by Tony Attwood
If you have been kind enough to glance our way in past seasons you’ll know that one of the pre-match reviews we always do is that of injuries, and yes as you will know, we have injuries before we have even started.
Jurrien Timber has a pelvic or groin injury and we won’t be available for a while – mid September is being quoted, but he might need a few reserve or practice matches after that before being available for the first team. He is certainly no playing – but we have been buying replacements.
Bruno Guimaraes has better news and is said to be “evolving really well”. I am not sure what he is evolving into, but hopefully it is just as human as ever. I would suspect the most we could expect today is a bench appearance but more likely that will come in the next match or one after.
William Saliba is most certainly not available and he is out for the long term – it is not even worth anticipating a date of his return – but there is one slightly bright point. If he is fit to play in, for example, January, it is going to be like having a new player come into the squad as the others are getting tired. It is a compensation, but even so, he will be seriously missed.
As far as I can see Coventry City have only one injury which is to Miguel Ángel Brau their left back, who definitely misses today’s game.
Coventry ended last season with a very fine away run: beating West Bromwich 0-2, and Sheffield United 1-2 away in February, and then in March continuing with that score, beating Bristol City 0-2 and going one better against Swansea City 0-3.
April opened with a goalless away draw to Hull, and a repeat performance of that with Sheffield Wednesday, before a 1-1 away draw with Blackburn. They rounded things off away from home with a 0-4 thumping of Watford on 2 May.
But even more interesting are the card figures because last season Arsenal got the fewest yellow cards in the Premier League. Yet with 71 yellow cards they were the least carded team in the Championship last season. It will be interesting to see if they change their approach this time around, having won promotion.
As the table below shows Arsenal achieved more points away from home last season than Coventry achieved away, even though Coventry had four more away games than Arsenal had at home. It is true overall that Coventry scored more away goals than Arsenal scored home goals, but Arsenal’s defence was more than twice as good.
| Club | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
| Coventry away | 23 | 11 | 7 | 5 | 46 | 26 | +20 | 40 |
| Arsenal home | 19 | 15 | 2 | 2 | 41 | 11 | +30 | 47 |
So by and large everything is pointing to a solid home win, and no matter where we look there really aren’t statistics to suggest otherwise. The one big thing going for them was the number of goals they scored last year and I suspect there were no supporters of the club who could remember when such a total was exceeded (indeed if there are any such people it would be interesting to enquire as to the details of their date), but in the seasons from 1931/2 through to 1933/4 Coventry, playing in Division 3 South, knocked up in consecutive seasons 108 goals, 106 goals and 100 goals. Mind you they seemed to achieve those scoring feats by ignoring the defense completely, especially in 1931/2 when they let in 97 goals! At least watching the games must have been fun.
Last season the opening results for Coventry City were erratic to say the least. They started with a goalless draw against Hull then got a 5-3 away win over Derby County and then beat QPR 7-1. But one of the points I did notice was that in that second game Coventry knocked up five yellow cards. I wonder if they are going to try that sort of tactics again in the Premier League where the willingness to accept the “But I got the ball” excuse is less prevalent than in lower leagues.
