Coventry City had a mixed Easter weekend with another impressive comeback at St Andrew's on Good Friday followed by an unlucky defeat at home to high-flying, star-studded Bournemouth on Monday afternoon. Expectations were high at Birmingham but poor defending gave the Blues a two-goal lead before the outstanding Ben Sheaf scored his first goals for the club to pull the Sky Blues level by half-time. With confidence high and the home side struggling to cope with City's attacking prowess, one felt there was only one team going to win and Rose and O'Hare put Blues out of their misery.
City's away form since Christmas has been very impressive with five wins and a draw from ten games and it is interesting that in the same period the team's home form, which was so impressive in the autumn, has gone the other way with only three wins and three draws from 11 games.
It was the first time City had come from two goals down to win since August 2019 when, during their stay at St Andrew's they trailed Blackpool 2-0 but came back to win 3-2 with goals from Matty Godden, Wes Jobello and a 91st minute winner from Callum O'Hare. City have now gained 27 points from losing positions this season, the best in the Championship and a club record.
I had a log trawl through the records to find the last time City reversed a two-goal deficit and won by two clear goals. There was an FLT victory at Wycombe in 2016 where they were losing 2-0 at half-time before goals from Ryan Haynes (2) George Thomas and Gail Bigirimana saw City win 4-2. For the last occasion in a league game you have to go back to 1946 when City visited Millwall in a Division 2 game. George Ashall put City ahead after half an hour but the Lions roared back and led 3-1 two minutes into the second half. Then a Coventry blitz saw them score four goals in 15 minutes to win the game 5-3 with Ashall completing a hat-trick and Harry Barratt and Ted Roberts netting the other goals. In the match report in the Pink, Nemo wasn't complimentary, saying : 'Play was wild and almost completely lacking in constructive football'.
The game on Monday attracted the biggest crowd of the season to the CBS Arena, 24,492. That is the largest crowd at the stadium since a Family Day game with Gillingham in 2019 when the 'official' attendance was 26,741. However that included 12,500 free tickets, many of which were not used and the likely attendance was more like 18,000. Similarly the 'official' attendance for a Family Day game v Accrington in 2018 was given as 28,343 but there were probably only 21,000 in attendance. The last time there were as many people at a City home game was the Gillingham homecoming game in September 2014 when 27,306 were in the ground (many on cheap tickets). The Bournemouth attendance means that the club's average attendance is now 19,346 and will almost certainly be the highest average since 2006-07 (20,342) and the third highest since the club were relegated from the Premier League in 2001.
I also looked at the home element of the club's attendances and on Monday there were 22,150 City fans in the ground. By my reckoning this is the fourth highest for a Sky Blues home league game since the move to the Arena in 2005. There were bigger home contingents for the Middlesbrough, West Brom and Chelsea FA Cup ties and the Crewe EFL Trophy game in 2013 but the three higher league games were:
2014-15 Gillingham attendance 27,306. away fans: 495. Home fans: 26,811
2007-08 Wolves attendance 27,992. away fans: 5,400. Home fans: 22,542
2005-06 Leeds attendance: 26,643. away fans: 4,255. Home fans: 22,388
With the good news about season ticket sales for next season we could soon be looking at record home contingents but also average home attendances of over 22,000, something we haven't seen at Coventry since the 1970s!
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