“WHERE next for Coventry City?” demanded Richard Keys in 1996 to an agitated ‘Big’ Ron Atkinson. The answer was Tottenham on Sunday… Saturday. In truth, scheduling has always been a big part of Coventry’s identity, from playing seven away games in a row in the spring of 1977 to recording their first ever league victory on Christmas Day 1919.
Think of them as the 100-year anniversary of that win against Stoke arrives in a couple of weeks. There will be no actual football to distract you on December 25, of course, since it was outlawed by the gifting industry in the 1960s, but that means it’s an excellent point to sit quietly and take stock of the season so far, and contemplate what might happen in the second half of the season.
How Your Team Does Relative To How It Was Doing At Xmas (#HYTDRTHIWDAX) has become a staple part of football in the Premier League era. Who can forget the crazy spring of 2005 when West Bromwich Albion defied many belief systems by becoming the first team to be bottom at Christmas and stay up, despite winning only six of their 38 matches.
Since then that feat has been repeated twice, first by Sunderland in 2013-14 in one of those seasons when they were pretty terrible but were saved by a new manager who either banned or unbanned tomato ketchup, and then by Nigel Pearson’s Leicester City in 2014-15 who won seven of their last nine games to avoid demotion. Pearson, newly installed at bottom club Watford, was rewarded that summer by getting fired by the Foxes, who went on to do very little the following season.
That’s enough about the foot of the table, though. Football is like a trifle: you endure the bottom just so you can revere the delights at the top. And research shows that recently, topping the Premier League while the Queen’s Speech is broadcast is a virtual guarantee of glory come May.
The last three times a PL team has been top on Christmas Day and not won the league:
Liverpool 08-09
Liverpool 13-14
Liverpool 18-19— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) May 12, 2019
Between 2008-09 and 2018-19, every single team who were top of the table on December 25 won the title, with the exception of Liverpool in 2008-09, Liverpool in 2013-14 and Liverpool in 2018-19. Also, Liverpool fans would be advised not to check out 1996-97 or 1990-91 when it was [opens advent calendar of doom] Liverpool(!) top of the tree at Christmas yet without a league title to show for it.
2018-19 also saw them become only the second team, after Sheffield United in 1899-00, to be unbeaten at Christmas and not win the league. Really, when you think about it, Liverpool’s 30 year failure to add a 19th title has been a triumph of narrative over probability.
Perhaps it is all karma for Liverpool’s famous 1981-82 season when they languished in 12th place at Christmas but stormed back to take their 13th league title due to little more than character. That remains the lowest any league-winning side has been on December 25, and in the modern era of teams regularly reaching 90+ points, is a lost art.
Conversely, the biggest fall from top at Christmas to the end of the season is down to eighth place by Sunderland in 1936-37, Liverpool (oh no) in 1949-50 and Manchester United in 1970-71. In the Premier League era, it remains Aston Villa in 1998-99, who slipped from top, their manager John Gregory proclaiming that only they, Arsenal, Man Utd and Chelsea could win the title, to sixth place by May. In a sense Gregory was right, as United (3rd at Christmas, one place ahead of Middlesbrough) won the title as part of their historic treble. In another, perhaps more important sense, Gregory was wrong, as Villa were not legitimate title contenders.
Still, at least they aren’t Swansea City who celebrated being top of the First Division on December 25, 1981 by dancing to that year’s other Christmas number one, the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’. But there was no humanity in Swansea’s league, and 18 months later they were relegated from the top-flight. “Don’t you want me?” they pleaded. “That’s irrelevant,” came the answer. “we have a system of automatic relegation and have had so since 1898. Bye.” Sometimes honesty is the greatest gift of all.
