Today is the final day of the Championship season and City are comfortably safe from relegation, a marvellous achievement as I mentioned last week. The relegation battle is unresolved with Rotherham still favourites to go down after failing to win at Luton in midweek. With no wins in their last seven matches the chances of them winning at Cardiff must be slim but end of season matches can be notoriously difficult to predict. A win in Wales however would take them to 44 points and if Derby and Sheffield Wednesday were to draw at Pride Park the Millers would be safe. I think a more likely scenario is that Rotherham will fail to win and will be joined in League One by the losing team at Pride Park. The Owls have some recent good form with only one defeat in four but have lost eight of their last nine away games. Derby, on the other hand, are on a dire run with six straight defeats and only one win in 14 games. Either way, at least one big club are heading for League One. It's 35 years since the Rams were last out of the top two divisions but Wednesday were in League One as recently as 2005 when they won promotion via the play-offs under Paul Sturrock. They will be joining a number of other fallen giants in what promises to be a competitive third tier next campaign. Charlton, Ipswich (possibly rejuvenated under new ownership and manager Paul Cook), Sunderland (possibly), Portsmouth (possibly) and a revitalized Wigan.
I had an interesting question from Oz Orman from East London recently. He wanted to know about a Turkish Cypriot player called Sevim Ebeoglu who came to play for Coventry City in the 1950s. I knew that Sevim had never played for the first team but with a bit of digging I discovered that he had appeared for City's reserve team in September 1956. He appeared as outside left in two reserve games for the club, against Reading on 15th September 1956 (a 4-1 away win) and against Tottenham on 22nd September (a 4-1 home loss). Sevim was a 23-year-old who was living in Holloway, London. He had had trials with several London clubs and was recommended by the Cyprus FA. According to the Coventry Telegraph the week before the Reading game he had played extremely well for City's A team in a 6-0 victory over Warwickshire Constabulary to earn his call up to the reserve team. Also in the team were a 17-year-old George Curtis, the 40-year-old reserve team coach Alf Wood in goal, South African wing wizard Steve Mokone and future chairman of the club Iain Jamieson. City's goals in the 4-1 victory were Bill Patrick (2), Denis Uphill and Ron Sheppard. According to Oz Orman Sevim moved back to Cyprus and played for AEL Limassol. He died in 2018.
Reader Vince Whelan remembers watching an England Schoolboys International at Highfield Road in the late 1960s and asked if I had any details. The game was probably England v Holland on 5th April 1969 which England won 5-2. The goalscorers were Chris Guthrie (2), Terry Spinner (2) and Ronnie Goodlass. Guthrie signed for Newcastle after leaving school and actually made his first-team debut against the Sky Blues in a Texaco Cup game in 1971 but failed to make the grade and moved on to play for Southend, Sheffield United, Swindon and Fulham. Spinner was a schoolboy prodigy and signed for Southampton but made only two senior appearances before moving to Walsall where he struggled for a place before drifting into non-league. Goodlass joined Everton from school and took longer to make the first team than the other two scorers. He made the first of 50-odd appearances for the Toffees at the age of 22 and later played for Fulham, Scunthorpe and Tranmere. The attendance for the game was 6,019.
My end of season stats review is already in the pipeline and will be out next week.
If you have a question about Coventry City's history please drop me an email at clarriebourton@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @clarriebourton
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