After losing to Hull at home, Coventry City bid farewell to any lingering slim aspirations of qualifying for the Championship play-offs. Mark Robins acknowledged that his team “ran out of steam.”
The Sky Blues were responsible for their own demise that evening, giving the Tigers the lead and third goals on the board through mistakes, and giving up a contentious penalty for the second that the manager and replays indicated was given outside the box.
But even though they were clearly trailing from their weekend exploits, City persevered until the very end, showing great character and effort to tie the score twice with brilliant free kicks from Kasey Palmer and Bobby Thomas that found the far post. In this article, Sky Blues reporter Andy Turner examines some of the key talking points from the 3-2 loss at CBS Arena on Wednesday night.
Startling statistics supporting weariness
Wednesday night’s 3-2 loss to Hull City was mostly attributed to physical and emotional exhaustion from Sunday’s thrilling FA Cup semi-final performance. Mark Robins felt unable to start Haji Wright, Ellis Simms, Milan van Ewijk, and Callum O’Hare, four players who had finished the entire distance at Wembley. The manager disclosed that the latter had run twelve and a half miles during Sunday’s thrilling match against Manchester United, and he was so broken that he was unable to even make the bench.
“The turnaround has occurred far too quickly, as evidenced by Callum’s inability to participate in person,” stated Robins, revealing the information obtained from the player’s GPS vest. “After running more than 17 km on Sunday, we wanted him to be on the bench, but he just wasn’t able to physically recover, even though some of the other players had done something similar.” There’s no way to get over that.
“They typically cover 12, 13, and 14 km, thus 17 is not included. They played for around 130 minutes, and there was also the psychological component of having to get up for the penalty shootout if you scored at the end of the game and it was disallowed.
“They haven’t meant to make the mistakes, but they have done it because they are extremely tired,” he continued.
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