By Jim Brown
Phil Babb, City’s latest full international, summed up 1993-94 perfectly: ‘We did well at the start of the season and well at the end of the season – it’s just the 25 games in between we struggled with.’ It was a fair description of a season that once again saw Coventry City propelled onto the back pages of the tabloids as the club was shaken by further internal ructions.
Bobby Gould’s October walkout, characteristically dramatic and unexpected, rocked the club to its foundations. Perhaps the seeds of Gould’s departure had been sown during the summer when Peter Robins, his friend and confidante, moved from club chairman to chief executive, which meant that Gould was now answerable to his successor, Bryan Richardson. The new chairman maintained that his relationship with Gould was cordial, though clearly, away from the public eye, the wheels on the City wagon were working loose.
After the hectic transfer activity of the past twelve months, the close season had been tranquil by comparison. Veteran striker Mick Harford was signed from Sunderland for £200,000, and promising Stockport full-back Paul R Williams arrived for £150,000. Gould sold Andy Pearce to Sheffield Wednesday for £500,000 in the knowledge that Babb was a more than adequate replacement. Michael Gynn was released after a ten-year career with the club.
Coventry had to start the season with a glut of injuries. Gould’s pre-season jaunt to an army camp backfired when Lee Hurst tore knee ligaments on an assault course. At the time, the injury did not look too serious, but the promising local youngster would never play first-team football again. Ten minutes into the opening game, at Highbury, Stewart Robson also fell victim to knee trouble, and the heart of City’s midfield had been ripped out. Like Hurst, Robson would never appear for City again. Robson’s distress was largely ignored at the time, as Coventry had marked up an astonÂishing 3-0 triumph, with Mick Quinn scoring all three.
Four days later – with stadium improvements reducing Highfield Road’s three-sided capacity to 17,000 – City enjoyed their first home victory, over Kevin Keegan’s promoted Newcastle, new signing Harford coming off the bench to score the winning goal. Harford never turned out for the Sky Blues again, struck down by back problems. His Sky Blues career lasted just sixteen minutes.
In what proved to be their best start since 1937, City were unbeaten in their first eight league games, claiming Liverpool’s scalp and drawing at Villa Park. But all was not rosy. Having piled up a three-goal advantage from the first leg of a Coca-Cola Cup-tie with Wycombe, the league’s newest team destroyed City at Adams Park, took the game to extra-time and led 4-3 overall. Fortunately, two late goals saved City’s bacon, but the fans were far from impressed.
Coventry City has seldom witnessed a day like 23 October, 1993. A 1-5 defeat at QPR was bad enough, but Gould stunned the post-match press conference by announcing his resignation. The reasons were hard to fathom. Gould appeared to accuse Richardson of forcing him to sell Peter Ndlovu, but the player was not sold. A week of claim and counter claim ensued, involving rumours of a Gould-backed consortium taking over. Gould turned up at Highfield Road as a Sky TV pundit for the home match with Sheffield United, an act which did little to help the team or enhance support for his own position. The match itself degenerated almost into a side-show, with the stadium reverÂberating to factional protests. The net result was that City earned yet more headlines of the wrong kind, losing a hometown manager who cared passionately for the club and the city. The general feeling is that, once Gould had resigned, Richardson made little effort to persuade him to reconsider. If true, that suggests the new chairman wanted his own man all along.
His own man, for the time being, was Gould’s assistant, Phil Neal who, far from being forced to sell players, was encouraged to buy them. Lower division players Julian Darby (£150,000 from Neal’s old club Bolton) and Ally Pickering (£85,000 from Rotherham) were signed, and Huddersfield midfielder Chris Marsden arrived on loan. Marsden looked the part from the outset, a ball-playing midfielder with a sweet left foot. His presence in the side over Christmas helped City look the genuine article. City, however, dithered when Marsden’s loan period expired, and he slipped away to Wolves. The club signed instead Sandy Robertson, another midfielder, this time from Glasgow Rangers for £250,000. It was quickly obvious to most supporters that Robertson was out of his depth in the Premiership.
City’s bubble burst during the first three months of 1994. This was in no small way due to Mick Quinn’s goals drying up. City won just twice in that period, against Ipswich and Manchester City, and the slump sucked the Sky Blues perilously close to the relegaÂtion zone. Neal’s response to the problem was to axe Quinn and John Williams, and play Ndlovu and Sean Flynn as his striking partnership. Ndlovu’s brilliance, subdued for much of the season, suddenly erupted again, and he ended the campaign in devastating form proving to the doubters that he was a player of the highest class. Ndlovu’s five goals in the final eight games sparked a defiant upturn of results, climaxed by out-battling and out-playing title-chasing Blackburn in front of a passionate Highfield Road crowd.
