Jim's column 9.3.2013

The seventh annual Coventry City Legends Day was a great success with 48 former players hosted by the Former Players Association at last weekend’s home game with Swindon Town. The bad result and poor performance didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the ex-Sky Blues and a great time was had by all. As usual there were emotional moments and this year’s was when Lol Harvey met former teammate Ronnie Waldock for the first time since 1954. The two grew up in the same town, Heanor in Derbyshire, but had not been in touch since Ronnie or ‘Polly’ as he was known, was sold to Sheffield United. After the match the traditional party took place in the G-Casino and included a moving rendition of Moon River from the legendary Ernie Hunt and a full-throated Sky Blue Song from all present. More information and pictures can be found at www.ccfpa.co.uk

On Saturday I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Sexton, son of the late Dave Sexton, City’s manager 1981-83. Chris spoke about his father’s ability to remember everything about games without taking notes. A young Chris used to go to matches with his Dad when Dave was scouting as part of the England set up. All around them scouts and journalists would be making notes but Dave just watched the match. When he returned home he could recall everything about the game and would write his report from memory.

Deputy Chairman John Clarke resignation from the football club board this week is sad. John has been a City fan since the 1960s and his passion for the club is undimmed. I would like to thank him for the staunch support he has given the Former Players Association. When the Association was formed in 2007 he wanted to be involved from the outset and became the Founding patron, every year raising money from the directors and Associate directors to support us. With the current state of affairs at the football club I am not surprised he is standing down. The impact on his family and working life over the last two years must have been enormous and he has always handled himself in a dignified manner despite some vitriolic abuse. 

Several fans have told me about goings on at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground on Tuesday night. Ex-City player Andy Morrell is manager at the Conference club and has surrounded himself with a bevy of ex-Sky Blues. On Tuesday five ex-City men played in the 4-1 victory over Ebbsfleet which keeps their promotion campaign on track and three of them scored. Dele Adebola, on loan from Rochdale, netted after three minutes with Kevin Thornton scoring the third after half an hour. With the referee about to blow for half-time Robert Ogleby, a former City youth player, made it 4-0. Stephen Wright also played and Morrell himself came on as a substitute in the second half.  The common question was have three-ex-City players ever scored for another team. The answer is yes, back in the 1930s. There were strong links between City and Walsall and in 1932 City director Bill Slade left the club to become manager of Walsall. He signed several City players to add to a couple they already had and for a couple of seasons there were regularly 6-7 ex-City men in the Saddlers Third Division North team. In 1933 Walsall pulled off one of the biggest Cup shocks of alltime, beating Arsenal at Fellows Park. The Walsall team wore City’s blue and white shirts that day and the whole forward line were ex-City players with two, Gilbert Alsop and Bill Sheppard scoring the goals in the 2-0 victory.  There were numerous occasions when three ex-City men notched goals for the Saddlers and I found one game, a 5-3 win over Tranmere in 1934 when four scored goals (Alsop, Sheppard, Freddie Lee and Reuben Woolhouse).

Talking of Dele Adebola, I learned this week that he holds the record for the most substitute appearances in a career. Up to this week he has made 196 league appearances as a substitute plus a further 30 in Cup games. Wrexham is the 13^th club of his career which started at Crewe back in 1993. 48 of those sub appearances were whilst he was at Coventry.

Coventry City’s turnover of players has not been extraordinary (34 players used to date and the record is 44) but in the last three league games I think some kind of record was set. Of the 10 outfield players in all three games, none of them had appeared in the first game of the season at Yeovil in August. Of the ten who played at Yeovil, three have left the club (Kilbane, Hussey and Brown), three were on the bench (McDonald, Clarke & Fleck), one (Wood) is injured, one (Daniels) has not been heard of for some time and two (Barton & Ball) may be in line for a recall soon. Goalkeeper Joe Murphy, of course, has been Mr Consistency, an ever-present in the league and missing in all but a game and a half in Cup games, the half being that suicidal second half against Crewe in the JPT.

