Sky Blues Blog

Let's all sing together.. in a sensible and well-mannered fashion.

  • Home
  • The players 11/12
  • Quote of the week
  • Contributions
  • Rules and that
    • 2
      19 Jan 2012

      The Late Kick Off time capsule

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost

      Whilst tidying out the blog, I stumbled across a few interviews with various Sky Blues personnel that I'd pointed out over the years. I find the sequence of videos below a staggering indication of just how much Sisu have buggered up our club, and in such a short period of time. They're all from BBC Late Kick Off's annual piece on Coventry, and I'll warn you now - they're so full of naivety, false hope and blatant fibs, it may well make you sob. 

      Read the rest of this post »

      • Tweet
    • 0
      1 Dec 2011

      Season's greetings... from Aidy Boothroyd

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost

      Ah marvellous. Ta, calendar people.

      Photo_5

      Read the rest of this post »

      • Tweet
    • 2
      1 Aug 2011

      Aidy Boothroyd back in Coventry hot seat? Heaven forbid...

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost

      We've all seen some pretty daft media clangers over the years. Les Ferdinand apparently restarting his career in 2004 in the center of England's defence; Joe Hart conceding 3,240 goals in 36 minutes on the pitch; and South Africa playing in 3 groups simultaneously at the 2010 World Cup (all according to a single, particularly bad paper). The pressure to be the first to run a story often leads to some quite peculiar mistakes.

      But if you were online around 6pm today, you may have caught Sky Sports' latest story on Coventry's investment saga which had plenty of us staring in amazement.

      Skysports

      Is that a huge photo of Aidinho I see? Crikey, someone's naffed up and picked the wrong photo haven't they. What a boob.

      Hold on, they actually think Aidy Boothroyd is in charge? Have they run mad? 

      And while that was enough to send most into a Print Screen frenzy, they also managed to include a bit more nonsense about "former vice-chairman" Kevin Hoffman. It's Gary, ennit.

      The article's been changed now thankfully, but it was ever such a laugh while it lasted. Thought it'd be nice to share for those who missed it.

      I feel sorry for Andy Thorn though - it's not the first time he's been overlooked.... 

      Daft BBC - Apparently Steve Harrison is tanned and bald

      • Tweet
    • 2
      14 Mar 2011

      Boothroyd given the boot

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost

      News coming from the Ricoh this morning is that Aidy Boothroyd has been told to bugger off. Even given the horrendous run of results we've been on since Christmas (which would have left most managers with the sack, let's face it), I imagine this will still come as a bit of a shock to many fans.

      The romantic view is that we finally find a manager who is given time to build a team. I can see there being a lot of cross people who disagree with removing yet another one.

      While I agree that continuity is important, the massive flaw in that plan is what to do if things are going the way of relegation after the first season. Do you stick with a manager and show blind faith that he will miraculously become great? We did that with Coleman and ended up going backwards after two and a bit years.

      If we’d had the great start to the season, then tailed off slightly towards the end, you’d still be able to acknowledge the work done in the first half. What we’ve seen throughout the current campaign however are instances of such inflexibility, which have rendered us the softest touch in the league. It’s hard to find any positive right now.

      Looking back at Aidy’s time here, he brought bounds of enthusiasm, and if you wanted ambitious talk, he did it better than anyone. I always had time for him when he spoke about his plans, but his downfall has been his single-mindedness in how he sets the team out. Whether conscious or not, his methods haven’t worked, and unfortunately there didn’t appear to be any signs that he had the ability to develop a team that could do much else. You can only guess how much of a hit our reputation has taken too – if you were a Premier League club, would you send one of your youngsters to Coventry to develop?

      It sounds like there was a lot of pressure on him to stop playing Clive Platt and change things. He changed things alright, but unfortunately that simply became the smash-to-whoever-is-playing-there tactic, rather than anything else more fundamental.

      Looking at the top half of the Championship, it appears the days of bashing your way to promotion have long-gone – if Aidy hadn’t worked that out already, he bloody well knows now.

      Thanks for your efforts Aidy – shame it didn’t work out.

       

      • Tweet
    • 0
      24 Feb 2011

      Coventry 0 Swansea 1 - Sorry Aidy - you've a job to do, too.

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost

      After all that huff and puff, yet another perfectly winnable game has eluded us.

      I think the first thing to acknowledge is that up to 70 minutes, we were the better team. Up to 70 minutes, we had more fight than Swansea. Up to 70 minutes there was only one side who really felt they could win the game.

      But eventually, those 70 minutes were not enough, and that big 7-0 was a key point in the game (I'll come back to this later).

      There's been a lot of keen words said about how well we tried. Now, I'm not one to go bandy about work-rate; the way I see it, it should be the norm that a player gives his all. If they're not working their arses off, they're not doing their job. That said, when you've 11 players on the pitch working together to make it impossible for the best passing line-up in the Championship to play football, you've got to give credit where it's due. We worked tirelessly.

      The quality in the final third wasn't there though, that was clear. But we still did enough to worry them, and if we only had it in us to create genuine goal-scoring chances, we might have taken the lead long before our top-class fitness training kicked-in and our legs turned to frankfurters.

