Jim's Column 20.8.22

The good news this week is that the CBS Arena pitch is to be substantially repaired following the damage left by the Commonwealth Games rugby sevens tournament. The bad news is that the time needed to make the pitch safe means that another home league game (the third of the season), against Huddersfield, is postponed and City fans won't see their team at home until 31st August when Preston North End are the visitors. The three postponed games will have to be slotted into an already crowded schedule and it seems likely that the team will probably be playing every midweek between now and the beginning of the World Cup in early November. City fans are praying that there will not be a points deduction or other punishment for the failure to play the matches.

Last Saturday the Sky Blues travelled to South London to play Millwall and were very unlucky not to come away with a result, especially as they had led 2-0 after 35 minutes. It's very rare for City to lose after leading by two goals and this was the first occasion since 2011 when in an FA Cup fourth round tie at St Andrews City led 2-0 only for Blues to come back to win 3-2. Marlon King and Richard Wood put the Sky Blues ahead and David Bentley pulled one back before half-time. In the second half Blues, then a Premiership side, scored further goals through Stuart Parnaby and Kevin Phillips. The last occurrence in a league game was in April 2009 against Watford when City looked home and dry after Robbie Simpson had put them 2-0 up early in the second half following Freddy Eastwood's early strike. The Hornets had different ideas however and goals from Tommy Smith, Grzegorz Rasiak and Tamas Priskin secured a 3-2 away win. The result was probably the final nail in Chris Coleman's coffin; with only one win in 12 games and another defeat at Ipswich a week later the manager was relieved of duties soon afterwards.

The only other occurrence since City left the Premiership was in 2003 when a young City side were demolished 4-2 at home by Ipswich after leading 2-0 at half-time. The Tractor boys blitzed the Sky Blues with four goals in 17 minutes. Villa Park was the scene of a famous capitulation on the day that relegation from the Premiership in 2001. Mustapha Hadji scored two first half goals and City held out until 61 minutes when Darius Vassell pulled one back. Nervous City fans could barely watch as Villa turned the screws and Juan Pablo Angel (81 minutes) and Paul Merson (85 minutes) sealed City's fate.

There was only one occurrence in the 1990s – a 3-2 FA Cup defeat at Derby – but the 1980s was a bad decade with seven losses from a 2-0 lead. Bobby Gould's eighteen months in charge witnessed four – West Ham (2-5), Sheffield Wednesday (FA Cup) (2-3), Stoke (2-3) and Chelsea (2-6). There were two at Forest's City ground (1982 & 1986) and a home loss to Southampton just months after City's Wembley triumph.

On the other hand the Sky Blues have come from two behind to win six times in the last nine years with the most recent last season at St Andrews (4-2) and in home games with Peterborough three seasons running between 2013-15. Prior to 2013 it had been 18 years since an occurrence – a 3-2 League Cup victory over Tottenham.

There have been several new books from former Coventry City players in the last year and there are biographies from Dennis Mortimer and Tommy Hutchison slated for publication in the autumn. Mark Hateley's biography 'Hitting the Mark' came out some months ago and I can recommend it to Coventry City fans and football fans in general. The son of Tony Hateley, a legend at Aston Villa who also played one season at Coventry, Mark was a prodigious youngster who broke into the City first team as a 17-year-old in 1979. The book is a reminder of the quality of talent being produced by the club in that period and Mark had some outstanding team-mates such as Danny Thomas, Steve Whitton, Garry Thompson and Paul Dyson. Financial difficulties and poor management saw the best of the talent leave the club in the busy summer of 1983 and Mark dropped a division to join Portsmouth. Within a year he was an England international and scored a memorable goal against Brazil which earned him a lucrative move to AC Milan. Mark's glittering career at Milan, Monaco and Glasgow Rangers is laid out in a very readable style. 'Hitting The Mark' was co-written by Alistair Aird and is published by Reach Sport.

Jim's column 13.8.22

Coventry City's start to the season has been thrown into chaos by the pitch debacle at the CBS Arena following the Commonwealth Games Rugby Sevens tournament. Last Sunday's opening home game against Rotherham was called off at short notice and ever since we have had a undignified and unhelpful war of words between the parties. Somehow the club managed to organise for the Carabao (League) Cup game with Bristol City to take place at Burton Albion's Pirelli Stadium on Wednesday evening.

This was only the second match ever called off at the Arena since it opened in 2005, and the first because of the state of the pitch. Bristol City became the first team to play away games against City at five different locations as they have previously played at both Sixfields and St Andrews.

Meanwhile Mark Robins's team will be playing catch up with the rest of the division until they can rearrange the Rotherham game and we have to hope that the next two home games can go ahead or that catch up will be increased. The situation is not dissimilar to the 1968-69 season when the club's new Main Stand wasn't ready for the start of the campaign and the club had to call off the first two home games and then start with two away games, both which were lost. So after every other club had played four games City had played just two and were bottom of the table. The club struggled to get out of the relegation zone all season and only avoided relegation because Leicester City had a massive fixture backlog as a result of weather and an FA Cup run. Let's hope that the Arena pitch is fit to play on soon and that the team can deal with what sounds like it will be an inferior playing surface.

