Putting all of the stuff which goes with a game against Swansea to one side for a while, it really was a match where defeat would have left us in a terrible position considering who we play in the two matches which followed it. Coventry, beaten Play Off finalists back in May, sold their best two players in the summer, but then spent £26 million of what they received on rebuilding their squad.
Coventry come to Cardiff City Stadium tonight just one place above us and with the same number of points, but I think they’ll show in the weeks to come that they are better than their current fourteenth placing indicates. Like us, Coventry suffered an unlucky 2-1 defeat at Leicester, but they followed that up with a 3-0 victory over Middlesbrough and have then drawn their last four games – I reckon they’ll become a top ten side at least and, as such, we’ll be doing very well if we can follow up Saturday’s win with another one tonight.
Add on the weekend trip to a Sunderland side that has scored eight times in winning their last two games and our away league fixtures show little sign of getting any easier – if we can have made it to ten points by the time we’ve played Sunderland on Sunday, I’ll be more than happy.
Here’s the normal seven questions about our upcoming opponents, I’ll post the answers on here tomorrow morning.
60s. Don’t know about this forty eight times capped utility player’s politics, but he was very much a man of the left on a football pitch. Blue was his colour for all but the very early stages of his club career in the UK. Signed by Coventry as an eighteen year old after an apprenticeship in a pack, he was soon given a debut by Jimmy Hill and repaid his manager’s faith with a goal. The next seven years saw him become a regular in the Sky Blues’ first team and it was a surprise when he was deemed to be surplus to requirements at the club. He dropped down a division to play for a Yorkshire club in decline, but his form was good and it wasn’t really a shock when he returned to the First Division after two years . It could be said that he had joined another team on the wane, but they stabilised during his three years with them and he became club captain for a season before moving on to spend the rest of his career in the USA. On the managerial front, he began with a very notable player/manager job and the fact he spent the rest of his time as a boss in charge of teams with names like Caribous, Avalanche and Steamers tells you that the large majority of a twenty year managerial career was spent in the USA. who am I describing?
70s. A winger with an eye for goal, he started out playing for a club in the city of his birth that would spend time living up to their name in the decades after he left them. On the face of it, his transfer in 1971 looked like a downward step as he was going to a team in a lower division , but there was no doubt he had joined a bigger club. This was proved over the next few years as his team earned two promotions (he scored a winning goal at Ninian Park along the way) and Cup triumphs which included what must have been his career highlight. Coventry were his next club and, although he didn’t stay with them too long, he was part of a bright, attacking team that dispelled the notion that Coventry spent most of the seventies trying to preserve their First Division status. He moved on to America after a year, but there was a return to Britain to play in yellow at Headington and then manage in the midlands and at his first club. Who is he?
80s. Midfielder with a biscuit loving bear adversary?
90s. Blown allied forces away I reckon. (6.6)
00s. He’s just endured an awkward, if lucrative, summer and scored his first senior goal while playing for Coventry during this decade, who?
10s. Two players who played against Coventry for us in this decade to identify, one was born in Mountain Ash and was last known to be playing for the Saints at St. James’ Park, the other is from Enfield and his current location could be said to be Melbourne after previously representing clubs based at Champion Hill and Princes Park.
20s. Cardiff and Coventry are two of what I make fifteen clubs this Derby born player has been contracted to over a twenty year career. His last club according to Wikipedia was Wrexham – who is he and what common element does his time at Cardiff and Coventry have?
Answers:
60.s Dave Clements won nearly fifty caps for Northern Ireland and was appointed player/manager of his country at the age of just thirty. Wolves were his first club, but his senior debut came as a Coventry player when he scored in a 2-1 win over Northampton. Clements was transferred to Sheffield Wednesday in 1971 and his good form in a poor team saw him move on to Everton two years later.
70s. Ray Graydon started off at Bristol Rovers before moving to Aston Villa for £50,000. Villa climbed from Third Division to First during Graydon’s time at the club and in 1975 he scored the only goal of the League Cup Final after he followed up to net after Norwich goalkeeper Kevin Keelan had pushed his penalty onto a post. Graydon spent the 77/78 season with Coventry and, after a summer playing for the Washington Diplomats, saw out his playing career at Oxford United before becoming a successful manager of Walsall and a less successful one at Bristol Rovers.
80s. Andy Williams was a midfielder who played nearly three hundred matches in a long career. Williams played mostly for Rotherham and Leeds, but played a few First Division matches for Coventry at the beginning of his career. He shared his name with an American singer who had a long running TV series in the sixties and seventies in which there was a long running joke about a bear which was always raiding the family cookie jar.
90s. Willie Boland.
00s. Jordan Henderson’s decision to move to Saudi Arabia a few months ago has attracted a lot of comment and it all seems an awful long way away from when he scored his first ever goal as a nineteen year old while on loan to Coventry from Sunderland in 2009.
10s. Tommy O’Sullivan came on as a sub in City’s 2-1 win over Coventry in the League Cup in 2014 – he currently plays for Brackley Town. Jazzi Barnum Bobb started the game, which was played at Northampton Town’s ground, and is currently playing for Chelmsford City (home ground Melbourne Stadium), having previously represented Dulwich Hamlet and Dartford.
20s. Lee Camp was at City during 17/18 and had a couple of months at Coventry during 20/21, he never played a first team game for either club.