Some fascinating stats

It's been a fascinating few weeks on and off the field and I thought it would be useful to recap on some of the interesting stats that been cropped up in recent weeks. Let's look at the recent games that the Sky Blues have been involved in.

Preston (away): another defeat at Deepdale, City's unhappiest away ground. The 1-0 defeat, unlucky I would argue, extended the Sky Blues run without a league win there to 23 games. Eight draws and 15 defeats since the first meeting in 1949. It's also 22 league games at any venue since the Sky Blues lowered Proud Preston's flag – Dele Adebola and Michael Doyle the scorers in a 2-1 win at the Ricoh Arena in 2007.

QPR (away): In the 113^th league meeting against the Londoners (City have not met any club more) City came away with a draw. They have won more away games at QPR than any other opponent (17) but failed to make it a hat-trick after the last two comprehensive victories.

Luton (home): Despite a good first half performance the Sky Blues trailed 0-2 at the break. Then, with a stunning comeback, they turned the game on its head with three second half goals to break a poor run against the Hatters. It had been 10 games, including the play-off final two years ago, since City had beaten the Bedfordshire club. The last victory was the 3-0 at Kenilworth Road in League Two in 2017 when Mark McNulty, Jordan Shipley and Duckens Nazon scored, the latter two in injury time. Up until 2007 City's home record against Luton had traditionally been very good (only two losses in 32 games) but since the 1-0 win in 2007 Luton had not been beaten in five visits (three draws and two losses). Coventry comebacks from a two-goal deficit are rare (only 10 in the last 54 years).

Sunderland (away): Another comeback, this time from 0-2 to draw. This was the fourth time in four seasons (five if you count the FA Cup semi final) that the Sky Blues have achieved this feat the others being Blackburn (away) and Bournemouth (away) in 2021-22 and Watford (home) in 2022-23. The result extended the Sky Blues excellent record against Sunderland to nine unbeaten and five unbeaten at the Stadium of Light. The last time City lost to Sunderland was in February 2007 when Roy Keane was in charge of the Black Cats and goals from Dwight Yorke and Carlos Edwards gave them a 2-0 win. City haven't lost at home to Sunderland in 12 home games stretching back to 1985 in the old First Division. The attendance at the Stadium of Light was 43,374 was the largest league crowd to watch the Sky Blues since they left the Premiership 23 years ago, topping the 41,216 that watched the Sky Blues 3-0 win last season.

Jim's column 20.4.2019

Saturday’s amazing 5-4 victory at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light was a gift for me in more ways than one. It generated a good number of statistical facts as well as giving me a very warm glow that will last for some weeks. I didn’t go to the North East but did watch the game on ifollow and could barely believe the drama being played out 200 miles away. In my opinion it was one of their finest away performances since they left the Premiership and I'm not going to apologise for concentrating on the game this week.
5-4 is a very rare scoreline and prior to Saturday City had only been on the winning side of this score on five occasions, all at home:
1962-63 v Halifax Town

(George Hudson’s hat-trick debut)

1964-65 v Newcastle United

(City hanging on after leading 5-1)

1977-78 v Norwich City

(Ian Wallace’s overhead kick, Graydon’s late winner before Jim Blyth saved a penalty which would have made it 5-5)

1990-91 v Nottingham Forest

(A League Cup thriller with City 4-0 ahead only to be pegged back to 4-4 before Livingstone’s winner)

2013-14 v Bristol City

(First game at Sixfields. City pegged back after leading 3-0 before Billy Daniels grabbed the winner)

The win was City's first ever 5-4 victory away from home. There have been only 74 occurrences of a 5-4 away win in League history, the last in 2017 when Fulham won 5-4 at Bramall Lane.

It was the first League defeat Sunderland had suffered since before Christmas and their first home defeat of the season. On top of that it was the first time that the club had conceded five in a home game since 1981 when on Bryan Robson’s debut Manchester United had won 5-1 with a young Nick Pickering in the Black Cats team.
The other record was that it was the first time in a Coventry City game where there were nine different scorers, equalling a Football League record. It has been done on forty or so previous occasions but never in a Sky Blues game. Our record was eight which happened in 1950 in a 5-4 defeat at Southampton and in the aforementioned Norwich game in 1977. That day City’s scorers were Barry Powell, Ian Wallace, Ray Golding, Bobby McDonald and Ray Graydon with John Ryan, Kevin Reeves (2) and Martin Peters for the Canaries. The last time five different City players scored in a game was quite recent - in 2016 in the 6-0 over Bury when Stokes, Cargill, Maddison, Fleck and Armstrong (2) were on target.
The crowd at the Stadium of Light was 36,134 and the second highest league crowd that the Sky Blues have played in front of since they were relegated from the Premier League in 2001, topped only by the 39,334 at St James’s Park, Newcastle in 2010 to see the Magpies win 4-1.
The victory was only City’s second at Sunderland in 19 visits, stretching back to an FA Cup tie in 1951. The only other win was in January 1977 when a Donal Murphy goal gave City the points on a treacherous icy pitch. City’s five goal haul was one more than the total they’d scored in those 18 previous encounters.
City have now won nine away games,equalling last season’s total and the the third highest in the club’s history. The record, set in Mark Robins’ previous spell as manager 2012-13, is 11, with the 1969-70 haul of ten under Noel Cantwell a close second. Mark Robins’ away record as City manager is phenomenal- he has 26 wins from 60 matches, 43% win ratio. This is easily the best of any City manager in history and Jimmy Hill’s away win ratio was a measly 27%.

I was sad to hear of the death of 1950s Coventry winger Colin Collindridge, who at 98 was the oldest living former City player. I will write more about him next week.