City manager Mark Robins is looking forward to the match against Stoke City this weekend at the Coventry Building Society Arena.
The Sky Blues face the Potters in their final match before the international break, hoping to reverse their recent results. Prior to the game, Robins provided an update on the fitness of his squad as well as a preview of the match against Alex Neill’s side.
Key decisions going against the team and bad luck…
When you’ve just lost the games that we’ve just lost, we’ve had some good performances within that, but there have been spells within the performances that have meant we’ve lost the games now. We’ve had decisions go against us once or twice, and we had another decision go against us with the penalty last week. We have confirmation that it was not a penalty, but there is some ambiguity about that.” So I need to do a little more digging on that to get a better understanding of the decisions they made.
“In the West Brom game, there was a penalty and an offside goal against us, and those things can count against you, and they have counted against us. Our luck will turn, but we’ll have to make it happen ourselves, but we’ll have to stay focused and as confident as we possibly can. There’s no reason to over analyse because you can overthink things as well, I think there’s a lot of positives within the performances anyway.
Reversing the trend…
“We’re playing some really good football with a new group of players, and we just have to get on with it.” There is no easy way out of any situation. This division is really tough, unforgiving, and unrelenting, and we know that, and I think each season is completely different.
Because of the changes, this one is essentially noticeably different. But, as I previously stated, it appears to be a broken record at the moment. There are a lot of wonderful things going on. But we know we have to turn that around in terms of results eventually, and we’re all looking forward to tomorrow’s game because it represents an opportunity to start that process.
Up against Stoke City…
“Alex does an excellent job wherever he goes.” They’re extremely well-organized, and he gets his players to play in his style, under his direction, and in a clear manner. They have a clear strategy; tactically, they may change for different opponents, but they overcome what they have. We go into this game certainly hoping to turn the results around but also maintain performance levels in general, because there’s been a lot of good things.
“They’ve got some good players and they’ve recruited, and they’ve changed a lot, but they’ve got some good players in the ranks, two of whom we know pretty well in Luke McNally and Michael Rose.” That will be interesting in and of itself.”
Michael Rose and Luke McNally…
Luke did brilliantly for us last year, as did Michael over a number of years, three, four years and sometimes it’s better for the player to move on and that was the circumstances around Michael last summer, but they were both good servants, obviously Rosey for a longer period of time and he is thought of highly here.
A squad update…
“Injuries are starting to return. We’re now only Kasey Palmer away from a fully fit squad. Fabio is getting there, he’s on the grass, and he’ll be ready to go after the international break, and hopefully Kasey will be as well. (Liam Kelly) He’s training now so he’s around it.
Illness in the group this week…
“There’s been some illness in the camp this week. We’ve had to postpone the Community Day, which shall be reinstated for next Wednesday.
“If you’ve got illness in the camp, people can’t perform at their maximum and it has an impact on that.
“Next week, I’ve got players away then on international duty and there are other players that have got family things going on which means that they won’t be able to go out into the community on that day.”
Callum O’Hare…
“I think that there’s still more to come from Callum but he’s obviously getting closer all the time and those performances won’t have done him any harm whatsoever and will have given him plenty of confidence, I’m sure.
“He’s overcome a lot of a lot of adversity in this year with the injury and everything that he’s had to work towards and that that gives him that that goal of getting back and playing and now it’s getting back to the level that he was at prior to the injury but that will take time anyway but he’s looking okay.”
