Jim's column 26.1.2019

Coventry City had a fruitless trip to Devon last week, losing, after dominating for long periods, to a pretty average Plymouth team. The man who made the difference was former City man Ruben Lameiras who scored both Argyle goals and is in the form of his life at Home Park. He struggled to win a regular place with Plymouth last season following his move from City but has now scored six goals in his last four games. His career at Coventry was hardly dazzling, although he did score some good goals.

The obvious comment on Saturday from many City fans was 'our former players always come back to haunt us and score'. I have written about this in the past arguing that we only notice the former players who score against us and ignore those that don't and I haven't altered my view. Ruben's goals are the first by a former City player this season and we have faced quite a few ex's. I did some research into last season and only two ex-players netted against the Sky Blues, Daniel Agyei for Walsall in a FLT game and Dominic Samuel for Blackburn in the League Cup game. Both of these were loanees and you have to go back to early 2017 for the last occurrence of a non-loanee to have been on the score-sheet, at Sheffield United when both John Fleck and Leon Clarke scored in the 2-0 loss. I calculated that there were 29 instances of former City players facing the Sky Blues in all competitions last season. Of course a number were defenders and one, Reice Charles-Cook was a goalkeeper, but the evidence doesn't support the theory that ex-players are always netting against us.

In 2012 when Stern John scored for Ipswich against us I made the point that it was his first goal in six appearances against City since he had left in 2007 and that there had been only four other former City players who had scored against us in the last five seasons: Dele Adebola, Jay Bothroyd, Andy Morrell and Calum Davenport. 

Ruben joins an elite group of former players to score two goals in a game against City. Leon Clarke did it for Bury in 2016, the first since 1983 when Steve Whitton of West Ham scored a pair in a 5-2 hammering at Upton Park. Before that Bobby Gould scored both Bristol City goals in a 2-2 draw in a League Cup game at Ashton Gate in 1973 and John Tudor netted two for Newcastle in a 4-2 win over the Sky Blues in early 1972.

The best ever effort by an 'ex' though was probably the famous England test cricketer Patsy Hendren. He left City in 1911 after a brief career but came back to haunt us fifteen years later as a veteran of 37 playing for Brentford. In a 7-3 thumping at Griffin Park Patsy helped himself to four goals in what was his final season as a player.

My good friend Geoff Moore is always coming up with interesting stats and this week he came up trumps again. He tells me that since Lee Burge made his debut for the club in August 2014, in a League Cup game versus Cardiff at Sixfields, a further 100 players have made their debut. Only five of these 100 players have played the equivalent of fifty games for the club (i.e. 4500 minutes game time): Chris Stokes, Charles Reice-Cook, Jack Grimmer, Sam Ricketts and Tom Bayliss. It illustrates the transient nature of football in the lower divisions and the strong reliance on loan players. 31 of those hundred were loans but the trend is that the club is using less. Ten loanees appeared for the club in 2016-17 but there have been only six in the last eighteen months.

Jim's column 12.1.2019

Regular reader Steve Pittam has been a City fan for many years and was one of the 50 or so supporters to make the trip to Plovdiv in City's only European campaign in 1970. He has spent many years out of the country, mainly working in the Middle East but gets back for a few games each season. He emailed me recently after the Fleetwood game (which he attended) to say that

on the drive home he was thinking about all the Coventry matches he had been to in the North west and reckons we have a pretty awful record up there. He asked if I could do the stats to confirm whether our record in the North West was worse than our overall away record.

Steve is correct about our away trips to Lancashire and the North West. Most City fans know we have never won a league game at Preston in umpteen trips and that we have never won at Rochdale. Older fans will remember the disastrous FA Cup defeats at Tranmere (1968), Rochdale (1971 & 2005) and Blackburn (1980) and League Cup losses at the same grounds over the years. The table below includes all City's trips to the area since they left the Premiership in 2001 (including Cup games). I have included Cheshire clubs Crewe Alexandra and Stockport County also.

Overall they have won only 17 of 72 away games, an average of 23%, compared to a total away win percentage of 26%. They have gained 65 points in those games, an average of 0.90 point per game. This compares with an overall away average for the same period of 1.03 points. The statistics certainly bear out Steve's theory!

I hadn't realised how bad our records are at Wigan, Bury, Morecambe and Tranmere (where the Sky Blues have not won in seven visits stretching back to 1938. I thought we had a better record at Burnley but have won only twice in 10 visits. Hope that helps you Steve.