      We should have been ahead though. Boothroyd didn't mince his words when it came to the penalty decision. He's right; it was a definite penalty, and the only question you've got to ask is why would a striker who has an open goal and is about to score his first goal in months, pass up that opportunity in favour of going down?

      There's no reason other than if he was impeded. The goalie made a right hash of things, and the best he could do at that moment was to drag Jutkiewicz to the ground. He did so, and got away with it.

      The referee got that wrong and we're right to be angry about it.

      However, that was not the reason we lost the game. Boothroyd has complained that the referee did not "do his job". Well Aidy, he's not the only one.

      Going back to my earlier point, as we hit the 70 minute point in the game, there was a very noticeable drop in our intensity. This isn't hindsight speaking, I was saying this at the time. Since half-time, we had pummled Swansea in every sense of the word, and they couldn't cope with our pressing. Gunnarsson was fantastic (if you know me, you'll realise that's not something I'll say regularly) and Lukas ran himself into the ground.

      But if we were going to win the game, we had to keep the same level of performance up for the full 90 mins. As soon as the signs of tiredness appeared, that was the point to react and shuffle our pack.

      There was a reaction alright, but it wasn't by Boothroyd. Brendan Rodgers was right on the money, making purposeful subs when he saw the game needed it. He bided his time, and did what our own manager is always preaching about - he managed the game. He recognised the point when his subs would have most impact, and sure enough the game was flipped on its head, while we were left persisting with a line up that had clearly hit a brick wall.

      I want to be clear that this isn't a criticism of the players. As a team, we stuck to our task and did everything but create the chances to score. Nathan Cameron's inability to pass the ball to teammates is, as ever, a common gripe of mine, and Lukas needs to work on his sharpness around the box. But it's fairly clear to me why we did not win the game on Tuesday; a lack of adaptability and awareness by Aidy Boothroyd.

      Our players were tired, and to maintain the intensity and domination we were enjoying, he needed to make changes, at the very least to keep the Swansea players on their toes. He didn't though. He just stood there conversing with Father Ted while the pattern of the game changed, and his opposite number pounced on our vulnerability.

      Don't take this to be a Boothroyd-bashing post or anything. I'm not saying the bloke should be sacked. I'm saying we had a chance to win a game against a very good team, but he was unable to read the game and it cost us. That's his job, and if he'd done it better (like Brendan Rodgers) I'm sure there were points in that game for us.

      It's worth noting that Swansea scored in the 76th minute, which gave plenty of time to rally and go again. 

      But nothing. That was the most frustrating thing. He showed zero-bravery in his use of subs, and just watched for 15 minutes as his team went through the motions - surrendering another 3 points in the process.

      • Tweet
    « Previous 1 2 Next »
    • Quote of the week

      I’m sure if we had started playing keep-ball the fans would have been disappointed, but when it’s that late in the day you should probably be a bit more professional about it and settle for the one point.
      Attacking and remaining professional are not mutually exclusive, Andy.
    • Twitter logo Newsnow logo The Seventy Two Unfortunates Blog Network Logo
    • Sky Blues Blog

      In an attempt to keep myself sane over the course of the 09/10 season, I decided to use this blog as a place to let off steam and vent my thoughts about Coventry City's progress.

      That all seemed to go quite nicely (the blogging side of things, not the team performance), so two years later, and I'm still doing it - rambling away whenever there is something worth rambling about.

      The plan is to focus my attention on writing in this, as opposed to indiscriminate ranting at anyone who'll listen, which always tended to be my main outlet. I never really envisaged it becoming a widely viewed Coventry City blog (as my points often annoy), but it's always good to see my posts popping up on forums with people discussing my waffle.

      lt's also quite interesting to look back at how many times during the season I threaten to stop supporting them and form my own breakaway club; FC Coventry City Mönchengladbach Saint-Germain.

    • Other sensible blogs

      • Tales of the Expected
      • Jim Brown's Journal
      • Away From Home - Steve Phelps
      • Bert's blog
      • Coventry City Banter
      • The Seventy Two
      • The Two Unfortunates
    • Squad archive

      • The players 10/11
    • Archive

      • 2012 (18)
        • February (3)
        • January (15)
      • 2011 (84)
        • December (9)
        • November (16)
        • October (4)
        • September (7)
        • July (11)
        • July (6)
        • June (2)
        • April (11)
        • February (6)
        • February (5)
        • January (7)
      • 2010 (32)
        • December (2)
        • November (5)
        • October (5)
        • September (4)
        • August (3)
        • July (1)
        • May (2)
        • April (1)
        • February (4)
        • January (5)
      • 2009 (35)
        • December (5)
        • November (5)
        • October (4)
        • September (8)
        • August (11)
        • July (1)
        • March (1)
  • About Sky Blues Blog

    This site represents the views of Sky Blues Blog writer Neil Allison and has no affiliation with Coventry City Football Club whatsoever. Obviously.

    © 2012 Sky Blues Blog

  • Contact

    Most of the time, you'll probably just want to use the comments section beneath each post. However, for other queries and requests:

    • email Sky Blues Blog
    • follow Neil on Twitter

  • Get updates

    Follow this Space »
    You're following this Space (Edit)
    You're a contributor here (Edit)
    This is your Space (Edit)
    Follow by email »
    Get the latest updates in your email box automatically.
    Loading...

    Subscribe via RSS

    TwitterFacebook