The gloom was lifted from the CBS Arena when Coventry City pulled off an impressive comeback victory over Luton Town.
The Sky Blues had dropped into the bottom three after giving up a goal lead at Queens Park Rangers last Tuesday night and travelling home from Loftus Road with just a point for their efforts in a match that they should really have won, going on the chances they created.
Torp’s pep talk
Mark Robins has revealed the inspiration behind Victor Torp’s sensational equaliser against Luton Town. The Sky Blues boss made the substitution in the 66th minute, sending the Dane on for Tatsuhiro Sakamoto who had been deployed in a more central role as a number ten rather than out wide on the wing.
Torp, who showed City fans what he is capable of in terms of his shooting prowess when he hit a sublime long-range effort against Sheffield Wednesday on his debut in January, curled in a stunning shot that went in off the post to level the scores at 2-2, with around 15 minutes to go.
“We had just had a conversation as he was going on and I said to him, if you get a chance to shoot just take it because your finishing is outstanding,” said Robins, speaking after the 3-2 win.
“I am not trying to take credit for it because it’s all down to him and the players because they were calm and found him. And he transferred it onto his left foot and his technique to finish that was incredible. I was watching it and wondering if it had enough bend and thankfully it went in off the post and it gave us that lift to go on to win. When it went in I felt we were going to go on to win the game, and thankfully that’s what happened.”
What Robins said to staff while losing
The Coventry manager was so encouraged by his team’s overall performance levels, both individually and collectively, on Saturday that he was convinced that even if they had lost it would still have provided the catalyst for an upsurge in the club’s early season form.
“Even at 2-1 down I turned around and said to the staff, whatever happens this is a template for what we need to do moving forward. It was high energy, determined and it had a lot of quality as well.”
Unscheduled visitor halts play
It’s been a strange start to the season for Coventry City, not least for the fact that two matches have been stopped due to outside forces. The first, you may recall, was due to a lightning storm over the CBS Arena against Swansea last month. With the players called off the field by the referee for several minutes, it certainly disrupted City’s second half momentum as they attempted to battle back from 2-1 down.
This weekend saw another halt in play when a paraglider flew over the stadium. Fortunately the disruption was minimal this time, with the referee taking the ball from Oliver Dovin for probably a minute at the most while the airborne voyeur passed by on his descent. And once the match official was reassured that the unscheduled visitor wasn’t about to land on the pitch, he handed the ball back to the goalkeeper to restart the game.
Kitch role explained
Mark Robins explained his reasoning behind starting centre-back Liam Kitching at left wing-back. The Sky Blues boss revealed that he’s still haunted by the 5-0 away thrashing from 2021 when the Hatters were 4-0 up in the first half. And when Town had taken a 2-0 lead into the break at the weekend, he must have thought history was in danger of repeating itself in terms of the final outcome.
“Kitch came in to try and make sure that we didn’t get over-run because I remembered the game down at Kenilworth Road where they pulled onto Ian Maatsen and we got battered. The game was over by half-time and we lost 5-0,” the City manager explained after seeing his players overturn the 2-0 deficit and win the game 3-2 with a determined second-half fightback.
“You remember things like that and I didn’t want that to happen again, but in possession I wanted us to be a little bit more than we were. To be fair to Kitch, he has come in and done me a solid job really, and we didn’t deserve to be 2-0 down.
“Things happen in a game and you have to react to it. And then Rudi played there, so to come on and provide that quality going forward and the delivery for the goal for Ellis, some of the play down the left-hand side was really good and he found space and made them work really hard. We didn’t give them any of their usual routes to our goal.”
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