Jim's Column 2.3.2013

It's Legends Day at the Ricoh Arena again today and whilst preparing to write this week’s column I looked back two years to see what I said about Legends Day 2011. Then it coincided with a new board at the football club and I wrote the following:

The faces in the boardroom are mostly new but the owner, SISU, is unchanged and little was said to reassure the long-suffering fans that much will change. SISU have had three years to progress the stadium ownership issue and have achieved little. Before SISU, Paul Fletcher, easily the best Chief Executive in the modern era in my opinion, resigned in frustration at the lack of progress with the owners of the stadium (and too much tinkering from a chairman who thought he knew best). In the three years since SISU saved the club in the last crisis there has been little or no progress on the playing side. On Wednesday the new chairman (Ken Dulieu) got off to a bad start when his assertion that a meeting was planned with the council was exposed as a myth by council leader John Mutton.

One way forward may be for all the parties (including the politicians) to get off their high horses, stop posturing and sit down together and thrash out a solution that benefits the football club’s supporters and the city of Coventry. Until that happens our football club will just stagger from this disaster to the next.

Sadly I could have written virtually the same piece today as the stadium issue (and it's not just about rent) rumbles on unresolved. None of the parties in this whole sordid soap-opera is blameless but having rejected the Manhattan Capital Partners and Paul Fletcher in 2007 and SISU subsequently, I just wonder who Coventry Council and the Higgs Trust would do business with. When one scans the owners of Premiership and Football League sides I struggle to find many who would surely satisfy the council's criteria. In the intervening two years the club's on-field fortunes have slipped and no prospective owner would countenance buying the club without the stadium issue removed as the club is financially unsustainable in its present state. Unless of course a Russian or Arab oligarch is prepared to bank roll the club - but would the council deal with them?

Back to something far more important today - the seventh annual Legends Day, organised by the Former Players Association, with around 50 former players planning to attend. All eras are well represented especially the 1970s with some of the great names from that decade including Colin Stein, Tommy Hutchison, Roy Barry, Willie Carr and Ernie Hunt amongst others. The traditional half-time parade will take place so I urge you to be in your seats to give these great servants of the club a rousing reception that befits their status. After the game the legends will be in The G-Casino to meet the fans and have some fun on stage. It promises to be another great day. I am not too modest to say that in the six years since the inaugural Legends Day the Former Players Association have achieved all that it set out to. That was to bring the former

 players and managers back to the club to meet their old colleagues and ensure their place in the club’s history was properly recognised.  To all my fellow committee members and all the friends who give their time to help us at our events, a massive thank you.

Tuesday night's victory at Bournemouth (the first league win there since 1957) was the 10th away win of the season and equalled the record set by Noel Cantwell's team in 1969-70.  With three away wins in Cup competitions (Dagenham & Redbridge, York & Crewe) City's travelling army have had much more to shout about than last season when only one away win was achieved all season.  My away following records only go back to 2006 but this season’s league average is currently 1,153 which is the best since my records begin. Last season an average of 918 followed the team so that is a 25% increase, in a lower division. One wonders if the home gates would have seen a similar increase if the home form had been as impressive.

Southampton’s central defender Aaron Martin arrived on loan this week and made his debut at Bournemouth. By all accounts it was an impressive debut by the 23-year old. Aaron becomes the tenth loanee used by the Sky Blues this season. This is just one short of the club’s highest number, 11 used in 2002-03. For me that was the worst season I have ever witnessed as a fan and the quality of the loanees was generally poor. For the record the magnificent eleven were:

Steve Walsh, Gary Caldwell, Richie Partridge, Brian Kerr,  Craig Hignett, Jamie McMaster, Dean Holdsworth, Juan Sara, Vicente Engonga, Christian Yulu, Matt Jansen.

My views on loan players was previously tainted by the poor quality of players acquired in the early seasons out of the Premiership but this season the quality has generally been far superior than in previous campaigns and players like Bailey, McGoldrick and Leon Clarke have turned our season around.

