It took Ellis Simms’ first season as a Coventry City player to really catch fire, but when it did the former Evertonian couldn’t stop scoring. The striker’s first campaign in sky blue involved a nine-game wait to break his duck, with a brace in a win at Queens Park Rangers at the end of September last year.
That didn’t prompt a purple patch, however; indeed the opposite, as Simms ‘ dry period extended by another 15 games without any more strikes to show for his hard work from game to game. After Christmas, though, the forward really came to the fore. There were the hat-tricks against Maidstone and Rotherham, the braces against Huddersfield and Wolves.
To end your first season at the club with 19 goals, having scored 17 of them after Christmas, is some going. Netting within two games of the new season beginning – and, poetically, within two minutes of being introduced at Bristol City in the EFL Cup on Tuesday night – will hopefully prove to be a pointer of what is to come.
Simms hasn’t had to wait anything like the length of time he did last year to get off the mark, and the manner in which he took this winning goal at Ashton Gate, having been played in by Kasey Palmer, taking the ball in his stride, holding off the last man and powerfully placing the ball with great authority in the far corner, suggests Simms still has that sharpness in front of goal.
“Ellis worked hard,” boss Mark Robins said. “There was a spark when he came on, the intensity lifted for a little while. The five changes caught them on the hop, you can’t adjust. It gave us a little bit of an edge, but the fact that we got into a position where Ellis was able to take the chance and tuck it away was great. He finished it brilliantly. We had other chances after that to finish the game, but it was disappointing because we didn’t pick the right pass.
“Ellis is really talented, but they’re not daft. They see players coming in to take their place or take game time away from them, but they’ve got to be realistic as well and understand that it’s a 46-game season and they need to be not burnt out. They’ve got to be ready to enter the field sometimes to finish a game off or start the game and have a right go to and keep the team in the game. That’s what you’re looking for – different players, to utilise the squad.”
It’s true, Simms must maintain his goalscoring form in the face of fresh competition from Brandon Thomas-Asante. The Ghana international, West Brom’s top goalscorer in the last two seasons, only increases the pool of attacking options available to Robins, who paired the two in the final half hour after introducing Simms in place of another option, Haji Wright.
“We can work smarter, in a way which showcases everybody’s talents, and we’re not there yet,” Robins added. “Brandon worked hard, for very little to be fair, but he looks really sharp, but we’ve got to get him in areas where he can affect the game in a positive way for himself. People like him need to be having shots on target, chances on goal, he was once or twice offside having moved too early, but then again the pass has to be released.”
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