Mark Robins hails Coventry matchwinner Martyn Waghorn

Posted Thursday, October 20, 2022 by PA

Mark Robins hailed match winner Martyn Waghorn after the striker scored his first goal in over a year to move Coventry off the bottom of the Sky Bet Championship with a 1-0 win over Sheffield United.

The striker, without a goal since September 2021, stepped up to dispatch an 87th-minute penalty after Viktor Gyokeres was brought down by Chris Basham to secure back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

The Blades had themself struck both the post and the crossbar through Oliver Norwood and Iliman Ndiaye, but remained without a win since the international break in September.

“The dishing out of yellow cards meant that something had to change,” explained Robins.

“What it did do, it gave us the opportunity to change, to bring in match winners, we wanted to get Gus (Hamer) on the pitch, Kasey Palmer onto the pitch, Martyn Waghorn onto the pitch, it gives us something different, a bit more energy and Waggy was outstanding in that 15-20 minute spell.

“He’s ended up being the match winner and rightfully so, we managed to get a really decent move down the right-hand side where Vik (Gyokeres) got in behind, probably only for the second or third time in the evening and he ends up getting hauled down for the penalty, stuck away brilliantly.”

The victory secured back-to-back wins for the Sky Blues for the first time since April after Gyokeres’ goal secured Coventry’s first away victory of the season against Cardiff on Saturday.

Robins said: “Back-to-back clean sheets, back-to-back wins, back-to-back real good togetherness in terms of the fight, the spirit and the support behind the team was what drove the team as well, so there were all those things and a game that lacked real quality to a degree.”

Wednesday night’s win lifts Robins’ men off the bottom of the table for the first time since mid-August and above Huddersfield, despite still sitting in the relegation zone.

Robins added: “We’re not even looking at it because we didn’t start the season. We’re looking at it from Luton, before it you cannot look at it realistically saying that this is where we are, this is what we are, because those games were a joke.

“We needed to build momentum and we weren’t allowed to build some momentum, we’re still eight away and four at home.”

Paul Heckingbottom discussed the two defensive errors that cost his team a chance of victory at the CBS Arena on Wednesday night but thought his side were strong despite going five matches without a win since a 1-0 win over Preston in September.

Heckingbottom claimed: “We were strong, without the ball we were strong, the start of the season affected them (Coventry) but they’ve been keeping clean sheets of late, so we knew it was going to be a tight, tough game.

“With the players we have missing we made certain errors we don’t usually make, without the ball or we’ve been soft in certain moments so we certainly didn’t want to be tonight and we weren’t.

“It’s two errors when I look back, two moments which I weren’t happy with. One’s the penalty and one’s a player just left a runner from a throw-in and that’s it without the ball, so there’s big improvements there.”

Wales international defender Rhys Norrington-Davies also left the field after 10 minutes on a stretcher with a hamstring injury, putting his place at the World Cup in under a month’s time in doubt.

Heckingbottom added: “Let’s not jump the gun, let’s wait and see what happens with that in the next couple of days, obviously he’s upset and we all know why, but let’s wait and see. It’s a hamstring injury.”