The Good, the bad and the ugly of the 2010/11 Coventry City season.
The season opened to the usual feeling of optimism even if the Coventry City support was split over the appointment of Aidy Boothroyd as the new manager following the dismissal of Chris Coleman at the conclusion of the 2009/10 season.
Boothroyd immediately went into the transfer market and brought some new faces to The Ricoh. He signed eight players, some more welcomed by the City support than others. Two of the more welcome were both Coventry old boys, Gary McSheffrey and Lee Carsley, both of whom rejoined City from Birmingham. Some of the signings raised a few eyebrows, those of 33 year old Clive Platt from Colchester, Boothroyd's previous club and Richard Keogh, a virtual unknown from Carlisle to name but two. Other Boothroyd signings were Stephen O'Halloran, Roy O'Donovan, Lukas Jutkiewicz and of course Marlon King.
On the whole, most of the signings have proved to have been good ones. Some took time to settle in, but with one or two exceptions they have been well received by the City faithful. King's goal scoring has endeared him to the fans and Richard Keogh has proved that there are some very good players in the lower leagues that can make the transition to the Championship. He has gone on to be the only Coventry player to have played every minute of every league game for the club this season.
Clive Platt has had a mixed reception and as a striker he has not scored too many goals, but he can't usually be faulted for his work rate and has provided more assists than goals. Many fans saw Platt as a target man brought in by Boothroyd to get on the end of a long ball, but there is a lot more to his game than just that one dimension and he proved to be an very good team player.
One of the biggest revelations on the playing field has been Ben Turner. At one time he was the leading goal scorer and he was a solid rock at the heart of a very mean defence, but a serious knee injury sustained in November kept him out for the rest of the season. It cannot be just a coincidence that the slump began when Turner was injured. Another influential player that missed too many games because of injury was James McPake and the side will benefit from his presence next season.
Gary 'Pit bull' Deegan missed virtually the whole season with injury. He suffered a stress fracture in is ankle and then further damaged it by trying to return to action too soon. His return to the side next season will be like having a new player on the books.
The season opened with a home game against Portsmouth who had been relegated from the premier League the previous season and for no better reason than that, they were touted by many pundits to be one of the promotion contenders. In front of nearly a 19,000 crowd, a 2-0 home win for City soon put paid to that speculation, but as we have seen in the past, Coventry City often start the season well only to fail at some point during the long season.
From the start of the season there was intense speculation surrounding Marlon King and whether he would be offered a way back into football by his former manager Boothroyd following his release from prison after being convicted for sexual assault. The controversy surrounding the possibility of signing King split the Coventry support right down the middle. The situation was not helped at all by the protracted negotiations and press speculation that seemed to go on and on and on.
Eventually King did sign, but he failed to make an impact. In reality he was unfit and not ready for competitive football, but Boothroyd persevered and he eventually started to improve and score goals. The way in which Boothroyd, the club and King managed the situation helped to win over the sceptics and King eventually became a fans favourite, especially when he started to score more often.
For the second game of the season Coventry travelled to Morecambe for the first round of The Carling Cup. For some rather strange reason, the powers that be decreed that the Carling Cup first Round should be played during a week of international games which meant many Championship clubs had to play without their international players.
Coventry City's new boss Boothroyd was unconcerned with losing his better players to international duty as he fielded an understrength Sky Blues side for the first game at Morecambe's new Globe Arena ground. With the absence of first choice goal keeper Kieren Westwood to international duty, Colin Doyle was brought in on emergency loan from Birmingham City and a club record was broken when 16 year old Johnson Clarke-Harris became the youngest ever player to play senior football for Coventry City when he came on as a second half substitute for David Bell.
Coventry lost the game 2-0 and Boothroyd had done little to win over the fans still sceptical about his appointment, but he had the opportunity to redeem himself in the next game when he took his side to one of his former clubs Watford, a side he guided to promotion to the Premier league.
Once again, City had an on loan goal keeper, this time Iain Turner from Everton, but a family bereavement that meant Westwood was once again unavailable. The game didn't get off to the best of starts for City when they lost their temporary goal keeper to a head injury in the 18th minute. Up stepped 18 year old Coventry Academy graduate Michael Quirke and he was soon called into action when he pulled off a blinding save. He was caught out though well into stoppage time in the first half when he failed to deal with a deep cross and City went into the break 1-0 down.
Watford scored again early in the second half, though a City old boy John Eustace goal. Boothroyd reacted with substitutions and that seemed to spur them on, but with three minutes left on the clock, City were still 2-0 down. Then drama! Substitute Platt nodded down a cross for Bell to fire home a pile driver of a shot to make it 2-1. In second half stoppage time City won a penalty when Keogh was pushed over and Jutkiewicz slotted home the spot kick to make it 2-2.
