Gordon Strachan is on course to equal a personal record he would rather forget.

Coventry City travel to play Arsenal at Highbury today (Sunday) without an away victory for almost a year.

They last won on an opponent’s ground on 3 April last season when they beat Sheffield Wednesday.

Strachan said:

"I went a year without an away win when I played at Leeds United and we had won the championship the previous season. I can remember exactly how the run came to an end; it was at Southampton.

"Benali was trying to see the ball out of play, but I slid in and hooked it back to Gary Speed and we scored. We won 2-0, but we didn’t break the run by brilliant football or a change of tactics, it was just a piece of luck.

"Maybe it will need something like that for us to break this run."

Leeds failed to win an away match in 1992-93 and they broke the sequence in the fourth away game of the following season at The Dell on 11 September 1993.

Strachan will warn his players of the tightness of the Highbury pitch.

"It can surprise people," he said.

"It is a tight place to play. The surface is so good that the ball moves quicker along the deck.

"The surface really is perfect and the next step from that would be astroturf. The really good players, and Arsenal have a lot of them, don’t mind playing under a bit of tightness.

"They can roll players when they feel crowded and they have the brains to play one touch, two touch. It is the mere mortals who find it difficult. The lesser players need more room and more space to work. They tend to get rid of the ball under pressure.

"But we have got to try to take something from the game and the way we have played over the last couple of weeks I am expecting something from it."