Mark Robins: No doubt in my mind Viktor Gyokeres was going to score penalty

Posted Thursday, December 22, 2022 by PA

Coventry boss Mark Robins had no doubt Viktor Gyokeres was going to score his stoppage-time penalty despite West Brom’s attempts at distracting him.

The Swedish international won the spot-kick and then, after a short delay, sent Alex Palmer the wrong way.

His goal secured the hosts a 1-0 victory against a Baggies side that had won their last five Championship matches.

“There was no doubt in my mind he was going to bury that and thankfully he did and we’ve come away with three brilliant points,” Robins said.

“If you look at what happened I think (West Brom’s Dara) O’Shea started to scuff the penalty spot up which he got the yellow card for, they try and slow things down, whether it’s right or wrong I don’t know, that’s for their manager to sort out.

“Ultimately, they’re trying to win a game of football however they can and it took a little bit of time so there’s a bit of thinking time for him, but one thing I know about Vik is that he’ll just be calm and he was.”

The victory marked the Sky Blues’ first since the return from the international break, sending Robins’ men up to eighth in the table.

Robins added: “I thought we were outstanding. In the first half the intensity was good, we moved the ball quickly and created all sorts of problems.

“We had to be really precise with our passing and we missed it a little bit but they defend resolutely, defend really well, play on your mistakes and break from there and try and catch you out.

“That’s a team that’s just won five on the bounce and the quality was there.

“But we got into decent positions to try and hurt them. It was a brilliant performance.”

West Brom boss Carlos Corberan explained his disappointment with the build-up to the penalty that cost his side a point, as Gyokeres twisted and turned his way into the box before being brought down by Erik Pieters.

“We lose one challenge in the space where I put one player to win the challenge,” explained Corberan.

“They create the counter, they create the action, so we didn’t stop the duel in the middle of the pitch, they were better than us in this action and one player was against four.

“Because it was Gyokeres, the player who took the penalty, against O’Shea, Molumby, Wallace and Furlong arrived from the back.

“For me it was the right decision to do from him (Pieters), I don’t know if it was a penalty this action or not, but it’s true that maybe the referee, there were a couple of situations on the limit in the first half which maybe allowed him to whistle.

“It was a very tough game. We were suffering a lot in the first 30 minutes, they were better than us in attack, they were better than us in defence, we couldn’t stop them and in our stuttering attack we couldn’t dominate them.

“In the last 15 minutes of the first half we started to control the positional attack, we started to attack more, we started to attack better and the team started to take a little bit more control of the game.

“In the second half we didn’t suffer, I don’t remember any big actions in defence in the second half, but it’s true in attack we couldn’t create enough chances to unbalance the game.”