Two wins in four days have cheered the Sky Blue fanbase and even got some talking about the play-offs, a fanciful idea if I ever heard one! Having said that the team are only three points worse off than they were at this stage in 2022-23 when they reached the play-offs under Mark Robins. They needed 70 points to get into the the top six then and got 32 points from the 18 games – an average of 1.77 points a game, losing only two of the final 18 matches. To reach 70 points this campaign would require 1.94 points per game, a tall order and there’s every chance that to get into the play-offs will require closer to 75 points.
Tuesday night’s win at Blackburn ensured a first double of the season and the first over Rovers since the 1967 Division Two title side. That season Blackburn had just been relegated from Division One and were one of the strongest challengers to the Sky Blues and fellow promoted team, Wolves. In fact when City travelled to Ewood Park on Easter Saturday were in third place behind the Midland pair and four points behind City who led the division. A Blackburn win that day would have narrowed the gap to two points but a less than thrilling 1-0 victory courtesy of a Bobby Gould goal went a long way towards promotion. City had won the home game in October 2-0 with John Tudor and Gould on target.
City’s recent record against Rovers is impressive. Although it was the first league win at Ewood since 1998 City have now not lost in their last 10 visits with Tuesday’s win ending a sequence of five draws. There was a time in the 1990s when City fans dreaded a trip to Blackburn at a time when Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton were in their pomp. Between 1993 and 1997 Rovers won five successive meetings with a goal tally of 17 to 2. That run ended with a famous FA Cup win in February 1997 when, despite Tim Sherwood giving Blackburn a first minute lead, City won 2-1 with goals from Eoin Jess and Darren Huckerby with Steve Ogrizovic saving a Sutton penalty.
This week’s victory ended a poor record in midweek away games. It was the first such success in a league game since February 2022 when the Sky Blues won 2-1 at Ashton Gate. That night goals from Ian Maatsen and Viktor Gyokeres (with an 89th minute winner) gave City the points. Since then City have failed to win in 13 attempts excluding Bank holiday and play-off games.
I’m proud to announce the launch this week of a new website skybluearchive.co.uk
A group of us have got together to build a website to bring Coventry City’s glorious history alive. It gives unprecedented access to in-depth details of every match in the club’s history - not only results and match stats but complete line-ups, highlights, programmes, photographs and reports. There’s also players, managers and staff profiles with their records in a Sky Blue shirt. The aim is to provide a complete historical information resource, offering ongoing updates ensuring every chapter of the club’s history is captured for all time.
If you enjoy this column and would like to hear more about Coventry City's history you can listen to the Sky Blue History Podcast which is available on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. Claudio Cardellino and I talk about all things Sky Blue. Just search for 'Sky Blue History Podcast'
If you have a question about the history or statistics of Coventry City or have a suggested topic for the podcast please drop me an email at clarriebourton@gmail.com and follow me on X/Twitter @clarriebourton
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Hello ,my memory is probably playing tricks but I remember when City were at Blackburn one night game,it was when Blackburn were riding high and City were alsorans,I was listening to the radio think it was Alan Green doing the commentary,allthoughout it was all about Blackburn.It came to the end and it was by the way Coventry won x-x.Did I dream this or what?
ReplyDeleteYou're probably thinking of the game in 1992-93 when Blackburn would have gone top of the Premiership if they beat City but City won 5-2.
ReplyDelete