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Revision as of 14:13, 5 May 2006 by CambridgeBayWeather (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 212.135.1.185 (talk) to last version by 217.126.54.248)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Football club| Coventry City badge | |||
| Full name | Coventry City Football Club | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Sky Blues | ||
| Founded | 1883 | ||
| Ground | Ricoh Arena, Coventry | ||
| Capacity | 32,500 | ||
| Chairman | Geoffrey Robinson | ||
| Manager | Micky Adams (2005-) | ||
| League | The Championship | ||
| 2005-06 | Championship, 8th | ||
| |||
Coventry City Football Club, otherwise known as the Sky Blues due to the traditional colour of their strip (which itself is sky blue in honour of the sky blue cloth traditionally made in the city), are a football team based in Coventry, England. They currently play in the Football League Championship. They are currently managed by Micky Adams, who was appointed on January 21 2005 following the departure of Peter Reid.
History
Formation
When originally founded in 1883 by the employees of a sewing machine manufacturer, the club was known by the name of that company, Singers. Ten years later, the club turned professional after a very successful season (1891-92) in which three separate cups were won (The Birmingham Cup, The Wednesbury Cup and The Walsall Cup). Local businessman David Cooke (later to become an infamous chairman) produced a 'Three Cups Tobacco' to celibrate the event. In 1898, the club was renamed Coventry City just prior to a move to new playing fields on the site of Highfield Road, the stadium they called home for the next 106 years. The club became a registered Limited Company in 1907 recording a capital of £2,000 in 5-shilling shares.
Coventry City were originally known as 'the Bantams' (a nickname shared with Bradford City before adopting their sky blue identity in the early 1960's. Coventry were first called the Bantams in December 1908 after the local newspaper noted that they were one of the few clubs who did not have a nickname. Being the lightweights of the Southern League, the Bantams was suggested and stuck with the press and supporters. (They remained as the 'Bantams' until the summer of 1962 when Jimmy Hill re-christened them the 'Sky Blues' and the club switched to an all sky blue kit.)
Rising to the top....
The club was elected to Football League Division Two immediately after the first world war. In the first season they found themselves second-from-bottom with only two games to play, both of which were against Bury FC. Coventry narrowly avoided relegation, drawing 2-2 at Bury and winning 2-1 at home, consigning Lincoln FC to relegation from the league. However, three years later in March 1923, an FA investigation concluded that 'an arrangement was made between Bury and Coventry City, allowing the latter to win'. The Coventry City chairman David Cooke, along with ten other officials, received a life ban from football.
In the same season Coventry City went eleven games (equivalent to 997 minutes of football) without scoring a single goal, a feat which is believed to still be a league record. In contrast, in April 1934 Coventry recorded their largest ever league victory, 9-0 against Bristol City FC. This tally included five goals from cult City striker Clarrie Bourton, who still holds the record for the number of goals scored in one season (50).
The introduction of a new continental-style all sky blue kit (making Coventry the first team to play in matching shorts and shirts) and the new nickname the 'Sky Blues' in 1960 was the start of a revolution at Coventry City, aided by investment by new chairman Derek Robins. They had won promotion from the Fourth Division in 1959 and, basking in the success of England's legendary win the 1966 World Cup, finished the 1966-67 season as Division Two Champions, under the management of Jimmy Hill.
Hill's revolutionary touch saw him introduce special sky blue trains to away matches, pre-game and half-time entertainment (pre-dating Sky Television by almost 30 years), supplied young fans with soft drinks and snacks, and even penned the club's signature anthem "The Sky Blue Song" (sung to the tune of the Eton Boating Son]g). Jimmy himself, riding a white horse, could often be seen dodging the young men employed to serve hot bovril to the fans from insulated backpacks, around the edge of the pitch. Controversially, Jimmy Hill resigned from the club on the eve of the team's First Division debut to move into a career in television.
.... And staying there
Coventry retained their First Division status at the end of the 1967-68 season and would continue to defy the odds as the seasons passed, finishing between 6th and 19th in the top division and sometimes avoiding relegation on the last day of the season when all hope seemed gone.