The result gave hope to the City support that finally their team might have some fighting spirit and would keep going to the end.
Then came another home win, this time 2-1 over Derby, followed by the first league defeat of the season at Millwall and their first red card when Carl Baker was sent off for two bookable offences midway through the second half.
City had begun to get an unwarranted reputation as a hard, physical side which became a double edged sword with some sides appearing to approach their games with Coventry with some trepidation, while others took advantage of the physical nature of the Coventry defence to influence match officials.
By October a pattern was emerging and it was not at all encouraging. Attendances were fluctuating with home games ranging from over 20,000 for the visit of near neighbours and fierce rivals Leicester City, which ended in a 1-1 draw, but dropped to just over 13,000 for the visit of Derby County.
Despite an encouraging start to the season and with Coventry either in or very close to the top six, they just couldn't attract the crowds in sufficient numbers for the club to break even, let alone make any money. By March the club admitted to losing around £500,000 a month and they desperately need more fans to buy tickets, but with the odd exception, notably the visit of Leeds in November when over 28,000 saw City go down 2-3, the attendances dwindled.
Prior to November Coventry City were doing reasonably well and many fans were getting a bit carried away seeing their side in the top six and competing for a play off place, but November saw three losses and two wins and in hind sight, the writing was on the wall for what was to follow.
December started brightly with City beating Middlesbrough and then drawing 0-0 at Reading, but as the season of goodwill progressed, it was City dishing out the presents of three points to all and sundry. Three defeats on the bounce, to Norwich, Cardiff and QPR were followed with a draw with Ipswich and then a loss to Barnsley in City's first two games of the New Year.
A 2-1 win away to Crystal Palace offered hope of a revival, but it was not to be as the defeats or under par performances kept coming. A goalless draw at home to bottom of the league side Sheffield United was the only productive game for a while as a run of three league defeats saw Coventry slide down the table. City also lost 3-2 in the FA Cup away to Premier League side Birmingham City despite going 2-0 up.
February dawned and a mood of doom and despondency had descended. The club was in turmoil. The January transfer window had come and gone with no new faces, but there had been a couple of departures. Michael Doyle had gone to Leeds, but the biggest cause for annoyance was the controversial loan move of Academy starlet Conor Thomas to Liverpool for the remainder of the season. Thomas had made his Coventry City début in the 3-2 FA Cup defeat at Birmingham, but now he was a Liverpool player and all for a loan fee, reputed to have been around £250,000 and the Merseyside club had the option to buy the youngster for around £1.5m.
The transfer brought to a head simmering differences of opinion in the board room on how the club was being run. Vice chairman Gary Hoffman resigned in protest and club director and another lifelong Coventry City fan, Coventry businessman and former chairman of the club Joe Elliott was removed from the board and partially placated with being made a Life President of the club. In their place came businessmen, John Clarke excepted, who had no affiliation with the club and yet another board room power struggle ensued.
Amid the bad run of results and the slide from promotion hopefuls to relegation contenders and the board room shenanigans came the news that club chairman Ray Ranson had sacked his manager Aidy Boothroyd. One win in 16 games was not acceptable and he paid the price with his job.
The news was greeted by the fans with some relief because of the disgust of having to watch game after game of long ball, over top tactics that usually led nowhere, but in his defence, Boothroyd managed himself with loyalty and dignity, especially during the last month or so of his tenure. He never once let on about the club being under a transfer embargo, he simply got on with his job. In hindsight he was the wrong man for the job, but despite knowing resources and funds were limited, he spent his limited budget too quickly and the club either couldn't or wouldn't give him any more. His tactics were soon found out by the opposition and he proved incapable of improvising.
One of the last things Ray Ranson did was to ask his chief scout Andy Thorn and head coach Steve Harrison to take over team management until a permanent replacement could be found.
Ray Ranson finally had enough and quit as chairman and it wasn't long before stories emerged about the the two factions on the board, the SISU side and the Coventry side. Inevitably the holders of the purse strings won in the end, but at least the extent of the losses, £0.5m a month were made public. So was news that the club had been placed under a transfer embargo because of unpaid bills.
The club appointed one of the new directors Ken Dulieu as chairman and one of his first public acts was to call a press conference in which he and the new board attempted to win over the long suffering, highly sceptical and extremely irritated fans. The press conference did help lift the gloom, in part because of the news that SISU had injected £7m into the club to pay the bills and to stave of administration or liquidation until the end of the season.
