Mark Robins wants Blackburn thrashing to be Coventry benchmark

Posted Wednesday, October 02, 2024 by PA

Coventry manager Mark Robins hailed his side’s 3-0 win over Blackburn as the Sky Blues ended Rovers’ unbeaten start to the Sky Bet Championship season.

Robins’ men had won just one of their seven previous matches this season, but goals from Jake Bidwell, Haji Wright and Brandon Thomas-Asante secured Coventry a much-needed victory.

Robins said: “It was a great win, much needed for confidence and belief, for the supporters, but this season we’ve played some really good football and not got what we deserved apart from Saturday when we deserved nothing.

“It was just a little bit of an anomaly. If you had played so well the previous week, you expect to try and build on that and it didn’t happen.

“That can happen with young players, a bit of lacking in self belief or whatever. But there was a difference in them yesterday. It was as if that game on Saturday hadn’t taken place and they came in and were absolutely in the right place.

“Tonight we started off really well. The line was led really well by Brandon and Haji on the left and Tatsuhiro (Sakamoto)’s injury meant Ephron (Mason-Clark) came on the right and worked really hard and picked up some positions in possession.

“I thought we were really good first half. They’ve been good so far and I thought we were good value for the win. We’ve had 18 shots and a lot of them have been really good chances.

“We needed to get a really good performance tonight and that’s what we saw but they are capable of that. Can we set that standard now, that can be a benchmark and can we keep going and try to improve on that?”

John Eustace admitted a disappointing night for his high-flying Rovers side after they suffered their first defeat of the season in the west midlands.

The Blackburn boss said: “A really disappointing night. I thought we were a little bit off the pace. We started quite well, had half a chance, but apart from that we weren’t at our normal levels which is disappointing.

“This is the Championship. It is relentless. We’ve come to a really difficult place, been on a good run, and we just couldn’t get our final pass off.

“I thought we were in some really good areas and the final ball just wasn’t good enough.

“We were just off the pace of getting tight enough to them as well so it was a bad night for us.

“We have to learn from it. We were up against a very good team who have spent a lot of money over the last couple of seasons.

“Their squad is a very good squad and we have to realise these are the levels we have to get to if we are going to compete with these teams week in and week out.

“We have to learn from every game we play and it is important that we react to it and have a really competitive game on Saturday.

“It is a 46-game season in the Championship, you have your ups and downs and we have to learn from tonight.”