In 1970 Coventry scored one of the most famous goals in the history of the game. In their home game against Everton FC, City were awarded a free-kick on the edge of the Toffee's penalty area. Willie Carr proceeded to grip the ball between his ankles before flicking it up into the air behind him for Ernie Hunt to volley it over a bewildered Everton wall and into the top corner. Though the 'Donkey kick' was allowed to stand, the F.A. banned the technique on the grounds that it constituted a 'double-touch' of the ball. Aside from changing the laws of the game, the goal also won the Match of the Day 'Goal of the Season' competition.
Jimmy Hill returned as Managing Director in 1974 and contunued to reform the game. In 1975 Derek Robins retired as chairman, emigrating to South Africa, to be replaced by Jimmy Hill. In 1981 he transformed Highfield Road into the country's first all-seater stadium under the slogan "You can't be a hooligan sitting down.". However, the idea backfired when away fans tore the seats out to use them as missiles. The stands were reinstated and Hill left the club again a few years later. The stadium also gained the first electronic scoreboard, flashing in scores from around the country.
Coventry City have a reputation for 'innovative' kit designs. The club's chocolate brown 'egg timer' away shirt of the late '70's regularly tops polls for the worst kit in football league history, a fact that has since given it cult status in the game. It still stands as the only brown shirt in English football history. The club re-issued replicas of the shirts in 2000 in response to increased interest in vintage shirts.
The 1981-1982 season saw the club banned from wearing their home shirts during televised games. Under advertising regulations, teams were not permitted to display sponsors names on their shirts (this ban was lifted for the 1983-84 season). Coventry had just announced the football league's first club sponsorship deal, and so to work around the ban Jimmy Hill tried to have the club renamed 'Coventry Talbot' to highlight the partnership with the locally-based car manafacturer. When this failed he commissioned a club home shirt onto which the Talbot 'T' symbol was boldly integrated into the design, which was promptly banned for televised games.
F.A Cup glory
In 1987 they won the FA Cup, beating Tottenham Hotspur 3-2 in the final after extra time, the score having been 2-2 after 90 minutes. (This also finally gave the lie to an old Monty Python routine, in which Coventry City's last FA Cup win is a trick question asked in a game show, as they hadn't won the Cup to that point). But they were denied their chance to play in the European Cup Winners' Cup (they did play in the Fairs Cup (later UEFA Cup), notably beating Bayern Munich (a team that included a young Franz Beckenbauer) at home 2-1, but losing on aggregate) because of the ban on English teams following the 1985 Heysel Disaster.
Key players in Coventry City's FA Cup winning team included goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic, defender and captain Brian Kilcline, midfielders Dave Bennett and Lloyd McGrath, and strikers Cyrille Regis and Keith Houchen, who scored the famous flying header. Their manager at the time was John Sillett. The following seasons' opening game, the Charity Shield against Everton, saw Sillett introduce his new signing David Speedie with the quote "For too long this club has shopped at Woolworth's, from now on we'll be shopping at Harrods." City lost 1-0. However, in 1988-89, he guided Coventry to the club's second best ever league finish of seventh place in the First Division - ahead of bigger and higher-spending clubs like Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Near misses
By 1990-91, however, Coventry's problems with league form returned and in November 1990 Sillett was sacked after five years in charge. He was replaced by Terry Butcher, the former England defender who was released from his contract with Rangers in a £350,000 deal. Butcher, aged 32, became player manager and at the time was the youngest manager employed in English league football. However, he was sacked in January 1992 after just over one year in charge. Don Howe took over as interim manager until the end of the season. His replacement was West Bromwich Albion's Bobby Gould, who in 1988 had led Wimbledon to a famous FA Cup final triumph over Liverpool.
Coventry narrowly avoided relegation at the end of the 1991-92 season in order to take their place in the inaugural Premier League.
Life in the Premiership
Coventry seemed set for at least a top-10 finish as they entered 1993 following the arrival of high scoring striker Micky Quinn, who ended the season as one of the Premiership's leading scorers with 17 goals. But a phase in late winter which had seen six games pass without a goal counted against Coventry's fortunes and they slipped to 15th in the final table. Micky Quinn was the jewel in the Coventry City side at this time, despite his slight overweight, Micky 'Ferenc Puskas' Quinn was an idol for millions of football fans all over the world.
