WINNING FORMULA!
NEW PLAN TO END SEASON WOULD SEE CITY CROWNED CHAMPIONS
WE’RE all agreed it’s been a fantastic season for Coventry City so far.
The Sky Blues made a steady start to the campaign, winning all their ‘home’ games up until mid-october and drawing all but one of their away fixtures.
Looking back now, had Mark Robins’ men picked up more points on the road with missed opportunities when the full three points slipped from their grasp at Bolton, Sunderland, Peterborough and Oxford, they’d have been virtually out of sight at the top of League One by now.
As it stands, however, they’re still pretty well off, sitting at the summit, five points off second-placed Rotherham United and seven off the chasing play-off pack with a game in hand over most with ten games left to play.
City had all the momentum going in their favour when football suddenly came crashing to a halt following their hard-fought 1-0 victory at Ipswich Town last time out.
Here we look at the good, the bad and the ugly side of the season so far. THE GOOD
Two games in the space of four short days was arguably a key turning point in the season – the back-to-back 4-1 victories at Wycombe Wanderers and Tranmere Rovers which got the awayday monkey well and truly off their backs.
The Sky Blues first travelled to Adams Park on December 29 to face then leaders Wycombe, who were four points clear at the top of the division, and promptly blew them away with a sensational Matty Godden hat-trick after Sam Mccallum had stunned the Chairboys with a superb third-minute opener.
Coming as City’s first league win on the road, it doesn’t get more impressive than achieving that feat against the top of the league.
Three days later, on New Year’s Day, Godden followed up with another treble at Tranmere as Coventry flew out of the blocks with another third-minute lead, with Jordan Shipley completing the incredible scoreline and result that lifted City to third in the table.
From that point on City never looked back away from home, chalking up another five wins to date. THE BAD Leaving politics to one side, the worst point of the campaign from a footballing point of view has to be the defeat at Rotherham United.
The Sky Blues travelled to the New York Stadium full of confidence on the back of an unbeaten start to the season, having won five out of their ten League One fixtures and drawn the other half.
The omens didn’t look good when news filtered through on the Saturday morning that Wesley Jobello had suffered a cruciate knee ligament rupture in training and would be ruled out for the season.
And it didn’t take long to realise that City were seriously out of sorts, going 2-0 down inside the first 20 minutes with a Matt Crooks opener, followed by a Michael Smith penalty six minutes later. To compound the misery, Kyle Mcfadzean was sent off just before the hour for a penalty offence that enabled Smith the extend the lead from 12 yards before Crooks also completed his brace 15 minutes
They came with that idea to stop us from playing and kick us off the pitch and that was that. Mark Robins
from time. Fortunately bad days at the office have been few and far between, but that has to be the worst.
AND THE UGLY
City’s third league defeat of the season has to go down as the ugliest.
It came just before Christmas at Shrewsbury Town where Mark Robins’ side were bullied from start to finish, the manager revealing afterwards that his players had been told prior to kickoff that the Shrews were going to kick them off the park.
Sam Ricketts’ side adopted the roughhouse tactics and it worked a treat for the home side who came from behind – Jordan Shipley having given Coventry a 26th minute lead – with Scott Golbourne equalising on 68 minutes before Shaun Whalley snatched victory at the death.
Robins said afterwards: “They were clattering them off the ball and hitting them, but before the game one of their players told one of our players that that was what they were going to do today.
“They came with that idea to stop us from playing and kick us off the pitch and that was that. And in those circumstances you need to have control of the game and we didn’t do enough and in a nutshell, that’s it.”