Three days after the Good Friday victory over Barnsley, Megson’s side travelled to Highfield Road to take on Roland Nilsson’s Coventry City on what proved to be a pivotal day in the promotion run-in.
Albion went into the game knowing that victory would move them level with Wolves after their Black Country neighbours had become the April fools having been beaten at home by Manchester City in the lunchtime kick off thanks to a double from Shaun Wright-Phillips.
If that didn’t fire the Baggies fans up enough, there was a little bit of extra spice with former Albion goalscoring hero, Lee Hughes, in the Coventry City line up having moved to Highfield Road the previous summer after City met the £5m exit clause in the striker’s contract.
Hughes came close to opening the scoring in the first few minutes but was denied by Baggies’ stopper, Russell Hoult, and it was the real Albion hero who opened the scoring. Bob Taylor got on the end of a wonderful pass from Jordão to convert from six yards after a quarter of an hour. The Portuguese had become incredibly influential in the run-in with that involvement making it two goals and two assists in three games.
One-nil to the Albion was a common result that season, and so it proved to be once again as Megson’s solid defence held out despite seeing substitute, Trevor Benjamin, sent off with six minutes left in his last action in a Baggies shirt.
The victory not only saw Albion move level with Wolves, but also delayed the inevitable promotion for Keegan’s Manchester City for a few more days.
The Baggies now had momentum with just three games to go.
Division One Promotion Battle – 1st April 2002 | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pld | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |||
1. | Man City | 43 | 28 | 6 | 9 | 97 | 49 | 90 | |
2. | Wolves | 43 | 24 | 10 | 8 | 73 | 40 | 82 | |
3. | ALBION | 43 | 25 | 7 | 11 | 57 | 28 | 82 |