Coventry City Football Club is an English association football club based in Coventry in the Midlands. The club was founded in 1883 as Singers F.C. by Willie Stanley, an employee of cycle firm Singer Motors. In 1898, the name was changed to Coventry City. The club first joined the Football League after World War I and in 1938, the club missed out on promotion to the First Division by one point.
Since the 1960s, the club has been nicknamed 'the Sky Blues' dedicated to the colour of their kit introduced by manager Jimmy Hill. Arriving in 1961, Hill and club chairman Derrick Robins led a revival of the club's fortunes which culminated in promotion to Division One in 1967. During their promotion season, the club went 25 games undefeated and reportedly attracted a crowd of over 50,000 spectators for a match with Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The city remained in the top tier of English football for over 30 years, winning the 1987 FA Cup under John Sillett, and in 1992, they became founding members of the Premier League. At the end of the 2000–01 season, they were relegated to the FL Championship. Since then, the club has been relegated twice more, experienced a change of ownership and, between 2013 and 2014, was temporarily forced to groundshare with Northampton Town.
1883–1898: Singers F.C. The earliest known organised football club in Coventry was Stoke F.C., founded in the suburb of the same name in 1869. The team did not play regularly and games were played under a variety of football rules, with some being closer to rugby union than Association football. The first association football club in the city was established by Coventry Wanderers Cricket Club in 1874. The Wanderers changed their name to Coventry Association F.C. in 1876.
By the late 1870s rugby had become dominant in the area, fuelled by the sport's popularity in local public schools such as Bablake and Rugby. Association football was reintroduced with the arrival of the bicycle industry in the city, and an influx of workers from Birmingham and the Black Country. In the 1880s each of the factories set up a football team. It was at one of these factories, that of the Singer Cycle Company, that Coventry City F.C. was born.
The club was founded in 1883 by William Stanley, an employee of the factory, and initially known as Singers F.C. Stanley convened a meeting at the Lord Aylesford Inn in Hillfields, with colleagues from the factory in Canterbury Street including "Little Harry" Banks, George Bowers, Harry Hathaway, "Cock" Heath, Frank Moseley, Andrew Poole, and "Shiner" Turner. The club's first headquarters was the White Lion in Gosford Green and they began playing matches at pitch in Stoke called Dowells Field. The Singers Cycle Company founder, George Singer, became the first president of the club. Singers played around forty games in their first four years, which were basic in nature, lacking a regular playing staff and sometimes missing equipment such as goal nets. They joined the Birmingham County Football Association and the played opponents from across the Midlands including Hinckley, Langley Green and Small Heath. Admission to the games was free at that time, and players covered their own expenses.
In 1887 Singers appointed J.G. Morgan as club secretary, and he oversaw a transformation of the club into a serious operation. Morgan was the first official at the club who did not play and fulfilled a role similar to a modern manager. Singers relocated from their original pitch at Dowells Field to an enclosed ground called Stoke Road, located just to the south of the future Highfield Road location. The ground had a small stand and entrances close to the White Lion and Binley Oak pubs, where an admission fee of two pence was charged. The club played an organized fixture list for the first time in the 1887–88 season and also entered the Birmingham Junior Cup, reaching the semi-final. The following five seasons have been described by club historians as a "golden age", as the club's performances and attendances, as well as the quality of their opponents, improved steadily. Capitalising on the renewed interest in football within the city, Rudge F.C., attached to the rival Rudge Cycle Company, began to achieve their own success. Singers and Rudge developed a fierce rivalry, fuelled by competition between the two bicycle companies. Games between the two clubs attracted crowds as high as 4,000 by the end of the 1880s.
Singers began the 1890–91 season with a new center-forward, Frank Mobley, regarded as one of the club's best players of the nineteenth century. Singers won their first trophy at the end of the season, defeating the Willenhall Pickwick 1–0 in the final of the Birmingham Junior Cup. They following season was even more successful with only four defeats and twenty-six wins from their thirty-four games, as well as a cup treble: the team lifted the Wednesbury and Walsall Cups as well as successfully defending the Birmingham Junior Cup. After returning to Coventry from the final of the last, another victory over Willenhall at Perry Barr stadium, many fans turned out to welcome them home. Local businessman David Cooke, who would later become the club's chairman, produced a "Three Cups Tobacco" to celebrate the event. The future seemed bright for the club, but financial problems at the cycle factory forced a number of top players to depart in the summer of 1892. Mobley, the previous season's hero, was among the departees, leaving for Small Heath where he went on to enjoy a successful First Division career.