Jim's column 23.2.2013

In last week's column I wrote about Mark Robins' record as a manager and it generated a lot of interest with many surprised that his win percentage was higher than Jimmy Hill. I mentioned the managerial reign of Jesse Carver, the last City boss to be lured away to another club and fellow Sky Blue historian Paul O'Connor pointed out that Carver & Robins league records are remarkably similar.

 The two records are:

	PL	W	D	L	FOR	AGST	PTS	PTS per GAME	%WINS
Carver	26	14	4	8	47	31	46	1.769	53.85
Robins	25	13	5	7	45	27	44	1.760	52.00

Paul points out that it’s not a fair comparison but if managers since 1919 are compared on points per game assuming 3 points for a win, they have the two best records of any manager (apart from Lee Carsley!). Carver actually had a higher percentage of wins than Robins. Paul also pointed out that Harry Storer, Jack Fairbrother, Eric Black and Roland Nilsson all had a higher wins percentage than Jimmy Hill. It is worth noting too that Carver’s record was based on a strong home record (12 wins, 2 draws and 0 defeats) as opposed to Robins’ poor home record but strong away record.

City's interest in  the Johnstone's Paint Trophy ended on a cold night in Cheshire as City failed to do themselves justice until the referees watch ticked past the 90 minute mark and a good number of their fans, including me, had left the Gresty Road stadium. BBC CWR had poor Dan ringing in without knowing the final score and he argued till he was blue in the face that the game had ended 0-0. I was 20 minutes down the M6 when I managed to pick up CWR and learned that I had missed the late goals. This is not going to be Coventry's year for a trip to the final at Wembley and our hopes now rely on finishing the league season with a strong vein of form to reach the automatic promotion places or more realistically the play- off positions. Their rivals have been catching up with their games in hand and as far as City fans are concerned, with mixed results. Swindon shook off the departure of Paulo Di Canio and won well at Tranmere, who seem to have hit the wall. Whilst Bournemouth slipped up badly at Preston, Yeovil's outstanding form has lifted them into the top six. As of this morning two points separate the top six and with Seventh-placed Brentford a further two points behind and the Sky Blues four points behind the Bees.

Today four of the top six meet each other with Sheffield United travelling to Bournemouth and Doncaster entertaining Yeovil. After today's home game with Crewe the Sky Blues have two massive games with a trip to Bournemouth's Dean Court on Tuesday night followed by a home cracker with current leaders Swindon Town. With 13 games left the Sky blues probably need 27 points (9 wins) to finish in the top six. Any defeats in the next three games could signal the end of City's play-off push.

City travel to Dean Court for a league game for the first time since the 1963-64 promotion season when they slipped up 1-2 to the Cherries and their only win in 11 league games there since the war was in April 1957. They did travel there for a League cup tie in 1988 when John Sillett's team comfortably won 4-0 on the way to a 7-1 aggregate win. Since then the ground at Dean Court has been transformed with the pitch being rotated 90 degrees and all the stands being rebuilt. After last week's ninth away win at Bury City are now on the brink of equalling the club record of 10 wins on the road set in 1969-70.

Swindon are another side who haven't played the Sky Blues for many years until this season. They did have one season in the Premier League in 1993-94 but before that City and Swindon hadn't met in league action since 1964-65 when the Robins were relegated from Division Two.

Next Saturday's game is also the annual Legends Day at the Ricoh, the seventh year running the event that brings City's former players together has been held. I hate to tempt fate but the Sky Blues have never lost on the six previous Legends Days. Around 50 former players are expected to be entertained to lunch by the Former Players Association and will be presented to the fans in the traditional half-time parade. Several attendees will be making their first appearance at a Legends Day including former player and manager Bobby Gould, Kevin Gallacher, Gerry Baker and a veteran from the 1950s, Ronnie Waldock. After the game tHe day ends in the traditional way with appearances on the stage at the G Casino. It should be a great day.