Jack Ross still pleased with Sunderland’s position despite defeat to Coventry

Posted Sunday, April 14, 2019 by PA

Jack Ross is happy that Sunderland’s automatic-promotion hopes are still in their own hands despite the club’s unbeaten League One home record disappearing with a remarkable 5-4 loss to Coventry.

The Black Cats suffered their first home league defeat of the season on an afternoon when they were never ahead in a nine-goal thriller.

The result means they have dropped out of the top two, but while they trail second-placed Barnsley by two points, they have a game in hand on their promotion rivals.

Ross said: “We’re still in a position where if we win our five games, we get promoted.

“What this has done is made the only way we can guarantee that is by winning all five. That is not easy, but it can be done.

“It brings pressure, and I’m going to need every single player who goes out there to be able to deal with that pressure.

“I think there’s some of them that can do that at the moment, but I need others to come along and find a way of dealing with that too.”

Bright Enobakhare gave Coventry the lead and despite George Honeyman levelling, Sunderland found themselves 3-1 behind following goals from Amadou Bakayoko and Jordy Hiwula.

Charlie Wyke and Will Grigg levelled at half-time, but Coventry went further in front through Jordan Shipley.

Max Power made it 4-4 with 21 minutes remaining, only for Conor Chaplin to net the winner for the visitors.

Ross said: “Individually, some players didn’t play well. There’s no point shying away from that. But at this stage of the season, with five games to go, it’s not a time for finger pointing and apportioning blame.

“If you want to blame people, blame me. Don’t blame the players because they’ve given an awful lot this season.

“But I’m not going to hide away from the fact that some of them individually were way off the levels they need to be at. They have to accept that, they’ll know it, but then they have to respond to it.”

Coventry’s win lifted them to within eight points of the play-offs, but manager Mark Robins thinks they have left themselves too much to do.

Robins said: “I think we’re too far behind. It’s eight points with four games, so that’s almost certainly going to be too much. We still have to play Doncaster on the last game of the season, but I still think it’s probably a bit too much.

“You can see Sunderland have quality players who know how to score, but we’ve got good players too. We just needed to get on the front foot and create things for ourselves, and we were able to do that and score some goals.

“We’ve had some good results away from home this season – that result means we’ve got a better away record than a home one this season.”