Coventry had a decent start to the 1993-94 season but Gould handed in his resignation just before Christmas and his successor Phil Neal secured an 11th place finish. Neal was sacked the following February with Coventry battling relegation for the first time in three years. Phil Neale's demise at the club will always be somewhat partially linked to his appearance in the infamous Cutting Edge television documentary "Do I Not Like That?", which followed the England team's failure to qualify for the USA '94 World Cup. Neale was an assistant to Graham Taylor, the then England manager, and the astonishingly frank and often brutal documentary (cum-dark comedy) cast Taylor, Neale, and fellow assistant Laurie McMenemy, in a professionally unattractive light.
Ron Atkinson, who had achieved managerial success with West Bromwich Albion, Manchester United, Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa, was appointed as the new Coventry City manager in February 1995. He brought in Leeds United midfielder Gordon Strachan as his replacement, as well as drafting in Aston Villa midfielder Kevin Richardson as club captain. During the 1995-96 season City's Peter Ndlovu became the first visiting player in 33 years to score a hat-trick at Anfield. Atkinson steered Coventry to Premiership survival in 1995 and 1996 before he became Director of Football in November 1996.
After losing their penultimate game of the 1996-97 Premiership campaign, it looked as though Coventry's long spell in the top flight was at an end. But thanks to a win on the final day of the season, and both Middlesbrough and Sunderland losing, the Sky Blues pulled off probably the most remarkable survival act in the history of the Premiership. Their defeat in the penultimate game of the season would have relegated them had it not been for a 3-point deduction imposed on Middlesbrough for postponing a December fixture against Blackburn Rovers within the 24 hours leading up to kick off.
Strachan guided Coventry to 11th, 15th and 14th place finishes in the Premiership over the next three seasons. Their luck finally ran out on 5 May 2001 when a 3-2 defeat at Aston Villa ended their 34-year stay in the top flight.
Life outside the Premiership
A boardroom takeover just after the 2001-02 season began resulted in the dismissal of Gordon Strachan as manager by the club's new owners. He was replaced by 38-year-old Ronald Nilsson, who took on the role of player manager. Nilsson was sacked at the end of the season after failing to get Coventry into the playoffs. He was replaced by 37-year-old Gary McAllister, also a player-manager, who had been on the club's books from 1996 to 2000 before being transferred to Liverpool.
Midway through the 2002-03 season, McAllister's men still stood a good chance of making the Division One playoffs. But they won only one league game after the turn of 2003 and finished 20th in the final table - just two places above the drop zone. Their form in 2003-04 was slightly better but McAllister left halfway through the season to spend time with his terminally ill wife. Assistant manager Eric Black took temporary charge and kept the club well clear of the drop zone. Just before the end of the season, he was replaced by former Sunderland manager Peter Reid. This decision proved an unpopular one with the majority of CCFC fans. As a protest against the decision and gesture of support for Black, fans arranged to turn up to the final game of the season against Crystal Palace in black clothing.
Reid caused further anger when he worked in Portugal for the BBC during the summer of 2004, when many felt he should have been scouting and trying to improve the stretched playing squad.
Reid lasted just eight months before the club's dismal league form led to his departure and left the club looking in real danger of relegation to League One. The club's board replaced Reid with former Leicester manager Micky Adams.
Adams helped the Sky Blues stay clear of the Championship drop zone in their final season at Highfield Road before relocating to a new 32,500-seat stadium at Foleshill (later named the Ricoh Arena as part of a sponsorship deal).
In the 2005-6 season, Coventry City finished 8th in the Championship - good progress over last season's narrow escape from relegation. The next step for Micky Adams and his men will be a challenge for promotion to the Premiership. Adams has so far achieved three promotions in his management career (one each with Fulham, Brighton and Leicester) and will be looking to achieve the same success with the Sky Blues.
On January 13 2005, the club touched off a controversy when it announced that the traditional badge would be replaced with an updated, more modern version. Fan reaction was swift and negative, and under pressure from supporters' groups the club cancelled plans to change the crest.
