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COVENTRY v BORO - BRIGGSY'S VIEW
It's like Groundhog Day watching the Boro at the moment. Yesterday's game was always going to be hard, an average Championship side raising their game against a struggling Premiership team. This was their cup final and we've already seen Premiership opposition go out to Championship opposition this season. Look at high flying Spurs going out to relegation threatened Leicester City.
As for the game, we started brightly but failed to test their keeper. We even had Southgate up there in the final third. Southgate commanded his area very well early on, winning three in the air against the big Adebola. Our best chance of the first half came on eleven minutes when Yakubu demonstrated good vision to pick out Hasselbaink only for Maton Fulop to get to the ball quicker. Nothing much happened in the first twenty minutes with both teams cancelling each other out, despite Middlesbrough having the majority of the possession.
Most of their better play came down our left through Pogo, with Southgate having to come over to cover. They'd obviously watched the Wigan game closely. Adebola had a shot come cross ball right across the front of goal and happily no one was on hand to tap it into the net. We picked up another injury on twenty-eight minutes when Ugo was injured in a tackle and was taken off for Bates. This gave Mc the chance to shuffle the back line, which was clearly unbalanced on one side. Bates move to right back, with Pogo and Southgate in the centre and Parnaby on the left. Adebola turned Pogo on fourty minutes, continuing his run into the Boro box but dragged his shot wide as Southgate was closing in. Half time.
The second half saw a goal early on. Hall's clearance went straight to Yakubu who headed back across goal picking out Hasselbaink who calmly slotted the ball into the net. We could have doubled our lead moments later only for Yakubu to see his shot saved by Fulop from fourteen yards. But our lead was short lived. Hutchison played a ball into Stern John who was unmarked and acrobatically put the ball into the back of the net. Coventry went from strength to strength with McSheffrey causing mayhem down our right, this brought about another switch with Parnaby and Bates swapping roles. Coventry will probably feel they deserved to grab a winner at the end, but our resolve made sure that didn't happen.
I'm happy with the result as this was never going to be a easy game. As I've said in previous a report, half time during the Wigan game was the lowest I've been for sometime. But I've seen something since then to suggest that those dark clouds are shifting. We showed great fighting spirit to come back from 2-0 in that game and but for a cruel late goal we would have got a deserved point. Yesterday again we showed great fighting spirit to grind out a respectable result. We aren't suddenly going to start playing breathtaking football and win all our games. We must grind out our results and this continues against Sunderland on Tuesday.
We're in the draw for the fifth round, that's all that matters.
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