Matchday Memories: On This Day 2023 See Sky Blues Score Three In Shepherd’s Bush!

MR becomes a Mad Hatter

On this day two season’s ago (15th April 2023) Mark Robins‘ men came away from Shepherd’s Bush, London with a fine 3-0 Championship victory over Queen’s Park Rangers. The Sky Blues were in a fine run with five wins and only one defeat in the last thirteen games which included brilliant away wins at Rotherham United (2-0), Huddersfield Town (4-0) and Blackpool (4-1). City had been 14th in February when the run began and today’s win got us into the top six play-off spot for the first time (when we were still in the bottom three at the end of the previous October). As all Sky Blues fans know this season saw our Premier League chance cruelly snatched away on extra time penalties by Luton Town in the Wembley Play-Off Final later in May.

Viktor in Sky Blue action

There were over 3,000 exuberent members of the Sky Blue Army in the 16,713 crowd in west London. They saw CCFC’s Swedish centre forward Viktor Gyokeres score a brace with a tenth minute opener and a decisive finale two minutes from the final whistle. A couple of minutes earlier our Brazilian midfielder Gustavo Hamer had made the game safe for City with our 86th minute second goal. Rangers situation helped the victory as they were forced to play the last ten minutes with ten man after their injured Balogun had to leave the field with no substitution possible as all substitutes had been used!

The Sky Blues fielded the following side (CCFPA members underlined):-

Gus Hamer in the Sky Blue

Ben Wilson, Brooke Norton-Cuffy (sub. Fankaty Dabo -76), Callum Doyle, Luke McNally, Kyle McFadzean (c), Ben Sheaf, Jake Bidwell, Josh Eccles (sub. Sean Maguire -90), Viktor Gyokeres, Matty Godden (sub. Tyler Walker -77) and Gus Hamer (sub. Josh Wilson-Esbrand -77)

Unused subs: Jonathan Panzo, Ryan Howley and Cian Tyler (gk)

The defeated Hoops (managed by Gareth Ainsworth) were represented by:-

Seny Dieng, Kenneth Paal, Jimmy Dunne (sub. Ethan Laird -73), Robert Dickie, Leon Balogun, Andre Dozzell (sub. Stefan Johansen -82), Albert Adomah (sub. Jamal Lowe -72), Sam Field, Lyndon Dykes, Ilias Chair (sub. Taylor Richards -65 ) and Chris Martin (c) (sub. Chris Willock -72)      Unused subs: Tyler Roberts, Jordan Archer (gk)   Referee: Michael Salisbury

The BBC Sport report of the game can be found here.

Match highlights can be watched by clicking on the link or image below:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0HxHWaXfDI

Here is the 2022/23 Sky Blue squad who unluckily missed out on promotion to the Premier League.

CCFC 2022-23 (May)

Fifth place CCFC (on 70 points) got to the Championship play-off Final by beating Middlesbrough over two legs and Luton Town beat Sunderland. If you need reminding, as well as the 3rd placed Hatters, second place Sheffield United (11 points superior) and champions Burnley a further ten points ahead of them (on 101 points) got their tickets to the Premier League.

At the other end of the table the trio who went down to League One were, in descending order, Reading, Blackpool and Wigan Athletic (bottom of the pile).

Thanks to CCFPA’s Mike Young for sourcing the images.