Frank Lampard’s Coventry. Every time I hear Coventry described as such, I roll my eyes into my head and remind myself of the time that Sky turned football into a game all about individuals rather than about teams. That isn’t his fault of course but Frank Lampard was one of the huge players of that particular time. His managerial career has been mixed so far, qualified for the playoffs at Derby, qualified for the Champions League at Chelsea, lost a game to Nathan Jones’ Southampton when at Everton and having an amazing season so far at today’s opponents Coventry. The planned career of eventually becoming the England manager seems very much back on track.

As I write, Coventry are the runaway leaders of the Championship, who have had a mini blip recently, losing one and drawing one, but got back to the winning ways last week by beating Bristol City in a game where they didn’t play particularly well but the goalkeeper Carl Rushworth ensured that one goal was enough, in a way that one goal is never enough to win a game for Southampton.

That’s the impressive thing about Coventry – the fact that they can win a game without playing particularly well and a scruffy 1-0 with a clean sheet is good enough. So, they can keep clean sheets and have enough about them to score regularly enough because they have goal threats all over the team in the shape of Victor Torp from midfield and either Haji Wright or Ellis Simms upfront. Their top goal scorer this season is the currently injured Brandon Thomas Asante, who we saw playing for West Brom a couple years ago and he was shite, to be quite honest, but Lampard‘s management has obviously awoken something in him and 10 goals at this stage of the season before getting injured, is a good return. Also in their attacking ranks is Jack Rudoni, widely linked with Saints in the summer before committing to Coventry and I bet he’s glad he did that.

Also at Coventry is Matt Grimes, who until this summer was playing for Swansea City and had been since the Russell Martin days. Every time I saw him play, he always seemed absolutely miles ahead of his team mates who were totally not on his wavelength and this in turn, made him look bad, but now, playing for a genuinely good team in this division, he is thriving and one we certainly have to watch this afternoon.

So, Frank Lampard’s last managerial experience against Southampton, was getting beaten by Nathan Jones and today of course, it’s Tonda Eckert’s job to bounce back from last weeks display of stodgy averageness up at Norwich. It looks like Tom Fellows will be fit so the ‘Big 4’ should all be available. Other than that, it is hard to see too many changes, but if there are to be any then the goalkeeper and a couple of the central defenders may be looking anxiously at the team sheet when it goes up. This is assuming they still pin a team sheet up on a noticeboard. I very much doubt that they do, now I think about it.

I kind of feel that if we want to make a run for automatic promotion, then we have to win this game to show we are serious. We got 87 points two years ago and currently we have 30. This means that in order to match the points total that was enough to finish 4th, we have to win 18 and draw 3 of our remaining 25 games. That tells us two things – today would be a good time to start and that the Will Still era pretty much fucked us up. I’m only thinking about Will because he turned up on social media this week with a photo of him on the touchline, with the Saints badge airbrushed out of the photo. Weird behaviour. It’s not as if anyone is going to forget that you were shite mate, and a big part of the reason we probably need 18 wins out of 25.

There’s a bit of a ‘What the fuck?’ moment with teh team news as Tonda brings in Josh Q and Welington for Captain Jack and Wee Man. Coventry have had a bit of a flu outbreak and both centre backs are changed so there’s got to be a chance there if our attack fires.

Coventry open the game quite brightly by pissing down our left and some quick snappy passes sees a low ball played across the box and suddenly Wellington steps into clear, so maybe it was a good idea to play him off the right hand side after all.

Eight minutes gone and a header from a makeshift centre half flops down to Azaz in the middle of the park and he rolls Armstrong clean through against the keeper and he advances not very far at all before snatching an effort well wide of the post as Rushworth came out. The ball ended up under Arma’s feet because his first touch wasn’t good enough to take the ball into his stride because if it was he would’ve been able to carry the ball much further.

Josh Q produces a good bit of pressing on former Saints target Rudoni and chases him all the way back into the right back position and then intercepts his attempted pass which bounces through to Scienza, who goes straight for goal from the left, opens his body out and goes for the far corner but doesn’t get enough on it and it hits Rushworth’s foot and deflects away. A quick replay on the big screen confirms that Leo probably should’ve passed that to Armstrong.

