By TheLongside.co.uk
February 22 2006

This Saturday sees the Clarets travel to Coventry for the Championship fixture against Mickey Adams' Sky Blues. The Longside looks at the new stadium and the Coventry City team.

Sent to Coventry

This Saturday sees the Clarets travel to the brand new Ricoh Arena for the game against Mickey Adams’ Coventry City. After 106 years of football at Highfield Road, the Sky Blues have now relocated to a 32,000 all-seater, state of the art stadium located in the Foleshill area of the city.

Any of you who travelled to Coventry last season will more than likely have passed the Ricoh Arena on your way to Highfield Road, and it certainly looks more accessible, although does tend to mirror the conservative designs of new football stadia that seem to be popping up all over the country.

 

Our last trip to Coventry, Highfield Road that is, saw us come away with the points with an impressive 2-0 win. John Oster and Ian Moore were the scorers that day, in fact it was to be Ian Moore’s last goal for us before his transfer to Leeds United. It had taken him four months to score a league goal, and this was rather fortuitous as it bobbled in off the underside of his boot. The striker has yet to score for Leeds in nearly a year, which is some going considering it was him that said that strikers should be judged on goals.

 

 

The last game at Highfield Road

 

This season the Clarets took on Coventry early-season and recorded our biggest win under Steve Cotterill. Garreth O’Connor got his first goal for Burnley, starting a run of 6 goals in his next ten games, an impressive outlay for a midfielder, which was only interrupted by suspension after a sending off at Reading. A Wayne Thomas goal and a late brace from Ade Akinbiyi made it four and saw us climb out of the relegation zone to the relative safety of 16^th.

 

So, who will we be up against? There certainly will be some names familiar to Burnley fans, names such as Richard Duffy. Duffy was on loan with us last season from Portsmouth and impressed, scoring a memorable winning goal for us away at Leeds. He went down in Clarets folklore that night after scoring from the rebound in front of the stunned Kop. What a night.

 

Burnley fans will also be familiar with Dele Adebola. Always a good player at Crewe, he looked anything but that on loan at the Clarets in the 2003/04 season, however he did manage a goal for us in a 3-2 home defeat to Watford. He now plies his trade at Coventry and will as all these fimiliar strikers do, up his game against us.

 

Another striker they have on their books is James Scowcroft. Scowcroft was heavily linked with us during the close season, but is believed to have chosen Coventry over us, so mark him down for a goal on your coupons!

 

Team news will follow closer to the game, but we do know Coventry will be without suspended duo Gary McSheffrey and Adrian Williams. Both players were booked in the 3-1 defeat at Plymouth and this may come as a relief to the Burnley fans who saw McSheffrey’s first half performance in the fixture at Highfield Road last season.

 

The booking took McSheffrey up to ten for this season and he will now miss the next two matches. Williams meanwhile misses this game after picking up his fifth yellow. Robert Page is expected to fill in for Williams as he returns from a one-game suspension for his fifth booking of the season.

 

The away end at the Ricoh Arena

 

It will be another visit to a new ground for the travelling Clarets, and with having a pretty decent record at Highfield Road over recent years we'll be hoping the point picking will continue at the new stadium. A victory would see our first three points on the road since the win at Luton in early November and would be very welcome, we haven't had much to shout about in recent weeks. Bring 'em on!

 

Many thanks to Craig Bailey and Aaron for the photos.