News Archive

CITY DUO IN PFA TEAM OF THE SEASON

Two Coventry City players have been named in the PFA Championship team of the season!

Goalkeeper Keiren Westwood and left-back Danny Fox have been voted the best in the division in their respective positions by their peers, the first time that the Sky Blues have had any players win such an accolade.

To further put this into perspective: Champions Wolves had three players in the team, and play-off contenders Cardiff and Swansea had two each, with one player apiece from automatic promotion hopefuls Reading and Sheffield United. So, every other player in the XI came from a team guaranteed to finish in the top eight.

It's an impressive achievement for the individuals, and given that Aron Gunnarsson was probably not too far away in the reckoning either, just makes it even more of a mystery that we have done so poorly overall this season. Are all the other players really that poor?!?

On the downside, the awards will further raise the profile of these two excellent players, and they will undoubtedly attract attention from Premiership clubs in the Summer, but that's football.

If, and it's a big If, we can hold on to guys like Westwood and Fox through the next transfer window, and add another couple of lower-league gems to our squad, we might just be in a position to challenge next season, but it's a tall order.

The thin times are continuing for Coventry supporters, and the fact that we've been technically safe for a couple of games can only paper over the cracks.

Watford came from two goals down to beat us today - something we haven't done in the league for over 20 years. They've now done the double over us, despite being a mediocre team, just as Plymouth did. It's a shambles. Our defence capitulates with alarming frequency, and we don't have anyone capable of scoring enough goals to turn a game around.

Our final game of the season is at Ipswich, where we always lose, and where Roy Keane has just taken over as manager, so we'll almost certainly lose there too, and that'll mean that we finish the season with one point more than we managed last season.

Yep, just one measly stinking point.

So, apparently Coleman is one of the brightest young managers outside the Premiership. And Westwood is one of the best keepers outside the Premiership. And Gunnarsson and Fox ditto ditto blah blah...

And yet, for all this wealth of talent, we are, just one point better than we were last season!

At this rate of improvement, we can look forward to achieving enough points to make the play-offs in about 2030.

HALL OF FAME!

It's a shame we capitulated defensively today, but nonetheless... Congratulations to Marcus Hall on notching up 300 appearances for the club.

It's quite an achievement in this day and age to make so many appearances for one club, particularly a hometown club, and Marcus is a Coventry kid through and through.

In his two spells with us over the last 14 years since he made his debut, he has shown committment and leadership. And indeed versatility. He might be a left-back, but under various managers, he has played in central defence, right-back, and in his younger days as a left-winger and holding midfielder too!

Marcus is likely to continue with us next season, having been offered a contract extension, and will play in a testimonial match at the Ricoh Arena ahead of the start of the new campaign.

A controversi and dramatic end to the game, and Barnsley supporters might not be very happy, but we've been waiting months for that penalty award, and the point means we've finally surpassed last season's tally - with a mere two games remaining!

It's not very often that we score a last minute decider either, and over the last few years we've suffered this kind of thing against us way more often than we've benefitted from it.

Barnsley have been good to us over the years, and we should be rooting for them to stay up, and for Plymouth to go down, which would be to our long-term benefit.

SAFE.

Ipswich's 3-2 victory over Norwich in today's East Anglian derby means we are mathematically safe from relegation.

Norwich are third from bottom, seven points behind us, and have only two games left, so we will definitely be playing Championship football next season.

So, relief all round then, and three games earlier than last season, but that cannot excuse the lack of progress we've made.

Another defeat to a struggling side, and another day goes by when we could have secured safety but didn't.

Barnsley and Watford at home, then Ipswich away. If we lose all these games, not only is there a slight possibility we might be relegated, but we'll have made absolutely no progress from last season in numerical terms.

The end of season games are stereotypically meaningless, but the team could effectively be playing for Coleman's job, because if we end up in 21st place again with 53 points, it's hard to see Ray Ranson being happy with that.

Elsewhere, things are starting to take shape, and we much congratulate Wolves who have clinched automatic promotion - almost certainly as Champions.

But while we're losing one local rival, we'll gain another, because Leicester are now confirmed as Champions of League One, but we'll be saying goodbye to Charlton whose long-expected relegation was confirmed today.