Stadium
For the 2005-06 season, Coventry City finally moved to the new 32,500 capacity Coventry Arena after 106 years at their previous ground, Highfield Road. In 1998, Coventry City decided that it was time to relocate to a new stadium in the Foleshill area of the city. The original plan was for a 40,000-seater, multi-purpose stadium with removable pitch and closing roof. It was due to be ready for the 2001-02 season. However, finance problems led to construction delays and a re-design. Despite initiating the project and being the principle attraction, Coventry City's financial situation means that they no longer own the stadium and must pay rent to use it.
The stadium naming rights were originally sold to Jaguar Cars who have strong links with Coventry. Jaguar Cars pulled out of the project on December 16 2004 and a new major sponsor was needed. A £10 million deal, which included naming rights, was signed and Ricoh became the new chief sponsor for the stadium. The project was funded largely by Coventry City council, and includes shopping facilities, a casino, exhibition halls and a concert venue.
On Saturday, the 20th August 2005, City hosted Queens Park Rangers F.C. in the first-ever game at the Ricoh Arena. Construction delays at the ground, forced Coventry City to play their first three games of the season away and postpone their home game. Nevertheless, Coventry won the game 3-0, with the very first goal at the Ricoh Arena scored by Claus Jorgensen, with an 11th-minute diving header. Dele Adebola then added two more for the Sky Blues to cap off a stunning victory.
Coventry City began playing at the site of their previous stadium, Highfield Road, in 1899, although they didn't buy the freehold to the site until 1937. Their football ground has an interesting history. In 1940 it was bombed. In 1968, the main stand burnt down. In 1983, Highfield Road was converted into England's first ever all seater stadium with a capacity of just under 25,000. It has been gradually upgraded since then, with the final phase of work being completed in the mid 1990's. The final game played at the stadium was against Derby County F.C. on April 30 2005, Coventry won the game 6-2, with the final ever goal at Highfield Road being scored by the local-born youngster Andrew Whing. Other goals came from Stern John (a player for Trinidad and Tobago), Dele Adebola, and another Coventry born player and favourite son, Gary McSheffrey, who scored two of the goals. One of which was from a penalty given away by ex-City player Mo Konjic. This marked what was most certainly an end of an era for the club.
The Ricoh Arena's highest attendance at this current time is 28,120 for the game against Middlesbrough in the FA Cup on 28 January 2006 which ended in a 1-1 draw, Stern John scoring for Coventry to cancel out Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink's opener for the visitors. The highest league attendance is 26,851 for the game against Wolverhampton Wanderers on January 2 2006 in the Coca-Cola Championship which was won 2-0 thanks to goals from James Scowcroft and an Own-Goal from Joleon Lescott. The Highest score at the Ricoh Arena was against Derby County on 21 January 2006 in a 6-1 thrashing. Stern John and Gary McSheffrey both grabbed two goals, with Dele Adebola and Dennis Wise both adding a goal.
Current squad
As of December 15 2005.
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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Honours
Old division 2 winners
1966/1967
Old division 3 winners
1963/1964
Old division 4 Runners up
1958/1959
FA Cup winners
1986/1987
Charity Shield Runners Up
1987/1988
Famous players
See also List of Coventry City F.C. players
- Micky Adams (current manager)
- Stern John
- David Busst
- Dion Dublin
- John Hartson
- Stephen Hughes
- Tommy Hutchison
- Robbie Keane
- Gary McAllister
- Roland Nilsson
- Steve Ogrizovic
- Stuart Pearce
- Micky Quinn
- Cyrille Regis
- Kevin Richardson
- Steve Staunton
- Ian St. John
- Dennis Wise
- Terry Yorath
- Magnus Hedman
- Lloyd McGrath
- Cobi Jones
External links
- Official club website
- Blues in the News - A Coventry City Website
- Club statistics
- Ricoh Arena website
- GMK Online
- LAST!
- CCFCFans Forum
- Club history & news
- Announcement of the club's new badge from icCoventry.co.uk
- Fan reaction to the proposed new badge (icCoventry.co.uk)