Coventry 2 Manchester U 1

Nobby Stiles

Cov­entry City 2 Man­chester Uni­ted 1, High­field Road, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, April 13, 1971. An un­in­spired Man­chester Uni­ted suc­cumbed to a nar­row 2-1 loss ag­ainst Cov­entry City at High­field Road in what would be Wor­ld Cup win­ner Nob­by Sti­les´ fi­nal fir­st-te­am ap­pear­ance for The Reds. 

In their pre­vi­ous five ga­mes, Man­chester Uni­ted had beaten Not­ting­ham For­est, Sto­ke City and Wolver­hampton Wan­derers and lost to West Ham Uni­ted and Der­by Coun­ty. Cov­entry City, for their part, had drawn ag­ainst Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur and West Brom­wich Al­bion and lost to Hud­dersfield To­wn, Ar­senal, and Ever­ton. In front of a 33,000 ho­me crowd, Ernie Hunt put City ahead in the fifth min­ute of the en­counter and then ad­ded a sec­ond goal for the hosts four min­utes af­ter the in­ter­val. And al­though Ge­orge Best re­duced the de­fi­cit for Uni­ted on the hour ma­rk af­ter a com­bin­a­tion wi­th Pad­dy Cre­rand, the red shir­ted men were un­able to find an equal­iser in the re­maining time and it all ended in a 2-1 win to The Sky Blues. The res­ult dropped Man­chester Uni­ted down to a dis­ap­point­ing 12th place in the top-flight ta­ble, where­as Cov­entry mo­ved up to 10th po­s­i­tion. As for Nob­by Sti­les, the dy­nam­ic and en­er­get­ic mid­field en­for­cer would move on to Stan Anderson´s Middles­brough where he made 57 Sec­ond Di­vi­sion ap­pear­ances for the club be­fore he fin­ished his pro­fes­sion­al play­ing ca­reer at Pre­ston North End. Cov­entry City Te­am: Bill Glazi­er, Wilf Smith, Chris Cat­tlin, Da­vid Cle­m­ents, Ernie Machin, Jeff Block­ley, Wil­lie Carr, Ge­off Strong, Ernie Hunt, Billy Raf­ferty, Bri­an Alder­son. Sub­sti­tute: Den­nis Mor­timer. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Al­ex Step­ney, An­thony Dun­ne, Fran­cis Burns, Pad­dy Cre­rand, Paul Ed­wards, Nob­by Sti­les, Wil­lie Mor­gan, Bob­by Charl­ton, Alan Gowl­ing, Bri­an Kidd, Ge­orge Best. Sub­stitutes: None.

 

Manchester United Quickfacts

Man­chester Uni­ted lost 2-0 ag­ainst Cov­entry City at High­field Road on the 16th of Mar­ch 1968. Ernie Machin and for­mer Old Traf­ford mid­fielder Mau­rice Set­ters re­cor­ded the goals for the ho­me team.

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