Back to the playing side and Andy Thorn's first game in charge was an away game at promotion chasing Burnley. Thorn had told his players that he wanted to change the long ball tactics advocated by Boothroyd to a pass and move style of play. He only had a day in which to get his side playing in a new style, with confidence and to start a revival which would lead to Championship safety.
Thorn's first game in charge was the away game at Burnley. City went behind inside 20 minutes, but fought back to lead 2-1 with goals from Jutkiewicz and McSheffrey. It was a game City dominated and could have scored may more goals, but they had to settle for a 2-2 draw when Burnley scored an undeserved equaliser with ten minutes of the game remaining. Even Burnley manager Eddie Howe admitted that the attacking style of play of Coventry City took him and his side by surprise and they had difficulty in coping. He said, "Coventry put us under pressure and credit to them, they performed very well. It was a complete change of approach and a releasing of the shackles. They came here with nothing to lose."
It was that fresh approach with a 4-4-3 attacking philosophy, with the ball kept on the ground as much as possible that alerted the fans to the style of play that the maligned Coventry squad could play if they were allowed to and so began the calls for Thorn to be given the manager's job full time.
The next game saw another reverse in fortunes when City went down to bottom placed club Preston 2-1, losing to a last minute goal in a game City ought to have won. An impressive 2-0 home win over Watford raised spirits only to be dented with a 2-2 draw with Derby, then possibly the best away performance in ages when City beat Portsmouth 3-0 to complete the double over the former Premier League side. A home 2-1 win over play off chasing Millwall did nothing to harm Thorn's case for being appointed as the manager.
The board decided that Thorn had the side playing in a way that was entertaining, likely to win more games than they would draw or lose and possibly more importantly, he had the fans almost unanimous backing. He was appointed as the new full time manager of Coventry City on a one year rolling contract.
A season that started high in optimism stuttered half way through the season. The initial high hopes rapidly turned into very real relegation fears then turned into relief at having found a manager capable of getting the best out of the players, but the side still finished the season in a lowly 18th place, just one place above last years finish.
However a closer look at the statistics paint a slightly different picture. While it is true that 18th place is not acceptable to the City support, or to the board of directors and owners for that matter, with a little more luck the finishing place could have been a lot better.
Coventry City had more attempts on goal than any other team in the division, but also had one of the worse ratios of shots on target to goals scored in the league, nearly six shots on target for every goal scored. They also hit the frame of the goal 53 times, more than any other team in the entire Football League.
The goal difference of -4 was the best since 2003/4, the last time Coventry had a positive goal difference. A negative goal difference is not good enough, but encouragement can be taken by the amount of shots on target and the amount of shots that hit the woodwork. The goals conceded was also the lowest since the 2003/4 season, so despite a lowly 18th place finish there are positive signs of improvement.
The transfer embargo is still in place, but the major causes have been resolved. One of the causes is believed to revolve around the fee for the loan from Bolton Wanderers of Danny Ward. The deal was to get cheaper the more games ward played for Coventry, but a hernia requiring surgery to repair, cut short his loan and a dispute arose over the size of the loan fee should be. This dispute has now been resolved paving the way for the embargo to be lifted. Whether the monies owed to the tax man have been paid is uncertain, if it has the embargo should soon be lifted.
There are still massive problems for the club to overcome and they all revolve around finance. The club continues to lose money and until the club can find more ways of generating income, they will continue to do so.
At the press conference chairman Ken Dulieu spoke of the need for the club to buy a share of The Ricoh Arena as a way of decreasing costs and increasing revenue, but a substantial amount of capital would be needed to fund the expensive project. The board of directors must find new and substantial investment if the club is to survive and they must manage the club in a way that is sustainable. Long gone are the bad old days of spending beyond their means trying to buy success, but finding substantial investment is almost as difficult as winning promotion.
A start has been made on the playing side with the appointment of Thorn as manger, but he now has to either persuade existing players to sign the offered new deals or he will have to start rebuilding the side with little or no money, or wheel and deal selling existing players and bringing in new faces.
The 2010/11 season is now over and will be remembered as another failure and a disappointment alongside the drama of the club having another crisis, but there are plenty of positives to be taken out of the season and provided the board can keep the club going.
I have faith in Andy Thorn to take the team forward next season and I hope the board can find the money to back him, but then again what do I know? I also had faith in Boothroyd, Coleman and most of the previous managers (to start with anyway) but perhaps I have literally been following The Sky Blues for ever. They were still The Bantams and played in white when I first watched them play and it is nothing short of a miracle that I can still remain positive.
PUSB.