Despite a slump in form as a result of losing their best players, Singers continued to develop administratively through the 1890s. The club became professional in 1892 but the status was largely symbolic as many players remained amateur and the professionals only received expenses and match fees. It was still a "shop club" which meant that only Singers factory employees were permitted to play. They entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1892 and began to play a full league fixture list from 1894, competing in the Birmingham and District League with games against the strong reserve sides of established Midlands clubs including Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion. There was a perennial proposal through the decade to change the club's name, given the growing support from Coventry residents not connected with the cycle factory. Club president George Singer, who was also mayor of Coventry in the early 1890s, favoured calling the club after the city but there was insufficient support within the club administration. The proposal finally gained the necessary support in 1898 as another slump in the factory's fortunes highlighted the desirability of distancing the football team from the company. Despite a last-minute objection from Coventry Rugby Club, who felt that the name was too similar to their own, the name change to Coventry City Football Club was approved by the Football Association (FA) on 12 August 1898.
1898–1919: Non-league years as Coventry City The club's first season as Coventry City was not a very successful one, with the opening game lost 5–0 to Wellington Town and no victory recorded until six games into the campaign. This was the last season at Stoke Road, as the land was earmarked for a housing development to accommodate Coventry's rising population. Building work began on Highfield Road in early 1899 but the cost of building the new stadium put the club into a perilous financial situation. The club decided not to pay its players for the last few games of the season, which led to a strike. Despite a 1–0 win over Shrewsbury Town in the opening game, the first season at Highfield Road was disastrous and the club finished bottom of the Birmingham Junior League. The financial problems and disputes with players continued and the 1900–01 season proved even worse than the previous, with 102 goals conceded and a 14–0 defeat to Aston Villa reserves representing the biggest defeat in the club's history. The following season was also a poor one, including a 10–2 FA Cup defeat to Worcester-based Berwick Rangers. A better season followed in 1902–03 with a seventh-place finish, but it was a brief reprieve and in 1905 the club had to re-apply for its membership of the Birmingham Junior League for a third time in five years.
The club restructured itself in the summer of 1905, in a bid to reverse the long run of poor performance. The board was replaced by a "syndicate", headed by Frank Lee, with Joe Beaman taking over training duties. New players were added, including goalkeeper–captain Harry Whitehouse and Jimmy McIntyre, an inside-left who would later become the club's manager. The following two seasons were much more successful. The change of management was not completely flawless, as the club's previous board made a complaint to the FA. The resulting investigation found shortcomings in the management of the club, and the syndicate was fined £10. Acting on the FA's advice, they registered the club as a limited company in 1907. Shares worth five shillings were sold, yielding a capital return of £2,000. Lee became secretary of the new entity, while Thomas Owen was named as chairman.
Following the addition of several more new players the 1907–08 season was Coventry's best so far, as they reached the first-round proper of the FA Cup for the first time. They won six qualifying matches in the cup run, including a 7–1 win over Bishop Auckland. In the first round they played Crystal Palace of the Southern League, losing 4–2 in front of 10,000 supporters. In the league City finished in fourth place, scoring 97 goals, with an 11–2 win over West Bromwich Albion reserves the highlight. The stars of the side was Albert Lewis, who was described by the Coventry Evening Telegraph as the club's best player of the Birmingham Junior League era, and Billy Smith, scorer of forty goals. After the season finished Coventry applied to join the Southern League, which at the time was regarded as the third-best division in the country with clubs of a similar stature to those of the Football League's second division. Crystal Palace, who had been impressed by City's performance and supporters in the FA Cup game, were vocal in support for the application and it was duly accepted on 27 May 1908.
Coventry City struggled in their first season of Southern League football, partly because their election was confirmed too late for them to sign new players suitable for the new level of football and because star-player Lewis left the club. They finished second-bottom of the league and escaped relegation only because of an expansion from twenty to twenty-two teams. In the middle of the season the club adopted a nickname for the first time, becoming the "Bantams" in a reference to their light-weight status as newcomers to the Southern League. David Cooke joined the board in mid-1909 and provided funds for City to invest in new playing staff. After another poor start to the season their fortunes changed with the signing of Patsy Hendren, a player who became better known as a cricketer, going on to play the sport for England. Coventry were challenging for the Southern League title at Christmas and went on to reach the FA Cup quarter final, beating top-flight teams Preston and Nottingham Forest before losing to Everton. They reached the third round in 1910–11 and also achieved their only title in the Birmingham Senior Cup with a 1–0 win over Stourbridge. The 1911–12 season was relatively successful, with a sixth-place finish, but City were beaten heavily in the FA Cup by Manchester United, making their first appearance at Highfield Road.