Jim's column 20.4.2019

Saturday’s amazing 5-4 victory at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light was a gift for me in more ways than one. It generated a good number of statistical facts as well as giving me a very warm glow that will last for some weeks. I didn’t go to the North East but did watch the game on ifollow and could barely believe the drama being played out 200 miles away. In my opinion it was one of their finest away performances since they left the Premiership and I'm not going to apologise for concentrating on the game this week.
5-4 is a very rare scoreline and prior to Saturday City had only been on the winning side of this score on five occasions, all at home:
1962-63 v Halifax Town

(George Hudson’s hat-trick debut)

1964-65 v Newcastle United

(City hanging on after leading 5-1)

1977-78 v Norwich City

(Ian Wallace’s overhead kick, Graydon’s late winner before Jim Blyth saved a penalty which would have made it 5-5)

1990-91 v Nottingham Forest

(A League Cup thriller with City 4-0 ahead only to be pegged back to 4-4 before Livingstone’s winner)

2013-14 v Bristol City

(First game at Sixfields. City pegged back after leading 3-0 before Billy Daniels grabbed the winner)

The win was City's first ever 5-4 victory away from home. There have been only 74 occurrences of a 5-4 away win in League history, the last in 2017 when Fulham won 5-4 at Bramall Lane.

It was the first League defeat Sunderland had suffered since before Christmas and their first home defeat of the season. On top of that it was the first time that the club had conceded five in a home game since 1981 when on Bryan Robson’s debut Manchester United had won 5-1 with a young Nick Pickering in the Black Cats team.
The other record was that it was the first time in a Coventry City game where there were nine different scorers, equalling a Football League record. It has been done on forty or so previous occasions but never in a Sky Blues game. Our record was eight which happened in 1950 in a 5-4 defeat at Southampton and in the aforementioned Norwich game in 1977. That day City’s scorers were Barry Powell, Ian Wallace, Ray Golding, Bobby McDonald and Ray Graydon with John Ryan, Kevin Reeves (2) and Martin Peters for the Canaries. The last time five different City players scored in a game was quite recent - in 2016 in the 6-0 over Bury when Stokes, Cargill, Maddison, Fleck and Armstrong (2) were on target.
The crowd at the Stadium of Light was 36,134 and the second highest league crowd that the Sky Blues have played in front of since they were relegated from the Premier League in 2001, topped only by the 39,334 at St James’s Park, Newcastle in 2010 to see the Magpies win 4-1.
The victory was only City’s second at Sunderland in 19 visits, stretching back to an FA Cup tie in 1951. The only other win was in January 1977 when a Donal Murphy goal gave City the points on a treacherous icy pitch. City’s five goal haul was one more than the total they’d scored in those 18 previous encounters.
City have now won nine away games,equalling last season’s total and the the third highest in the club’s history. The record, set in Mark Robins’ previous spell as manager 2012-13, is 11, with the 1969-70 haul of ten under Noel Cantwell a close second. Mark Robins’ away record as City manager is phenomenal- he has 26 wins from 60 matches, 43% win ratio. This is easily the best of any City manager in history and Jimmy Hill’s away win ratio was a measly 27%.

I was sad to hear of the death of 1950s Coventry winger Colin Collindridge, who at 98 was the oldest living former City player. I will write more about him next week.