FAN’S VIEW  2025/26 – COVENTRY AWAY

This isn’t an away day that lends itself to a pub crawl taking in three or four establishments pre-match due to the location of the now called Coventry Building Society Arena.

No matter though as the Byatt’s Brewery Brewhouse bar served its purpose as it always does. Unsurprisingly the ale drunk was mostly Byatt’s and before one knew it a couple of hours had passed talking some sense but likely a load of old bollox too. All part of the day. I didn’t detect any great buzz from the many Sky Blues on the premises. Neither was there doom and gloom even though they’d slipped from the dizzy heights they’d achieved earlier in the season. After 18 games at the end of November they were 10 points clear at the top. Now they only held that position on goal difference and had lost their last two games, both away.

But they were back on home territory and their record thus far in CV6 read 11 wins, 2 draws and just one defeat. Goals scored 31 and in the 14 fixtures they had only failed to score twice. And their opponents on the day were little Oxford United, an out of form team only being kept off the bottom of the table by the Chansiri sabotaged Owls.

I felt marginally more optimistic than the stats suggested I should. After we’d been in the bar for a while Tim B walked in. This was his third away game of the season. The other two were Bristol City and Leicester. Both wins. 100% record. I turned to Mark H and jokingly said we’ll win today now Tim’s here. I wasn’t going as far as putting a quid or two on it but did look up the odds on an Oxford win. Bet Fred were offering 6/1. Mark gave me a fiver and on it went.

I came away from this one feeling deeply satisfied but of course knowing this was but a tiny step we’d taken. I recall turning to a mate not long into the second half and saying even if we don’t get anything out of the game but keep playing like this on our way to League 1, I won’t be complaining about much.

If we had conceded here and gone down by a single goal perhaps my attitude would have been different because the stats were much the same as when I’ve been very critical.

We only had 26% possession, we had no shots on target, we only had seven touches in the Coventry box. Our passing accuracy was only 58.4%.

In comparison the home side’s figures were 74% (obviously), five, 53 and 85.2%.

I sensed a spirit there though that had been lacking at Bramall Lane. Our fans were more behind the team too. It always works both ways. Chicken and egg?  It never quite reached the intense unity achieved at Leicester but this felt pretty damn good even though our numbers were down on recent visits here. That will have had a lot to do with the ridiculously high prices.

This was Matt Bloomfield’s sixth game in charge. We’ve not scored in four of them. It goes without saying that if you don’t score the best that you can hope for is a point from a goal-less game. Under Gary Rowett’s 25 games we kept just two clean sheets.

It also goes without saying that if we don’t win matches we will go down. To do that we have to score goals. Going for goal, as we know, can leave you exposed and the three points aimed for quickly turn into none. We’ll sometimes have to take a gamble but have we got the personnel in the building to get those goals? I can’t quite see it to be honest.

Although we didn’t look like scoring here it seems only right to focus on the positive point achieved. I’ll even go so far as to hug it on this occasion.

Yes, for much of the game we were pummelled. Yes, we rode our luck big time more than once. Yes, their finishing wasn’t of the highest quality. Yes, some of our defending was last ditch. But we kept a good shape throughout and never allowed them acres of space in which to play. We’ve not always been able to say that.

The 3-4-2-1 formation obviously had much to do with how the game went.

It makes sense to have the tall Michal Helik in the middle of the “3”. Christ Makosso to his right looks a player and he’s not 22 until May. It seemed to suit Ciaron Brown being on the left in this formation. No criticism of not having the quality on the ball in this one. Did any of us truly ever have possession of the ball and look to keep it? That was never our tactic, nor did Coventry ever sit back and leave the ball with us to see what we could do with it.

Those with deep analytical tools will have an explanation of why our passing accuracy was so low in the context of playing as we were. I can’t remember having a moan when a pass went to an opponent or out of play instead of to a team-mate.

We’d been under siege for nearly all of the game but this only grew after Will Lankshear was dismissed and we had to survive 21 minutes (13 regulation and eight added) with ten men. The longer it went on the more it became attack against defence. We had everyone back and were just kicking the ball away. Were these clearances deemed to be passes that never found a man?

