Gus left out to save him from a ban
MARK Robins has revealed exactly why he left Coventry City’s newly crowned Player of the Season of out the last match of the campaign.
Gustavo Hamer – who scooped the top award, as voted for by the Sky Blues fans at Saturday night’s presentation evening at the CBS Arena – was conspicuous by his absence from the matchday squad at Stoke.
The 24-year-old was at the Bet365 Stadium where he was fully fit and available for selection but deliberately omitted from the teamsheet. Given that the Brazilian-born player was on 14 bookings, one more would have meant he would have been suspended for the first three games of next season – a risk Robins didn’t want to take.
“That’s spot on,” he told the Coventry Telegraph. “You don’t
want him suspended for any games next season, but it’s not an ideal scenario to have to face is it, because you have got somebody who is one booking away from a three game suspension and a lot of those are avoidable I think, so he’ll have learned a lesson. He’s definitely learned a lesson and hopefully he’ll be a little bit wiser next season.”
The fact that Robins is banking on Hamer being part of his squad next season is a clear sign of the manager’s intentions to keep one of his star men this summer when he, along with Callum O’hare and Viktor Gyokeres, is expected to be the subject of intense interest and speculation linking him with other clubs.
“My intention is to keep everyone together and add to it,” said Robins, “but we don’t live in a fair world do we, so we have to wait and see what happens because the summer window is always an interesting one.”