It might not have been the sort of match that particularly deserved a place in the memory bank or the history books — but Coventry City's Halloween spectacle on Tuesday night at least had them smiling in the Ricoh Arena box office.
The official gate of 27,212 proved to be the biggest for a league game in the club's 14 and a half months at their ' new' home. It topped the 26,851 who turned up for the January Bank Holiday win over Wolverhampton Wanderers.
That gate has only once been bettered at the Ricoh, just under a month after that Wolves game, when 28,120 saw the FA Cup clash with Middlesbrough — as close as the club has yet been to filling their 32,500 capacity. But Tuesday night's crowd was still the highest for a Coventry home league game in just under 20 years.
Just over 5,000 Birmingham fans made the short trek down the M6 to significantly swell the numbers.
Coventry manager Micky Adams did not have much to take in the way of consolation from only his side's third home league defeat in a year. But, up against one of his oldest friends in football, Steve Bruce, who he knows from their days together as apprentices at Gillingham in the early 1980s, he did suggest that the Sky Blues were deserving of better.
"I don't think it was a fair outcome," reckoned Adams. "We were simply on the wrong end of a 1-0.
"We created the best chances in the first half and also in the second. But it did not drop for us and another day it will. If Leon McKenzie's header had gone in instead of hitting the post things could have been different."
Adams was also unhappy with Nicklas Bendtner's match-winning goal — notably the part his keeper Andy Marshall played in it.
"We got caught out in midfield and Mat Sadler has gone down the wing and put in a tremendous cross for a free header for Bendtner," said Adams.
"But, even then, the goalkeeper has got a hand to the ball and it trickles over the line. Any goalkeeper would be disappointed with that."
