Coventry City 0 Brighton 5 - Post Match Reaction

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Man of the Match for Brighton (h)

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The LAST Word

Hmmmm. Where to start.

Well, we've played 4 and lost 4 and those 4 teams occupy the top spots in the PL. Yes we've had a tough start. Brighton are a high scoring side, before facing City they scored 3 at Chelsea, 4 against Villa and 4 against Tromso - they have now scored 17 in the last 5 games. You could also argue that nothing is falling for City, keepers are pulling out worldies, goal mouth scrambles don't fall our way, centre halves are scoring from 35 yards and every mistake we make is punished.

That is life in the PL though, its full of world class players. Brighton had arguably 5 first team players missing yesterday and were more than a match for us, even with 11 a side. I thought the first half was fairly even, they started and ended better, we had a good spell in the middle. Crucially we didn't score and then conceded a goal early in the second half, as against Arsenal and the half time team talk goes out the window. It then goes over the horizon as Awoniyi gets sent off and the game is done. Sure City battled on, backed by the SBA which was mentioned on MOTD, but it was a hopeless cause at that point.

City aren't helping themselves though, despite not getting the rub of the green. They concede bad goals, whether that's 4 at the back or 5 at the back. Take the first goal yesterday, it was a great flick, turn and finish by Kostoulas but just look at the build up.

1 is Boscagli who has just crossed the ball in, MVE is miles away from him. 2 is Pascal Groß who is about to run onto the ball and head it to goalscorer Kostoulas. Onyeka and Grimes are ball watching and miles away from Groß. 3 is Kostoulas who is going to receive that header with time to control it before Pinnock or JDS can get to him. Its a poor goal to concede.

The second goal is simple a ball forward.

The ball has just bounced and its Yalcouyé vs Amenda, 5ft 6 vs 6ft 4. Amenda either wins the ball or he takes out Yalcouyé. Even then he's a long way out and Thomas can't get across and pulls out of a challenge, Pinnock is out of shot and level with Thomas. One header and chest and he's taken our whole back 3 out. As the middle of the 3, should Thomas not be sweeping these things up, rather than being ahead of Amenda?

The worry here is that its one PL game before a long international break and City face the real possibility of getting to mid October with no points and no goals. The first thing they have to do is stop shipping goals, we'll all take a 0-0 at Forest. At some point the ball will run in our favour and we'll score but that's no good if we concede 2 poor goals at the other end.

A bigger worry for me is that SFL doesn't seem to know our best team or our best system. I'm not sure what Yirenkyi has done to be left out but the midfield needs pepping up, it seems too pedestrian with Grimes and Onyeka. EMC and Rudi both contribute and put shifts in but it needs more. Whether that's from Yirenkyi or Hamer in the middle I don't know but there has to be some drive or spark from the middle of the pitch, someone orchestrating things. Looking ahead to Villa in the cup its a chance to try something different and try and find a winning or at least more solid formula. With Awoniyi suspended for 3 games City will have to try something different, surely its not just a straight swap for Simms and we carry on.

A bit of perspective though and a lighter note to end on, just a few years ago we were conceding 6 at home against Yeovil. Things look worse as Ipswich and Hull have started well. Sections of the media will love to write negative headlines and articles with SFL in charge. Stats will be rolled out about 5 games without scoring in the PL for City, going back to 2001. Fans and players need to ignore that noise, concentrate on ourselves and at some point we will hopefully scrape a win following a goal that hits someone's backside and things turn.

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