Second row (l-r); Richie Norman (Youth Team Coach), Tommy Casey (First Team Coach), Jimmy Holmes, Les Cartwright, Brian Roberts, Don Nardiello, Jim Blyth, Bill Glazier, Neil Ramsbottom, Paul Cahill, David Philpotts, Mick Ferguson, Alan Robinson, Dennis Mortimer, Bert Edwards (Second Team Coach)
Third row (l-r); Alan Dugdale, Colin Stein, David Cross, Tommy Hutchison, John Craven, Gordon Milne (Manager), Peter Hindley, Mick McGuire, Brian Alderson, Willie Carr, Chris Cattlin
Front row (l-r); Barry McCarthy, Ian Christie, Paul Banks, Ian Loose, Les Sealey, Norrie Brown, Max Irwin, Adrian James
By Jim Brown
City were many pundits favourites for relegation and once the curtain went up it was clear that this was going to be a long hard season. Without a victory in the first nine matches the club quickly settled to the bottom of the pack and manager Milne was under pressure for the first time. A dominant central defender was high on Gordon Milne’s shopping list. As ever, it seems, in the history of Coventry City, a financial crisis was brewing. The free-spending days were over and money to buy could only be acquired by agreeing to sell. Liverpool’s Larry Lloyd was City’s target, for whom a club record fee of £240,000 was agreed. Lloyd duly signed, but the other half of the deal – the sale of Mick McGuire and Alan Dugdale to Tottenham for £200,000 – fell through when Spurs manager Bill Nicholson lost his job. Having in consequence gone substantially into the red, it would be some years before City would again be in position to trade freely in the transfer market. At the AGM in November Peter Robins announced the club were £250,000 in the red, needed a breakeven crowd of 28,000 and would need to sell. Just over a year after his father had stepped aside from running the club the club were in the mire in a scenario reminiscent of the bad old 1950s. A few months later Peter came out with a quote straight out of that by-gone era: ‘..we will never again have to sell star players to balance the books’. After years of frankness and relative openness in its dealings with supporters the worthless football clichés were back in fashion at Highfield Road.
There would be no cup runs this season: City were knocked out of the League Cup at the first hurdle, and out of the FA Cup at Arsenal in a Fourth Round replay, following a torrid 1-1 draw at Highfield Road. The brightest memory of that short-lived cup campaign was Larry Lloyd’s goal in the 2-0 Third Round victory over Norwich, when from deep in his own half he hoisted a sky-bound shot which swept over the outstretched arms of an astonished Kevin Keelan.
Overall, league form was too uneven to reveal any pattern, but a splendid vein of home form saw the Sky Blues lose only once in 15 games between November and the end of the season. Although a final position of fourteenth may be considered satisfacÂtory, the club’s financial problems overshadowed everything else. Boot-sales were the order of the day as Mick McGuire, Carr and Colin Stein were sold for what the fans considered to be derisory fees. The three outgoing players brought in around £240,000, with Carr’s sale to Wolves raising only a third of what Wolves had agreed to pay before the medical, and the sales did little to ease the pressure on the club’s cashiers. Lloyd was not the player for Coventry that he had been for Liverpool, looking overÂweight, unfit and displaying an attitude that did not endear him to many supporters. It could hardly be said that he was over the hill: three years later he would help Nottingham Forest to a league championship and the European Cup. In Forest’s shirt he even earned a recall to the England team.
There was a big shock at the end of the season with the news that Jimmy Hill was returning to the club. He became the soccer’s first managing director, an unpaid role. Football was changing fast both on and off the pitch but it was not yet clear what function the ‘bearded wonder’ would perform. It had been eight years since his departure to the world of television – he was by now the Match of the Day anchorman.
Two home grown youngsters broke through to the first team. Full-back Graham Oakey made such an impression he was voted Player of the Year by the supporters and Mick Ferguson, a lanky Geordie striker did enough in 12 games to demonstrate that he had a big future. Other changes in the backroom staff saw first-team coach Tommy Casey take up the manager’s job at Grimsby and he was replaced by former Aston Villa coach Ron Wylie.
Gates plummeted with the average dropping by over 4,000 to just over 19,000 – the lowest since 1962-63 – with the largest league crowd only 25,460 for the visit of Leeds United in November. City’s season ticket holders were down too – only 4,500 compared to over 12,000 at the peak in 1968.
