Some famous strikers, a fiery manager and a former club sponsor are in focus in the latest Coventry City A-Z...
Across the season, we worked our way through the alphabet for this year's Coventry City matchday programme PUSB, finding a Sky Blue perspective of each letter in the alphabet.
It made for a popular feature so we thought we'd bring it to the web too! So without further ado, here is S, with some famous strikers, a fiery manager and a former club sponsor the latest to make our Coventry City A-Z...
STRIKERS
From past to present, there have been many goal scorers remembered fondly by the Sky Blue Army.
From Clarrie Bourton to last seasons line of Frank Nouble and company, players of all shapes and sizes have played up front for the Sky Blues.
Where better to start than the man who has scored more goals for the club than any other player, the great Clarrie Bourton. With 181 goals in 228 matches, Bourton was part of the team in the 1930’s that experienced great success and growth on and off the pitch.
Moving on to Jimmy Hill’s Sky Blue revolution, George Hudson is another member who is part of the Coventry City Hall of Fame. Hudson scored 62 goals in 113 games as Hill took the Sky Blues into the top flight for the very first time.
In the 1980’s more First Division stability followed as well as the FA Cup success in 1987. Cyrille Regis saw and done it all with City, with 47 goals in 238 games across the 80’s and 90’s. Originally signed from West Brom, he would go on to play for all of the ‘big four’ Midlands clubs, with spells at Aston Villa and Wolves. But he would never replicate the success he had with City.
The 90’s saw exciting changes in play under Ron Atkinson and the man we give column inches too on this feature, Gordon Strachan. Dion Dublin and Darren Huckerby lead the line and Dublin ended up scoring 61 times for City while Huckerby netted 34 times.
The 2013/14 season saw a renaissance and reminders of the days of old, when Leon Clarke and Callum Wilson tore League One apart. Clarke scored 18 times before he left in January to join Wolves. Wilson scored 22 goals which is all the more remarkable having dislocated his shoulder and been out for two months. The ‘Cov kid’ is now at Bournemouth, where his form propelled the Cherries to the Premier League.
STRACHAN
The fiery Scotsman is one of the most colourful characters in City’s history, where his press conferences as manager went down as the stuff of legends.
Despite all of his colourful antics in the dugout, he should not be forgotten as one of the finest midfielders Scotland has produced and played with honours for the likes of Manchester United and Leeds.
He joined City in 1994 as a player and made 26 appearances before becoming manager the following season. He had five years at Highfield Road and kept the club in the Premier League for four of those years.
Strachan is now manager of Scotland and hopes are high that the ‘wee man’ will guide the Tartan Army to their first major championship finals since France in 1998.
Gavin Strachan, Gordon’s son, also featured for the club when he signed professional terms with City in 1996 and went to make 16 appearances for the Sky Blues. He left the club in 2003.
SUBARU
City were sponsored by the car giants for eight years, from 1997-2005. They featured on every Sky Blues home shirt in that time and some of these shirts are fondly remembered by supporters.
The ‘embossed’ 1998 kit was worn by such players as Youssef Chippo and Mustafa Hadj, whilst the ‘Sky Blue and White’ kit in 2000 was adorned by such stars as Craig Bellamy.
Most of these kits also had the City badge directly in the centre, which at the time was unusual for any team, but they allowed the shirts to be unique and some of the most stylish in the country, at a time when there some shocking kit designs around the Football League!
STADIUMS
Although Highfield Road and the Ricoh Arena are all well known, City have actually played at three other grounds in their existence.
Dowells Field was the original site of Singers FC, the club which came before Coventry City. A move to Stoke Road came next and the club was there for a combined 16 years between the two grounds until the move to Highfield Road, the clubs home for the next 107 years.
Standing and seating changes came and went, new stands were built and rebuilt until the decision was made to move into the Ricoh Arena which finally occurred in 2005.
One season was spent playing at Sixfields until the moving back to the Ricoh last September, where an emotional sold out crowd saw City beat GIllingham 1-0 as the Sky Blues came back home.