We're still not completely safe, Charlton still aren't completely relegated, and it's another typical day at the office.

It says a lot about our situation in recent years that drawing at home against the bottom club in the division comes as no surprise.

It's a fact that we've been held at home by a team that has gone down at least once every season in the last decade.

We've reached 53 points, matching last season's total with four games still to play, but we might not get that many more.

Oh dear.

It's one thing not doing well against Plymouth, but conceding four goals to a team struggling at the wrong end of the table is cause for significant concern.

What the hell happened today? The exact same team that should have won at Palace just days earlier capitulated utterly, making mistake after mistake.

There are no excuses for days like this, and with bottom club Charlton visiting the Ricoh in two days time, we'd best get ready for more ritual humiliation this Eastertide.

HENDERSON DEPARTS

Loan signing Jordan Henderson has returned to parent club Sunderland, following a diagnoses that he will miss he remainder of the season with a metatarsal injury sustained in our game against Reading last weekend.

Henderson had been an impressive figure on the right side of midfield during his spell with us, and is a player we could well try to sign permanently in the Summer, especially if Sunderland are relegated from the Premiership.

Stephen Wright could also miss the run-in, while Leon McKenzie might not return from injury before the end of the season either.

So, with players missing, the final six games could be an opportunity for Chris Coleman to blood some youngsters.

The Palace hoodoo pretty much continues, as we're pegged back in a game we really should have won, and concede a goal to an unknown player on his debut, not for the first time.

But it's nice to see Gunnarsson on the scoresheet, even if he probably should have had a hat-trick, and it's nice to be able to relax and enjoy the end of the season, knowing that we really don't have anything to play for in the next few games.

Over Easter, we face two of the Championships relegation-threatened sides - Plymouth away on Saturday, and Charlton at home on Monday, and it would be nice if we could remain unbeaten against these sides, though they have a lot more at stake than us.

Things it would be nice to see in the next few games:

• Morrison finding his form in front of goal again.
• Eastwood actually scoring a goal, for fucks sake. Likewise Simpson. And probably Turner too. And Beuzelin.
• Our defence keeping a clean sheet in an away game.
• Getting awarded a long-overdue penalty.

Could be wishful thinking though, eh?

A draw is a fair result from a pretty poor game, and for Reading, time is running out as far as automatic promotion is concerned, while we can go into our final seven games feeling pretty confident of safety, after defeats for several teams near the bottom of the table who have played more games than us.

Unless something disastrous happens in the run-in, we should easily surpass last season's tally of 53 points, which will be a measure of the improvement under Chris Coleman, though maybe not as big an improvement as we might have hoped for, given the undoubted talent of several of our players.

On Tuesday night we travel to Crystal Palace - a team who have been something of a béte noire for us in recent seasons. A win there, and we can really start to relax and enjoy the remainder of the season.

SKY BLUES FINISH FIRST IN CHAMPIONSHIP...

...the Championship's 'Best Matchday Programme' Award, that is. (Mathematically we can't now catch leaders Wolves in the league, and could only finish second!)

Our £3 Programme is, admittedly a decent read, and presumably wins the award because it's not full of the outdated and recycled rubbish that some of the other sides in the division publish, where you can read that Kevin Thornton is a striker who features regularly in our first team...

CITY FANS PLANNING ACTION OVER TEVEZ

London-based Sky Blues fans are being advised to launch compensation claims against West Ham Utd, over the Carlos Tevez affair.

Following legal action against the Hammers by Sheffield United and their former manager Neil Warnock, supporters in London have been told they have a 'very good case' for compensation due to the increased travel costs of attending a game at Brammall Lane after the relegation of United, compared to a trip to Upton Park

Any supporters who attended Sheffield United vs Coventry last season can claim the difference in cost compared to attending a game against West Ham, and can expect to receive payments of up to £41 per person.

INTERNATIONAL ROUND-UP

Aron Gunnarsson travelled to Scotland this week, and started Iceland's 2-1 defeat to the Tartan Army in World Cup qualifying tonight, before being withdrawn after an hour of play.

Elsewhere, Keiren Westwood was in the Republic of Ireland squad, for their pair of 1-1 draws at home to Bulgaria and away at Italy, but the keeper is yet to make his debut for his country,