Jim's column 26.3.22

Coventry City threw away a 1-0 lead at Derby last weekend. After Matty Godden and Callum O'Hare combined in scoring a dazzling opening goal the Sky Blues conceded their fifth league penalty of the season and Derby skipper Tom Lawrence duly beat goalkeeper Simon Moore from the spot. This season's other four penalties conceded were:

Luton (a) Elijah Adebayo

Reading (h) John Swift

Bristol City (h) Chris Martin

Preston (h) Damien Johnson

Last season the team conceded 11 league penalties and the subject was one that concerned many Sky Blue fans. This impressive improvement has largely gone unnoticed this season. In 2020-21 those eleven penalties cost City seven points on the basis that without the penalty the result would have been different, so for example, Preston's penalty at St Andrews gave them a 1-0 victory and cost City one point. This season the penalties have cost City four points, two points each at Derby and against Preston with the Reading and Bristol penalties having no effect on the final result.

One common theme about this season and last season is that the opposition haven't missed a penalty. Sixteen penalties conceded, sixteen scored, although Marko Marosi did save one in a League Cup game at MK Dons last season. You have to go back to an away game at Tranmere in January 2020 for the last penalty miss by the opposition when Rovers' Morgan Ferrier blasted his spot kick over the bar in City's 4-1 away win.

It's five years since a City goalkeeper saved a league penalty. That was Lee Burge in April 2017 against Peterborough at the Ricoh Arena. Burge saved Craig Mackail-Smith's penalty before a Ruben Lameiras goal gave City a victory in what was only Mark Robins' seventh game in charge. Six days later the club's relegation to League Two was confirmed. Since then the Sky Blues have conceded 25 penalties and none have been stopped – a pretty miserable record and a long way from 2013-14 when Joe Murphy saved five out of the 11 penalties conceded by the team.

A while ago I had an interesting email from Harry Devey who revealed an interesting fact about former Coventry and England goalkeeper, Reg Matthews:

I played for the Cheylesmore Youth Club Junior side in goal. I had a trial to play for Coventry Boys in 1946 at the Memorial Park on a sloping pitch. The one player who stood out against us on the day was the right winger who was from Foxford School called Tom Cartwright who went on to play cricket for Warwickshire and England.

I got picked to play for Coventry Boys at the Butts Stadium but due to a mix up with the date I didn't turn up. The lad who was picked to play at left back was asked to go in goal and his name was Reg Matthews. As they say the rest is history.

For fans who are interested in the history of the English game there is an excellent new book out telling the history of the FA Cup. The Cup by Richard Whitehead (published by Pitch Publishing) is a pictorial celebration of the competition and coincides with the 150th anniversary of the first final. The large format coffee-table book allows the outstanding photographs, many of which have never been published, to be displayed at their best. All of the glorious photographs have a revealing and sometimes surprising backstory with many featuring fans as well as the heroes of the competition. My favourite is from 1959 of Nottingham Forest's Stewart Imlach smoking a pipe whilst carrying a tea tray down a train corridor. Imlach, who later signed for City, had been the hero of Forest's 1959 2-1 Cup final win over Luton Town.

Coventry City's greatest FA Cup goal sadly doesn't feature – the author explains that he instigated 'the Houchen rule' which involved trying to avoid choosing pictures that were over familiar. The Sky Blues do get several mentions however including a previously unseen picture of Greg Downs holding the Cup aloft.