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.