Five Points From Three Difficult Fixtures....

By CovSid67
December 3 2006

Dele Adebola squandered opportunities to become a hero for the third time in three games, as Stoke escaped the Arena with a point.

Four points from two tricky away games against two sides in fine form, with QPR unbeaten in five (Including an impressive win away at Cardiff .... well it seemed impressive at the time), and Preston also unbeaten in five (And unbeaten at home for almost two years), as much as the biggest optimist could have hoped for. And, better than that, the performances were a vast improvement too.

Adebola's stunning strike against QPR was typical of what he is capable of, but sadly all to rare in how often he actually does it. And days later, another fine Adebola effort helped Coventry City to a share of the spoils against high-flying Preston - a match Coventry probably deserved to win.

The match against QPR was strange for a number of reasons: the first being that somebody in a Sky Blue shirt finally managed to take a decent corner (Perhaps Currie is worthy of being signed on that fact alone?!); the second was that John Gregory was magnanimous in defeat, as were a fair few QPR supporters (Hats off to all that were); and the last was that Coventry City's players had to travel to this match on the tube as the team coach was stuck in traffic! Myabe the fact that Mickey Adams didn't have time to give a team talk helped a little....

Victory over QPR makes it four wins on the road so far this season, so maybe people can stop bleating about our poor away record?

As for the Preston game, the home side took the lead through Nugent, with Coventry City expecting a free kick to be awarded after a foul by Agyemang on Duffy, and it wasn't until ten minutes from the end (Following strangley positive substitutions by Mickey Adams) that Coventry scored, and helped them to a point their efforts deserved.

Saturday saw us take on another in-form side, with Stoke City, who had won their last five matches without conceding, the visitors - complete with quality loan signings!

Yet again the Skidata entry system caused massive confusion, with some away fans seemingly in awe of such new technology. It's not rocket science getting into the Arena, but it really does seem to be too much for some people to cope with.

It took 17 minutes for the first decent chance to be created, with great work from Duffy seeing him set McKenzie free on the right. His quality cross found the head of Adebola, whose poor header didn't even test the keeper. Another Duffy cross minutes earlier also failed to bring the rewards it deserved....

On 19 minutes a ball fell to Cameron on the edge of the Stoke area. He dwelt on it for too long, but Stoke's efforts to clear saw the ball going towards their goal rather than away from it. Disappointingly, a poor first touch from McKenzie gifted the ball to Simonsen in the Stoke goal when a shot looked on.

Another decent Coventry City attack, which saw McKenzie advancing goalwards, with Curie in acres of space to his left, was stopped when a Stoke player suddenly decided he had a head injury. This might have been more believable had the same tactic not been used on too many attacks from the home side....

There is no need for the ball to be kicked out of play in the Championship when a player is injured, but Coventry City opted to anyway.

Marshall was called into action in the 27th minute when a foul on Clarke went unpunished, and Stoke quickly broke up the pitch.

Neat passing between Page and Duffy set Adebola up for a chance, but his turn and shot was tame, and easily gathered by Simonsen. The Stoke keeper also made a fine save from McKenzie in the 34th minute, though the whistle had already gone for an infringement.

Superb footwork from Currie caused panic in the Stoke defence in the 42nd minute, and it was Currie's cross that saw an Adebola header hit the bar in first half injury time (With the benefit of now having seen a replay, this was almost as bad a miss as his earlier chance). There was time for one last effort from Currie before the whistle blew for half-time.

The second half was far less entertaining, with two of Stoke's best efforts coming from Coventry City defenders!

John replaced Cameron on 65 minutes, and with one of his first touches could have put the home side ahead. Sadly, despite looking to be clean through on goal, his terrible first touch meant the chance was lost. After that he was fairly anonymous....

The in-form Fuller was replaced with only minutes left, and strolled off the pitch at such a slow pace that probably any other referee would have booked him for time wasting. Mr. Miller didn't....


Once again the stewarding left a little to be desired, with wind-ups and taunts from Stoke fans going unpunished (Especially a small section of idiots who were stood next to a gathering of officials), while any Coventry City fan making any sort of gesture was warned about their conduct.

Mickey Adams proved that he might just have a sense of humour, bringing Burchill on for a matter of seconds. As an ex-Port Vale player, this did not go down too well with a few of the travelling morons....

Outside, a fair few moronic Stoke fans seemed to take pride in their notoriety, singing 'We're Stoke And You're Scared Of Us' (Though the word 'Stoke' did sound more like the word 'Scum') - the reason why their numbers are restricted anyway. Idiots....

Worth noting that our four game unbeaten run has coincided with Stephen Hughes being left out!