There’s a bit of a shift in the direction of play after this and Coventry take over. A bit of pinball in midfield he’s the ball drop nicely to Eccles and it’s played through for Wright to take on THB. Wright appears to get in front of him, but then THB gets back alongside him and Wright collapses on the ground appealing for a penalty rather than trying to score. Baz comes out and mops up and no one really complains the referee too much as Wright lays on the ground in the time honoured fashion of a player who knows he should’ve done better.

THB does give away a free kick and earns a yellow card for catching Mason-Clark late and when Grimes puts the ball into the mixer, there is Wright at the back post all alone as we perform our defensive speciality of not picking anybody up, and Baz has to get across to block comfortably enough and besides, the flag has gone up.

Baz is busy again a few minutes later as Eccles goes for the top corner from the edge of the box, but Baz sees it all the way and pushes it away comfortably enough again. It’s a decent save to be fair but he made it look confortable as he could see it all the way. Coventry definitely looking like the better side now.

43 minutes and a shite clearance from Manning is picked up by Rudoni and knocked infield to Grimes. He finds van Ewick in behind the ball watching Josh Q and though Azaz gets a foot in, Eccles picks it up all alone as Manning has still not rejoined the rest of the defence and the cross to the back post, floats over THB and is met by Mason-Clark and drops past Baz into the net. Fucking hell, shit marking, shit goal

Scienza, who has been Saints only attacking threat this half then takes on the whole team again in a bid for a late equalizer and gets right into the penalty area before being confronted with Rushworth and slipping over and managing to kick the ball off his standing foot and behind the goal. Balls.

Half time and that really hasn’t been great with Coventry being by far better team, especially in the last 20 minutes. As a half of football, it was kind of a non-event until Coventry scored but we have not been great particularly upfront where it’s Scienza or nothing much. I’m already thinking that we will do well to get a point out of this.

Expectations of the second half all change however as a crap clearance by Baz is deflected into midfield and Welington gets in front of Da Silva, who then smashes the sole of his boot into Welington’s shin. You can tell by the players reaction that this is not a great challenge and the referee Hurczeg gets the red card out straight away. Off you fuck. To be fair, there are not many complaints from Coventry, but Lampard immediately makes a sub, I assume to bring on a new left back. Tom Fellows is warming up and I really think we should get him on if he’s remotely capable of playing the rest of the game. We don’t however.

Coventry have pretty much given up on attacking so it’s going to be low block time and up to us to break it down. We still have Welington looking incredibly uncomfortable on the right but he wins the corner which is headed away and ends up back with Scienza who chips in a brilliant cross to the far post but THB can’t get his head to it and Josh Q takes a swing and connects, but it goes nowhere near the goal before Coventry get it away as far as Jander. He plays it short to Armstrong on the left and his right foot in swinging cross is met by Nathan Wood who heads down and in past Rushworth. Brilliant cross and a really good header. 40 minutes to beat this lot. Come on!

There is a sense that Coventry is still re-organising so in an ideal world we get a second goal quickly and we break down the left with Scienza and Manning, before Manning does really well to pick out Azaz on the edge of the penalty area and he takes a touch but never looks convincing and his shot is easily saved by Rushworth

After that initial chance and with Coventry better organised now, we go into the horrible knocking the ball around at the back mode and we are not stretching them out at all as a result. Eventually, Tonda decides to take off Jander and Welington and replace them with Fellows and Archer, which basically brings Azaz back into midfield and moves Armstrong to the right, thus taking two people out of their best positions to accommodate Archer, who will probably do fuck all. Scienza begins hugging the left touch line and pisses past van Ewick and wins a corner, which he then delivers right under the crossbar. Rushworth punches out to the edge of the box, Manning wins a tackle and it drops to Armstrong who hits a snapshot but Rushworth saves comfortably enough.

I don;t see it happening as again we’re going to slow motion attacking mode and this doesn’t really change until we reach 90 minutes and all of Coventry’s ‘not really injured’ injury breaks mean that there are still nine minutes to go. A Wood effort from the edge of the box goes for a corner. Manning over hits it, THB recycles it back to Scienza and there’s some scrappy play on the edge of the box and Manning having jogged infield from taking his shit corner, absolutely lashes a shot and catches it really well but sadly, so does Rushworth.

95 minutes and another corner and what the fuck is this? Baz is up from the back, with the scores level and four minutes to go. We play the corner short because of course we do, and Scienza and Manning make an almighty bollocks of it, but we manage to get a corner on the other side and Baz is still up and Scienza puts it in under the crossbar and Baz goes up for it with Rushworth, barely touches him if at all but of course the referee blows.

