Middle row (l-r); John Sillett (Youth Team Coach), Kenny Hibbitt, Kirk Stephens, Trevor Peake, Wayne Turner, Brian Borrows, Jeff Doyle, Frank Upton (Assistant Manager), George Dalton (Physiotherapist)
Front row (l-r); Michael Gynn, Micky Adams, Dave Bennett, Cyrille Regis, Don Mackay (Manager), Keith Thompson, Lloyd McGrath, Gareth Evans, Terry Gibson
By Jim Brown
A season that offered so much began badly and grew steadily worse. Survival was once more the name of the game with City’s Division One status preserved yet again only by victory in their final league match. It was a season in which the coach was sacked, the manager quit, and three different captains were appointed.
By City’s standards, transfer activity in the summer had been quiet. Stuart Pearce and Ian Butterworth joined Nottingham Forest for a combined fee of £450,000. The replacement full-backs were destined to play a part in the club’s FA Cup fantasy the following season. Former Everton youngster Brian Borrows had excelled since moving to Bolton and City paid £80,000 to bring him back to Division One. Greg Downs, he had been a member of the Norwich side relegated by City’s momentous run in the previous season and a fee of £40,000 secured his transfer.
The captaincy issue blew up even before the season started. As part of their pre-season preparations, the City squad stayed at the Crystal Palace Sports Centre, which they used as a base for friendly matches in the south. But a row developed about the quality of the accommodation and finally blew up into a confrontaÂtion between skipper Trevor Peake and manager Mackay. Heated words were exchanged, as a result of which Peake was sent home, missing the friendly with Millwall and relinquishing the captaincy.
New midfield man Wayne Turner, signed from Luton for £75,000 during the summer, was handed the captain’s armband. Injury, however, kept Turner out for the first five matches which saw City pick up just two points from a possible fifteen and one off the bottom of the table.
The early home defeat by Newcastle was to provide a foretaste of things to come. City conceded two late goals. ‘A disgrace,’ fumed an irate Mackay: ‘It was down to a lack of disciÂpline – we just didn’t do our job properly in the last five minutes.’ Sadly, he was to say much the same many times during the season.
Home form went from bad to worse, the total of ten defeats being the worst at Highfield Road in nineteen seasons of First Division football. At one stage Coventry went four and a half months, from October to February, between one home win and the next. In between, City lost at home to Watford in Round 3 of the FA Cup. It was hardly surprising that gates fell to the second lowest average in their Division One history, just 11,638. Never was the ground full to its 22,500 capacity (the Kop having been restored to standing terraces) and the biggest gate – for the visit of Manchester United – failed to top 17,000. Two weeks after the Hornets knocked City out of the Cup, Watford returned in the league. This time the gate was a paltry 7,478, which still constitutes City’s lowest ever top division crowd.
After their poor start, City stemmed the tide, helped by the return of Lloyd McGrath. A run of one defeat in nine games saw comprehensive home wins over West Brom and Leicester and an amazing Milk Cup-tie with Chester. Having brought back a one-goal lead from the first leg, City let rip in the second, winning 7-2, with Cyrille Regis setting a League Cup record of five goals – which equalled his total haul of the previous season. In the main, however, the goals continued to fall to his striking partner, Terry Gibson, with the result that City had to fend off numerous enquirÂies about the striker.
December was a shocking month, which saw City slip back to seventeenth, following a Boxing day home defeat by struggling Ipswich. Skipper Turner was substituted, and days later he handed the captaincy to Brian Kilcline. Continued bad form into January prompted more changes – on and off the field. Three new directors – Ted Stocker, John Reason and Derrick Richardson, all Poynton men – joined the board, which almost in the same breath opted to accept Manchester United’s £650,000 bid for Gibson. Scottish international striker Alan Brazil arrived as part of the Gibson deal. Some of the balance was used to buy Nick Pickering from Sunderland and Jim McInally, a full-back cum midfielder, from Nottingham Forest.
The comings and goings freshened up the side for a while, and excellent wins at Oxford and Tottenham, plus a thrilling 4-4 draw with Birmingham, and the long-awaited first home win for nineteen weeks, hinted at better times. It was not to be. After squandering a lead to lose at Leicester, City plummeted back into the red zone. Someone had to take the rap, and coach Upton was sacked the week after Easter.
Mackay stayed on – but not for long. Eight games without a win, culminating in an abject surrender at Anfield, saw him dramatically leave with just three matches to go, at which point City lay nineÂteenth. Perhaps Mackay jumped; more likely he was pushed.
Executive director George Curtis and youth-team coach John Sillett took temporary charge, and home wins over Luton and QPR proved enough to keep the Sky Blues in Division One for a twentiÂeth successive season.
After the final game against QPR Curtis ‘reluctantly’ let City players celebrate with the crowd – ‘reluctantly’ because safety was no cause for celebration. The local press speculated about the sort of reaction there might be if City ever won anything. At the time, few thought this team could be something special.