The League Cup game went ahead in Burton but turned into a nightmare with a pumped up Bristol team thumping a City team, largely made up of fringe players, for an easy passage to the second round. The first half performance was abysmal and although things improved after half-time the final scoreline of 4-1 didn't flatter Bristol. It was the club's worst home defeat in the competition since 1964 when Leicester City thumped Jimmy Hill's side 8-1. There were some mitigating circumstances that night – captain George Curtis had to leave the field injured before half-time and there were no substitutes in those days plus the fact that Leicester were a top six First Division side and had their best team in their pre-2016 history.

The club's fans travelled in good numbers and good humour to Burton on a beautiful evening and the crowd, with just a few hundred away fans, was 2,680. The club have had lower home crowds in the competition at Sixfields and St Andrews but the receipts will probably be a quarter of what they could have expected at the CBS and the hire of Burton's facilities will make it a loss-making event. With valuable income lost with the Rotherham postponement one has to worry that one of the club's top players will have to be sold before the transfer window closes to fill the inevitable shortfall of cash.

The competition has been extremely unproductive for City in recent years – it was the seventh time in the last ten seasons that they have exited the competition. It is now 15 years since the club last progressed beyond the third round – the year they won at Old Trafford and only once since then have they reached the third round! The Sky Blues are not alone – 19 Championship clubs played in the competition this week and all but four were eliminated, the majority to clubs from the lower divisions. This suggests that Championship clubs are so focused on the league campaign and gaining promotion to the Premier League that they have little or no interest in the competition even though there is the lure of big pay days if they draw one of the big clubs later in the competition. Sadly it seems the League Cup is on its last legs and that will mean that smaller clubs will lose their opportunity of financial windfalls and exciting giant-killing exploits and all because of the greed of the bigger clubs.

The Sky Blues kicked off the new season at the Stadium of Light last Sunday with a hard fought 1-1 draw thanks to a top drawer finish from last season's top scorer Viktor Gyokeres. Following the trend of last season the team conceded first and had to come from behind to get the result.

The game was manager Mark Robins's 300th game in charge of the club and only two men, Harry Storer and Gordon Milne, have managed Coventry City in more games. Storer, a legendary manager who took a virtually bankrupt club from the depths of Division Three South in 1931 to the verge of Division One in 1939 and, like Robins came back for a second spell in the post-war era, took charge in 549 games. Milne, who kept the club's head above perilous relegation waters before producing the most exciting team of the post-war period in 1977, managed for 440 games. It's worth comparing the three manager's win ratio in league games during their period in charge. Robins has a win ratio of 41.7% which is less than Storer's 44.4% but better than Milne's 32.5%. However that oversimplifies the comparison as Milne's games were all in the top flight whilst neither Storer or Robins managed the club higher than tier two. Jimmy Hill is the only other City manager who has been in charge for longer than one season who can beat Robins's win ratio – Hill's percentage was 43.9.

                               Harry Storer in 1949

The attendance at the Stadium of Light was a massive 40,851 and the largest crowd to watch a Coventry City league game (Wembley 2018 apart) since the club left the Premiership in 2001. The previous highest in the last 20 years was at Newcastle in February 2010 when 39,334 were present. The last 40,000 plus crowd in the Premiership was at Old Trafford in April 2001 when 67,637 watched John Hartson give City an early lead and the sides were level until nine minutes from time before Giggs and Scholes sealed a 4-2 win for United. Later that day United were champions after their nearest rivals Arsenal lost.

The Sky Blues fielded only two debutants on Sunday – loanee Jonathan Panzo started the game and Kasey Palmer came off the bench. What a change from a few years ago and when the club seemed to field a completely new team on the opening day and clearly demonstrates the stability within the playing staff that was missing just a few years ago. In 2017 there were seven debutants in the starting XI against Notts County and two more came off the bench. It was perhaps understandable given that the club had suffered relegation the previous campaign and the close season had given Robins the first chance to rebuild the squad after returning to the club. Similarly, in 2003, Gary McAllister had used eight debutants in the first game of the season, a League Cup game with Peterborough. Gary Mac had had a major clear out with the club in serious financial difficulties and brought in a glut of free transfers. The club record of 10 opening day debuts was set in 1926 when Scottish manager James Kerr decided to completely revamp his squad after a miserable campaign in Division Three North which saw them finish 16th. Kerr's gamble didn't pay off, the club finished one place higher in Division Three South and the majority of the players fell by the wayside before the season was over.

Older fans will remember the stable squads of the late 1960s and 70s. In the three seasons between 1967-69 there were no debutants on the opening day and very few throughout the 1970s. Of course there were no transfer windows in those days and clubs could carry on transfer activity throughout the whole season but turnover was very low.

Another indication of the stability of the club's playing staff is illustrated by the fact that for the first time in many years the club have five first team players who have made over 100 appearances for the team. The five are:

Dominic Hyam 190 games

Liam Kelly 147 games

Callum O'Hare 135 games

Kyle McFadzean 118 games

Fankaty Dabo 101 games

All these five players and several others are already legends of the club and how many of the players from the 2001-17 era can one call a legend?

I think you have to go back to 2001 to find as many players with more than 100 games for the club. As the first season outside the top flight in 34 years started there were six: Paul Williams, Richard Shaw, Paul Telfer, Marcus Hall, Gary Breen and Magnus Hedman. By the end of that season however all but Shaw had left the club.