After that little bizarre Baz attacking cameo, the referee decides he’s had enough and blows the final whistle, the game ends and it all kicks off. Lampard gives it the big one in the general direction of the Northam and a couple of our players confront him about it and then it’s load of handbags for a few minutes. Nice one Frank you bellend. In some ways that was an exciting end to what was a pretty weird and flat end to the game.

Overall, it seemed a pretty unexciting game, with not much quality being shown in either area. Saints weren’t great in attack in the first half or the second, with both Armstrong and Azaz having poor games and us relying on Scienza or nothing. Archer didn’t help when he came on. It was almost as if Tonda felt sorry for Frank and decided we play with 10 as well .

I think we probably would’ve taken a point before the game, but the way it panned out was disappointing. There was still about 40 minutes left after equalised so to not put the Coventry goal under a serious pressure in that time was disappointing. A few snapshots from the edge of the box, from which we only brought one, what I would call decent save out of Rushworth.

In general, we were stodgy again today and didn’t move the ball quickly enough. In the first half it was the issue of not having Fellows playing and having one less attacking outlet and one less player ahead of the ball to pass to but in the second half against 10 men and with Fellows on the pitch, we still didn’t move the ball quickly enough to pull the defence around. Bear in mind that Coventry had both of their first choice centre backs missing and we didn’t really cause them too many problems.

The referee got the two main decision right in the game, not falling for Haji Wright’s pathetic collapse under pressure from THB and the red card is a spot on decision and no one can have any complaints about it, except probably Frank Lampard of course, who made himself a complete fucking bell end at the end of the game, which he tried to explain away with a complaint about the Northam swearing at him and saying hurty words at him. It’s probably one of the more embarrassing things I’ve ever seen a manager saying in a post match interview, especially when you bear in mind that nepo-Frank was born into a football family, concentrated around West Ham, so I’m sure he’s heard much much worse. He knows that inciting a crowd is not a good thing to do though I guess we should take it as a compliment that he sees a point at Southampton as a massive deal.

As for our manager, I am questioning the team selection and the tactics in the second half in particular. Welington is not Fellows and we shouldn;t expect him to be but if you play a completely different profile player then you really have to change the way that we play to be effective. We had so much difficulty progressing the ball today, which was down to Coventry being smart and also down to our lack of movement and options, so eventually we boomed it long. Part of that lack of options was Caspar Jander taking goal kicks, with left Flynn Downes. not the most progressive of players, virtually on his own in midfield, with Azaz and his lead boots being the only real chance of getting out.

The choice of central defenders was interesting today with Josh Q again coming in for Jack Stephens. Stephens has been kind of nondescript in the games he’s played recently, often ball watching. Josh Q had some good moments today but he is forever an accident waiting to happen with the amount of time the signals seem to take to go from his brain to his feet. It certainly wasn’t his worst game today and that’s about all you can hope for from him.

The second half was weird. You have to play the ball quickly and you have to make the pitch as big as possible against 10 men. We did the latter but not the former. We kept three central defenders on the pitch and that was preferred as an option than keeping a goalkeeper in goal with Baz going up for a corner when we were 1-1 with five minutes to go. The real comedy of that was that we played the corner short and nearly lost it. However, our subs bench is not what you want when chasing a game. Archer came on and touched the ball maybe twice but he’s the only real option apart from maybe Jay Robinson, who in hindsight would have been a better bet as a striker.

Defensively, we managed to throw in another shit goal, this time with a lack of marking in the middle of the penalty area despite having three big central defenders in there. In addition to them, we had both fullbacks and all three midfield players in there but only one of our players (Welington) was making anyone. Just being there isn’t enough. THB was trying to organize the marking but lost Mason-Clark who was his man. I still feel that we should go to a back four and feel that we certainly should’ve done so in the second half today.

Attack wise it was all about Leo, though he should be doing better with some of these chances he creates for himself. He always shoots with no backlift and is almost trying to place it in the far corner. On occasions I wish he’s just smash it. Arma struggled today to get any decent possession. I feel that he had a lack of decent ball up to him but he certainly could have done more and put Latibeaudiere in particular under more pressure. However, he made up for that with an excellent cross for Wood’s goal and it was good to see the big man make his presence count in the opposition penalty area.

Onwards into the carnage of the Christmas schedule and a vist to the Kassam Stadium in Oxford. Don’t let anyone tell you that anything less than a win is anything but a shite result.