Coventry City - All You Need to Know/Can Learn in 5 Minutes
Posted On 27/11/2009 at at 22:10 by Alistair Kleebauer
Coventry City Team News
Coventry have a few problems at the back going into tomorrow's game. Centre-back Ben Turner is out with an ankle injury and left-back Marcus Hall misses out with a calf problem. Recent signing Sammy Clingan, a summer arrival from relegated Norwich, is also out with a broken toe. On a positive note for the away side, they can call on Isaac Osbourne who has recovered from a knee injury and Jordan Clarke returns following a ban.
Coventry City - A Potted History
How do you summarise Coventry City's history? That FA Cup win, countless last-day survival bids and Jimmy Hill would all be close to the fore of most people's minds.
City certainly started out as they meant to go in their first season of league football. In Division Two in 1919/20, they conspired to lose their opening game 5-0 at Tottenham, not win a game until Christmas and still stayed up on the last day of the season.
It took the arrival of the Golden Chin to elevate the club out of the lower divisions though. Much derided now as basically a bit of a prat, Hill was actually a bit of an innovator at Coventry. He changed the team's kit and nickname to 'The Sky Blues', came up with their anthem 'We All Sing Together' and most importantly, set about revolutionising the team on the pitch. He guided the club from Division Three to the top flight only to go and choose a career in television over management.
After battling to remain in the Premiership ever since its inception, the club succumbed to the inevitable in 2001 though and dropped to their current home in the Championship. As with a number of clubs who were previously used to Premiership football, they haven't looked particularly close to returning there for some time.
British Pathe Golden Moment
A trawl through the available footage of Coventry back in the day unearthed the 1920s version of hard-core pornography. In a video in which British Pathe cast aspersions on the whole city of Coventry by branding them all 'Peeping Toms', a faintly depressed looking Lady Godiva stand-in called Muriel Mellerup parades through the city naked on the back of the horse. http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=17163 - click here for some hot black and white action.
Highest Point
FA Cup finals have rarely been captivating occaisions in recent years, but if Coventry do nothing else, they
will still have played their part in one of the most memorable Cup finals ever (it got the nod from John Motson and he's been to a few).
Against a Spurs side who had won the cup twice in the previous six years, City somehow defied all expectations to land their one piece of silverware. And of course they didn't make it easy. They trailed to a Clive Allen goal after only two minutes, but twice pulled the game back in normal time, their second goal, a diving Keith Houchen header often regarded as one of the Cup final greats. In extra time, Gary Mabbutt's knee earned its place in the hearts of every Coventry fan by putting the ball into its own net.
Lowest Ebb
Getting relegated after 34 years is one thing. To do so at the home of local rivals Aston Villa adds a fair amount of salt to the wound. Not only that, but as the masters of escaping the drop, Coventry had their supporters tasting survival once again as they raced into a 2-0 lead at Villa Park. One of the golden boys of their late Premiership era, Mustapha Hadji scored two beauties within the first 25 minutes. But this time the Sky Blues ran out of luck. As results began to turn against them in other games, Villa went on the rampage as Darius Vassell, Juan Pablo Angel and Paul Merson ended one of the longest runs in the top flight.
The Grass Is Always Greener - Life as a Coventry Supporter
I didn't have to go too far to get the views of an away fan this week. Despite a love for the red half of North London which grows by the year, my brother has been a Coventry supporter ever since he first struck his eyes on the angelic face of Steve Ogrizovic. His words below sum up the experience of your average Sky Bluer:
Being a Coventry fan has cost me two things…money and pain. For what felt like eternity we proudly hung onto our Premier League status but ever since then have struggled badly. On the whole Cov fans are an extremely cynical bunch. With only one major honour in our history we are used to mediocrity, and expect little else. Since our relegation to the Championship these meagre expectations have fallen even further, with the prospect of administration and League One football rearing their ugly heads but still we survive.
Dropping down another division is viewed as the potential death of the club, but the manner in which bitter rivals Leicester (who have usurped Villa as our most hated team because we never play Villa anymore) have bounced back makes us wonder. Chris Coleman still has the backing of the fans, but with players struggling for form and Keiren Westwood, our star goalkeeper, allegedly leaving in January, Coleman has a tough job getting anything from a season that seems to be slipping through our fingers
Star Man
As mentioned above, if you're going to spend a lot of your time scrapping about at the bottom end of the Championship, you better have a decent goalie to lessen the burden. Now in his second season at the Ricoh Arena, Westwood has been close to ever-present since his arrival and is one of the few bright sparks in a team lacking in funds and genuine talents. At only 23 years of age, he's already been called up to the Republic of Ireland squad and is now supposedly fancied by a number of Premiership clubs. If he's on top form tomorrow, the Hoops will have to work extra hard for goals.
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