Jim's column 26.1.2019

Coventry City had a fruitless trip to Devon last week, losing, after dominating for long periods, to a pretty average Plymouth team. The man who made the difference was former City man Ruben Lameiras who scored both Argyle goals and is in the form of his life at Home Park. He struggled to win a regular place with Plymouth last season following his move from City but has now scored six goals in his last four games. His career at Coventry was hardly dazzling, although he did score some good goals.

The obvious comment on Saturday from many City fans was 'our former players always come back to haunt us and score'. I have written about this in the past arguing that we only notice the former players who score against us and ignore those that don't and I haven't altered my view. Ruben's goals are the first by a former City player this season and we have faced quite a few ex's. I did some research into last season and only two ex-players netted against the Sky Blues, Daniel Agyei for Walsall in a FLT game and Dominic Samuel for Blackburn in the League Cup game. Both of these were loanees and you have to go back to early 2017 for the last occurrence of a non-loanee to have been on the score-sheet, at Sheffield United when both John Fleck and Leon Clarke scored in the 2-0 loss. I calculated that there were 29 instances of former City players facing the Sky Blues in all competitions last season. Of course a number were defenders and one, Reice Charles-Cook was a goalkeeper, but the evidence doesn't support the theory that ex-players are always netting against us.

In 2012 when Stern John scored for Ipswich against us I made the point that it was his first goal in six appearances against City since he had left in 2007 and that there had been only four other former City players who had scored against us in the last five seasons: Dele Adebola, Jay Bothroyd, Andy Morrell and Calum Davenport. 

Ruben joins an elite group of former players to score two goals in a game against City. Leon Clarke did it for Bury in 2016, the first since 1983 when Steve Whitton of West Ham scored a pair in a 5-2 hammering at Upton Park. Before that Bobby Gould scored both Bristol City goals in a 2-2 draw in a League Cup game at Ashton Gate in 1973 and John Tudor netted two for Newcastle in a 4-2 win over the Sky Blues in early 1972.

The best ever effort by an 'ex' though was probably the famous England test cricketer Patsy Hendren. He left City in 1911 after a brief career but came back to haunt us fifteen years later as a veteran of 37 playing for Brentford. In a 7-3 thumping at Griffin Park Patsy helped himself to four goals in what was his final season as a player.

My good friend Geoff Moore is always coming up with interesting stats and this week he came up trumps again. He tells me that since Lee Burge made his debut for the club in August 2014, in a League Cup game versus Cardiff at Sixfields, a further 100 players have made their debut. Only five of these 100 players have played the equivalent of fifty games for the club (i.e. 4500 minutes game time): Chris Stokes, Charles Reice-Cook, Jack Grimmer, Sam Ricketts and Tom Bayliss. It illustrates the transient nature of football in the lower divisions and the strong reliance on loan players. 31 of those hundred were loans but the trend is that the club is using less. Ten loanees appeared for the club in 2016-17 but there have been only six in the last eighteen months.