.

The games at least give managers the opportunity to give promising youngsters a run out against stronger players than they're used to and on Tuesday we saw several City debutants. Jak Hickman and Morgan Williams got their first starts and then 17-year old Jack Burroughs and recent signing Dexter Walters came on as a substitutes. Burroughs became the first City player born after the millennium to appear for the first team. None of the youngsters looked out of place with Williams and Jordon Thompson especially impressive.

Dick Graham was the manager of Crystal Palace when they were promoted from Division Three alongside the Sky Blues in 1964. Dick passed away in 2013 but his son Mark is writing a book about his father's football career and I was able to help him with a few facts and figures. Graham and Jimmy Hill, City's manager at the time, had a few spats in their time. After a 1-1 draw at Selhurst Park in December 1963 JH was critical of Palace's tactics saying 'I have never been so pleased to have won a point. To me it proved that constructive football can triumph over the purely destructive. This is our third experience of Palace's rough play this year'.

In those three games four Palace names had been taken – in the days when you almost had to a maim an opponent to go into the referee's book, with full-back Bert Howe picking up two bookings for flying tackles on City's winger Willie Hunphries. Graham retorted by calling Hill's comments undignified and saying 'We play the game men should play it'.

Both teams were promoted and the two managers were in opposition for a further two seasons before Graham was sacked in early 1966.

Jim's column 6.10.2018

Coventry City's home game with Sunderland saw a bumper 16,407 crowd at the Ricoh Arena, boosted by an excellent 4,900 following from Wearside. Apart from last season's vastly inflated crowd for the Accrington game it was the biggest regular season league crowd at the stadium since Burton Albion's visit in January 2016 when the attendance was 17,140. Obviously the mass of Sunderland fans boosted it but the atmosphere generated by the larger than usual crowd was reminiscent of the days in the Championship. The number of away fans was the largest since 2011-12 when Birmingham City brought 5,755 for the game in March. City were in desperate trouble at the foot of the table and took the lead in the 70th minute through Gary McSheffrey only for their old boy Marlon King to equalise less than two minutes later.

Since the Ricoh opened in 2005 and accurate records began to be kept for the number of away fans there have been 15 instances of 5,000 or more visiting supporters, all of them in the Championship days. The biggest was in 2010-11 when Leeds brought 6,366 to see a thriller. Leeds led 2-0 at half-time before Lukas Jutkiewicz pulled one back. Then Max Gradel made it 3-1 with a penalty and Ben Turner made it 3-2 to set up a hectic finish with Leeds hanging on for a 3-2 victory. The total crowd that day was 28,184 – the biggest crowd to watch a City home league game since 1980.

SkyBlueLewy asked me a question on Twitter last week. He wanted to know about a friendly that the Sky Blues played at Hastings in the early 1990s that his boss had attended. The game took place on 26th July 1989 and was a testimonial for long-serving Hastings player Wayne Peacock and City's first pre-season friendly. Hastings were managed by John Sillett's brother, Peter, at the time and John took a strong City squad to the South Coast. City ran out 6-2 winners with goals from Brian Kilcline (pen), Dougie McGuire, David Speedie, Micky Gynn, Keith Thompson and Steve Livingstone. Peacock had his moment of glory when he equalised Kilcline's penalty with a penalty of his own spot-kick and Stuart Dunbar scored a second equaliser before City upped the tempo in the second half. Peter Sillett had an earlier spell as Hastings manager and in December 1980 City (for whom brother John was coach) opened the club's new floodlights in a friendly game, winning 2-1.

Last week it was the 30th anniversary of Middlesbrough's 4-3 win at Highfield Road, a game that saw hat-tricks from both David Speedie and Boro's Bernie Slaven. I was asked how many City players have scored hat-tricks and ended on the losing side. There have been two other occasions: in 1962 Terry Bly scored three in a 4-3 home defeat to Southend and in 1995 Dion Dublin scored three in a 4-3 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday.

                                                              David Speedie

That prompted a further question: how many times have players from both sides scored hat-tricks in City games? In addition to Speedie/Slaven there are five others :–

1931-32 City 5 Fulham 5 (Billy Lake (Coventry) 3/ Frank Newton (Fulham) 3)

1933-34 Gillingham 3 City 7 (Arthur Bacon (Coventry) 5/ Arthur Mills (Gillingham) 3)

1937-38 Fulham 3 City 4 (Magnus McPhee (Coventry) 3/ Jim Hammond (Fulham) 3)

1962-63 City 3 Southend 4 (Terry Bly (Coventry) 3/ Mike Beesley (Southend) 3)

1990-91 City 5 Nottm. Forest 4 (Kevin Gallacher (Coventry) 3/ Nigel Clough (Forest) 3)

Finally a question from regular reader Ed Blackaby. Ed wanted to know the details of a game the Sky Blues played at Lockheed Leamington in February 1967. It was a charity game in aid of the Ken Shelton-Rayner Appeal Fund. The programme, dated 8th January when the game was originally planned for, explains that Ken, from Alderminster, needed a life-saving kidney machine which would cost £7,000. The proceeds of the match would go towards the appeal.

The Sky Blues, who had won 1-0 at Bury the previous day, put out a strong team but were overwhelmed by the Brakes who ran out 5-3 winners. City's goals were scored by Brian Lewis, Bobby Gould and Ronnie Rees and a crowd of around 2,500 watched the game.