John Eustace was quick to remind fans that the Championship is a marathon rather than a sprint after seeing his old club Coventry City bring a dramatic halt to Blackburn Rovers’ impressive unbeaten start to the season that saw them riding high in third place going into Tuesday night’s match at the CBS Arena.
The Sky Blues, in contrast, had managed just one measly victory ahead of kick-off while a poor performance against Swansea and abject display at Leeds had sparked growing anxiety amongst supporters that the wheels were starting to come off Mark Robins’ outstanding reign at the club.
The form book, however, was turned on its head on the night with the home side racing into an early lead from the head of Jake Bidwell and dominating for most of the match before running out deserved 3-0 winners with second half goals from Haji Wright and Brandon Thomas-Asante.
“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.”
He added: “It is a 46 game season in the Championship, you have your ups and downs and we have to learn from tonight. 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.”
Asked if he thinks Coventry have enough quality to live up to their pre-season expectations and be challenging this season, the 44-year-old told CoventryLive: “Yeah, definitely. They’ve had a bad start in the last couple of seasons and always come through it. They have got a very good manager there, an extremely talented squad, a really exciting squad of players.
“You could see they made four or five changes today and the players who came in they have spent millions of pounds on, so they are a good team with lots of Championship experience and lots of fire power, so I am sure they will be up there.”
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