Mark Robins admits to a “poor” performance as Coventry City suffers their second Championship loss as a result of

 

Sky Blues manager Mark Robins reacts to tonight’s action at the Cardiff City Stadium and calls it “poor” as Coventry City suffers their second Championship loss. Coventry City match reaction from CoventryLive.

As his Coventry City team lost 3-2 at Cardiff, Mark Robins lamented the team’s shoddy defensive and midfield weaknesses.

At Cardiff City Stadium, the Sky Blues allowed the Bluebirds to score far too easily in the second half after falling behind early to a set-piece goal. Matty Godden scored two fantastic goals for the Sky Blues, the second of which served as a consolation.

The City manager admitted that “the style of the goals was the most upsetting part, but we didn’t start the way we wanted to. Being that we had an extra day of relaxation, we had hoped to start with a tempo. We simply lacked ball courage and didn’t really start to penetrate until the first breakaway, when we scored the opening goal from a corner. Cardiff set up, they are organized, have some strong players, and pace in the team.

READ: Godden scores twice, but Coventry City’s shaky defense costs them against Cardiff City. Blue skies

“But we were a goal down for the first 20 to 25 minutes and we never put a glove on them. We scored, which gave us a slight boost, but we usually have more courage and skill with the ball to find the guy, and we didn’t do that enough. Despite having a lot of possession, we turned the ball over a bit too frequently. Possession is vain if nothing is done with it.

“And then we managed to score twice away from home while giving up three incredibly terrible goals, in our opinion. We don’t allow goals to be scored like that—two after they hoisted the ball inside of us and two set-play goals. We have players on our team who are more capable than that. Cross defense is what we ought to be doing instead of letting.

Robins acknowledged that City’s inability to penetrate the final third is a direct result of Gustavo Hamer’s absence in midfield, which is made worse by Ben Sheaf’s injury.

“We have lost 70% of our success rate in terms of his passing with the loss of Gus and now Ben, but his passing was always penetrative and always got through teams, and that was what we were missing for large stretches of the game,” he remarked.