My old club’s in a false position

Athleic’s striker writes every week for Chron Sport

THE chance to take on Coventry City is a special one for me personally.

Five years ago the Sky Blues became my first professional club. I automatically consider them to be a Championship side and it is quite odd seeing them in npower League One.

I always look for Coventry's results. It will be good to see some of the backroom staff who remain from my time at The Ricoh and there are familiar names in the team too: David Bell, Gary McSheffrey and Jordan Clarke, who was in the youth team as a hot prospect when I left the club.

Jordan is a fantastic player, as we knew he would be coming through the system; and Gary has plenty of experience of playing in the Premier League.

I believe their position at present is a false one. They are second-bottom of League One, but much of that could well be down to the disruption behind the scenes, which may have unsettled the players.

Coventry still have some serious quality in the squad: Kevin Kilbane, goalkeeper Joe Murphy and on-loan striker David McGoldrick, for example.

Having appointed Mark Robins, they will come good. He has a very good track record from managing Rotherham and Barnsley and I am sure that trend will continue at Coventry.

As much as they will be hunting a victory, we certainly need to claim one ourselves — especially in front of our own fans. There is a lot riding on Saturday's game. A win can change everything in terms of league position at this stage of the season and I am sure if we play as well as we did at times against Brentford, it will come for us.

As a group, we felt confident going into the game at Griffin Park on the back of three matches unbeaten. Against Scunthorpe, we had been the better side and should have had three points.

We managed to carry that into the opening 20 minutes of the game against Brentford. Of the two sides, we were the sharper and appeared the more confident.

I'd go as far as to suggest the quality we produced in that section of the Brentford game was the best all season in the league campaign. The old cliché that goals change games then applies.

A mistake was made at the back by us and they finished it off very well.

As well as giving Brentford a big lift, it led to us questioning whether our own approach was the right one. The remainder of the first half was evenly fought, and the game became scrappy after the break.

But as time wore on, we really got on top of them and it was obvious they were nervous about conceding. You could see that by the six players they had operating in defence at the end. We have to take heart from that.

Bees goalkeeper Simon Moore made a couple of stunning saves to preserve his clean sheet.

Moore ended up in the national newspapers' team of the week — while we ended up disappointed not to have claimed a point.



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