Table-topping Sky Blues set more records

The Sky Blues extended their lead at the top of the Championship to five points with an excellent win at Stoke last Saturday. In a game of few chances it took a sublime goal from Ephron Mason-Clarke to separate the teams first and second in the table at the start of play. The victory made it a remarkable eight wins out of nine since mid September.

The team have now topped the Championship table since the 4^th October and, whatever the results in the next two games, they will still be top until at least 25^th November. That's 53 consecutive days in first place and the best achievement by a Coventry City side since the 1966-67 Division Two promotion season. Then, Jimmy Hill's team went top of the table on 7^th January following a 1-1 draw at Birmingham's St Andrews and stayed top until Easter Monday, the 27^th March, when, with City not playing, Wolves slipped ahead of the Sky Blues on goal average (before goal difference came into being) with a win at Huddersfield. That was a total of 81 days in first place. The club record for days at the top was set in the 1963-64 Division Three promotion season when the team were top for 157 days. A 2-1 home win over Bristol City on 8^th October 1963 sent the Sky Blues top and they remained there until 14^th March 1964 when after a shocking 5-2 home defeat to Southend on the previous night, City were overtaken by Crystal Palace. The Sky Blues had held a nine point lead (14 points under the three points for a win) at the top on 3^rd January but an eleven-game run without a win saw the chasing pack catch them. In a fraught end to the season City managed to put together a run of eight games with only one defeat to snatch the title on the final day of the season.

Rich Overson posed an interesting question after the Stoke victory: When were City last in the top six and defeated another top six side away from home (excluding play-off wins). After quite a bit of research I discovered it was back in January 1993 in the Premiership. City, under Bobby Gould and with Micky Quinn scoring for fun, were flying high and travelled to Blackburn for a midweek game in sixth place. Rovers were in fourth position and a 3-0 win or better would see them overtake Manchester United at the top. The Sky Blues upset the form book as well as BBC Radio 5 whose reporters had come to celebrate Blackburn going top, by inflicting a 5-2 defeat on Kenny Dalglish's Rovers. Mike Newell gave Rovers an early lead which was cancelled out by a David May own goal. Lee Hurst gave City a lead just before half-time and John Williams made it 3-1 soon after the break. Colin Hendry pulled one back on 71 minutes and for a while City were hanging on for dear life before Quinn scored twice in the final five minutes to seal the points.

Prior to that win in 1993 there had been away wins at Nottingham Forest in 1990 (4-2) and Norwich City in 1989 (2-1) when both City and their opponents were top six teams. The latter being the week after City's ignominious FA Cup defeat to Sutton United.