Catching the eye, brilliant balance, O’Hare replacement – things learned from latest Coventry City friendly
Coventry City pre-season news from CoventryLive as we pick the bones out of Tuesday’s pre-season friendly against League One side Stevenage to see what it told us about the weeks and months to come
Coventry City continued their unbeaten pre-season programme with a relatively comfortable victory over League One Stevenage – the club’s third friendly fixture of their summer schedule.
Although conceding in only the second minute from a lapse in concentration and organisation at the back, the Sky Blues quickly recovered with goals from Justin Obikwu, Bobby Thomas and Fabio Tavares before the break in an entertaining run-out that ended 3-1 to the Championship side.
Having already beaten League Two Port Vale 3-1 behind-closed-doors and gone toe-to-toe with Spanish top flight side Getafe CF in a goalless draw, City now head to Germany to face SV Darmstadt – recently relegated from the Bundesliga – this weekend. So what did we learn from Coventry’s third pre-season game? Here we take a detailed look at what the game revealed for the season ahead…
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Working towards starting XI
Having played two completely different teams in each half of the club’s opening two friendlies, against Port Vale (3-1 win) and Getafe (0-0), Mark Robins upped the match minutes for his starting XI at Stevenage, giving all but Fabio Tavares – who has recently returned from an ankle injury – 66 minutes before making wholesale changes with a different ten players seeing out the last 24.
Tavares was replaced by Tatsuhiro Sakamoto on the hour, so City fans travelling to Germany at the weekend can expect to see Tuesday night’s second XI, minus the injured Ben Sheaf, starting against Bundesliga 2 side Darmstadt and getting 65-odd minutes in their legs before changes are made.
Starting XI against Stevenage: Brad Collins; Jack Burroughs, Bobby Thomas, Liam Kitching, Jay Dasilva; Kai Andrews, Josh Eccles; Jamie Allen; Fabio Tavares, Justin Obikwu, Aidan Dausch.
Second XI: Ben Wilson; Milan van Ewijk, Joel Latibeaudiere, Luis Binks, Jake Bidwell; Ben Sheaf (Ryan Howley), Jack Rudoni; Kasey Palmer; Tatsuhiro Sakamoto, Ellis Simms, Ephron Mason-Clark.
Notable absentees and injuries
Haji Wright and Victor Torp didn’t travel, with Robins revealing afterwards that the striker suffered an ankle injury against Getafe and will be out for an unspecified time. The good news, however, is that he’s not in any pain and the manager appears hopeful it’s not too serious and that the USA international will be back soon. Midfielder Torp, meanwhile, is nursing a groin strain which, again, doesn’t appear too bad.
Elsewhere, Raphael Borges Rodrigues was at the game but sat out with a thigh strain which he suffered against Port Vale, while new goalkeeper Oliver Dovin was also a spectator, having only trained once with the squad and nursing a sore shoulder, which he suffered at Hammarby before joining City last week. He is, however, due to train again on Thursday (July 25) and therefore could make his debut at Darmstadt.