It would be fair to say the “4” were operating mostly in front of the “3” and none of those players can be called attacking. Sam Long, who was on the right, is a defender all day long. Here he wasn’t exposed as he can be in the right-back position when up against some of the quality pacey wingers the Championship has to offer. The lad from Bicester will fit in wherever he’s asked. The middle two of this unit, Cameron Brannagan and Jamie McDonnell, worked well together. We know what Cam is but are still learning what J Mc has to offer. He’s described as a “defensive mid-fielder”.

On the left of the “4” was one of two debutants, Ruben Roosken. Looks like he’s a left wing-back. He fitted in well.

The “2” were Shemmy Placheta and the other debutant, Aidomo Emakhu. He’s called a forward but today wasn’t the day to judge him as an attacker. I thought he was decent. Placheta, we know has pace and he had our best chance of the game. Neatly set up by Makosso his effort looked much closer to going in on replays than it had on the day.

That leaves the one up front playing that thankless role. Not Lankshear or Mark Harris but Myles Peart-Harris. Bloomfield clearly wants him in the team.

Between minutes 57 and 86 all five substitutions were made. The five that remained were the back three and the middle two of the four. Presumably that was seen as the base which was going to see us through. Tired legs necessitated changes but whether there was any thinking about genuinely trying to win the game at this point I don’t know. Even with Lankshear, Mark Harris and Ole Romeny all on the pitch I couldn’t envisage a goal materialising. I do have to say that I think Romeny is going to surprise us one day with a little bit of magic – but not in this match. I was more convinced here that we’d be less solid with half a different team out there.

Actually it was never half a different team. Lankshear only lasted 20 minutes and was only on the pitch for six minutes alongside Harris and Romeny. Ben Davies didn’t appear until the 86^th minute.

What of his sending off? The second yellow I have no complaints about. Just like my gripe about Harris in the previous FV, Lankshear only had his eyes on his opponent and ran purposely straight in to him. Sod the ball.

His first was a different matter altogether.  We ended up with seven players booked, Coventry just one. Given that they had way more of the ball than us I would expect there to be some imbalance but this was excessive. Ruebyn Ricardo is a referee who not long ago was officiating in the National League and has under 20 games at tier two level under his belt.

It appeared to me that we were being penalised whereas if Coventry did the same, they were not. Peart-Harris had been fouled but the kick went against him. Lankshear said something and that got him his first booking.

Imho there were other glaring errors from Ricardo.

Defensive walls are set up directly between where the kick is going to be taken from and the goal. On one occasion his spray was nowhere near in line.

Perhaps it is me because I’m colour blind and a lot of dark colours look quite alike, but at first and second glance, I thought their keeper, Carl Rushworth, was wearing an Oxford kit.

Then there were the throw ins he allowed them to take some distance from where the ball went out of play. That they were further away from our goal than they should have been is neither here nor there. It gave them an advantage because they took them quickly to ensure that an unmarked man had possession.

Minor moaning perhaps because he didn’t stop us getting a point and we no way deserved more than that.

I watched the vlog of a sensible Coventry fan, one who obviously understands the game. He said Oxford did a job on his team. We were “absolutely brilliant at what we did”, “yes they rode their luck but defensively Oxford deserved 0-0” To his fellow fans who had said that we time wasted and didn’t come to play proper football he said, “what do you expect given where they are in the table?”.

Tuesday brings Norwich to the Kassam. They’re on better form than we are. They’ve won four of their last five and that defeat came at Middlesbrough. This is a really big challenge. Being at home our fans will have an expectation of us doing more attacking than we do on our travels and the opposition will also have a bit of the same thinking, no doubt hoping to pick us off if we do.

The league table continues to make horrible reading and we’re now 4/9 to go down.

However on current form (last 6 games) we’ve collected four more points than WBA, and two more than Leicester – who have also lost six owing to financial misdemeanours – and Blackburn. If this trend were to continue through to the end of the season we’d survive.

That’s my straw clutching over for now. Best thing we can do is to focus on increasing our output per game. Other than Wednesday we’re the only club to have won an average of less than one point per game.