Robins acknowledges Coventry’s promotion push has ‘stagnated’

Posted Wednesday, February 14, 2018 by PA

Mark Robins admits Coventry’s promotion push has ‘stagnated’ following their 2-1 defeat at Colchester.
Mikael Mandron headed home Junior Ogedi-Uzokwe’s cross in the 88th minute to give the Essex side victory and condemn the Sky Blues to a third straight defeat, leaving them three points off the Sky Bet League Two play-off places.
Coventry boss Robins said: “Our promotion push has stagnated – we’ve got a situation where we’ve lost the last three games, two away from home and one at home.
“We have big games coming up – we have 14 big, big games to see where we are in the overall scheme of things.
“We’re really disappointed but we can’t rest on our laurels. We have to work hard and graft and we have to hang in.
“We have a cup game on Saturday and then we’ll get back to it – then it’s the real time that it starts and we need to start picking up points.
“The players had a choice at half-time whether they wanted to go out and have a real good go.
“Confidence is short in one or two of them and maybe they are feeling sorry for themselves but they needed to go out and give everything for the shirt, for us and for the supporters.”
Coventry looked on course for a point after Tom Bayliss’ deflected strike flew in from 20 yards after Colchester goalkeeper Sam Walker had parried Jordan Shipley’s effort, 10 minutes after the break.
It had cancelled out Ogedi-Uzokwe’s 27th minute penalty, which he converted for his first professional goal after being fouled by Rod McDonald in the area.
The win lifted Colchester to within three points of the top seven and extended their unbeaten run to five matches, to the delight of head coach John McGreal.
McGreal said: “It was great to draw level with Coventry on points – we’re three points off the play-offs and it’s all to play for.
“We got a late goal, which we’ve been craving. We got the first goal and you’re always looking for a second, which we didn’t get.
“I thought we should have been a couple of goals to the good but they changed it a little bit in the second half and got a goal.
“Coventry are a tough team to play and we conceded but we didn’t drop our heads and we showed a bit of character.
“I love the personality of the team and what we showed in the second half.
“We’ve got a window of what we want to try and do and it’s one game at a time.
“We’ll try and get the wins if we can but this was a really important win – and I thought that we deserved it.”