	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Last win
Accrington	1	0	0	1	-
Blackburn	2	1	1	0	Jan 2008
Blackpool	7	2	1	4	March 2016
Bolton	1	0	0	1	Jan 1998
Burnley	10	2	4	4	May 2007
Bury	4	1	0	3	Feb 2013
Crewe	10	5	0	5	Mar 2018
Fleetwood	4	2	0	2	Oct 2015
Man United	1	1	0	0	Sep 2007
Morecambe	3	0	1	2	-
Oldham	5	2	1	2	May 2016
Preston	13	0	4	9	Sep 2000
Rochdale	5	0	2	3	-
Stockport	1	1	0	0	Aug 2001
Tranmere	2	0	0	2	Dec 1938
Wigan	3	0	0	3	Jan 1991
Totals	72	17	14	41
Up to and including 31.12.2018

Another hoodoo club for the Sky Blues is Scunthorpe and last Saturday's defeat there meant that the Iron have now won the last six league encounters between the clubs. Fellow historian Paul O'Connor pointed out that this equals City's current run of six successive league defeats by Manchester United. He also advised that the club's worst run of defeats against any club was nine against West Ham. The abysmal run started with the infamous defeat on the final day of the 1982-83 season in what was Dave Sexton's final game in charge on the day it was announced Bobby Gould was replacing hime, then the 5-2 defeat at Upton Park after leading 2-0. The run was ended in November 1987 with a 0-0 draw at Highfield Road.

Jim's column 5.1.2019

Santa Claus was good to Coventry City this year. After a poor run of results – four league defeats in a row and no wins in seven – the Sky Blues bounced back with three straight wins over the holiday season. Tight but deserved home victories over Charlton and Southend were followed by a comfortable win at Wycombe on New Years Day. Daniel Davenport asked the pertinent question : when did City last win all three Christmas games?

There have been some good Christmas's over the years but you have to go back to 1959 for the last time they recorded three victories – coincidentally the season after the club won promotion from the Fourth Division. The run started on Christmas morning – the last time City played on the 25th December – with a 5-3 victory over Wrexham with four goals from Ken Satchwell and another from Peter Hill watched by 17,500 at Highfield Road. The following day, as was the tradition back then, the two clubs met again at Wrexham's Racecourse Ground and Satchwell was on fire again, scoring two of the goals in City's 3-1 victory with Ray Straw netting the other.

In those days New Year's Day wasn't a bank holiday so there were no fixtures on the 1st January but the following day City entertained York City and Satchwell made it eight goals in three games scoring twice in a 5-2 home win with Peter Hill, Straw and an own goal also on target in front of 14,400. City did leave it late however with three goals in the last nine minutes.

                                                              Ken Satchwell                                

The run of three victories (six points not nine in those days) lifted City to third place in Division three, four points behind leaders Bury and three back from Southampton. City eventually finished fifth as Saints and Norwich won promotion.

This year's Christmas run coincided with victories over three of the teams they defeated in the excellent run in October and resulted in three doubles being recorded in a matter of seven days. I'm pretty confident that is a first for the club.

The win over Southend was particularly satisfying as it was the first home league win over the Shrimpers since 1960. Since then the Essex club have made six trips to Coventry and won three and drawn three. Older Sky Blue fans will remember the embarrassing 5-2 defeat inflicted by them in the 1963-64 promotion season. Jordy Hiwula therefore ended an awkward bogey record against Southend.

Several readers thought we had fielded our youngest ever side in the Southend game with Zain Westbrooke making his first start. Zain is actually older than the player he replaced, Luke Thomas, and therefore the starting XI v Charlton was younger. My age expert Geoff Moore ran the numbers for me and for the Charlton game the starting XI had an average age of 22 years & 250 days and is the youngest for a league game since September 1983 when the average age of Bobby Gould's starting XI at West Ham was 22 years & 248 days. That line up was as follows: Suckling (17), Hormantschuk (20), Roberts (27), Grimes (26), Peake (26), Jacobs (22), Butterworth (18), Withey (23), Platnauer (22), Gibson (20), Adams (21). The youngest team ever put out by Coventry City was at Cheltenham this season in the FL Trophy which had an average age of 21 years & 33 days, 25 days younger than the youngest ever league side which played at Manchester City in 1980.