Millwall 0 Coventry 0 - Wake Me When It's Over....

By CovSid67
August 11 2005

Chuffed after Saturday? Disappointed after tonight? The football season is well and truly back. And it hasn't taken long, but Coventry fans are already arguing amongst themselves over the contributions (Or lack of!) from one or two players....

Gary McSheffrey had two early efforts for Coventry, and a late chance to win the match, while Barry Hayles proved a nuisance for the Coventry defenders. And that, as they say, was about it as far as entertainment went!

Sadly, there were more bookings than goal chances in this match, with Richard Duffy managing to pick up his second yellow card in two games - this time for hauling down Hayles after a terrible pass from Marcus Hall had dropped him in the mire. Had the incident not happened so close to the half-way line, the colour might just have been red.

One player who did see red was long-throw expert Adrian Serioux, and with his disappearance down the tunnel went Millwall's best chance of creating anything! He was dismissed soon after the re-start for a second bookable offence, though just to prove nothing changes in football, the side with 10 men looked better than the side with 11 (Though neither side looked very good!).

This should have been Coventry's cue to run riot, but they simply had no answer to Millwall's stubborn defending. One Stern John effort had the commentator shouting "goal!", only to then have to alter this to "somehow saved by Marshall". The excited call almost woke me from my slumber....

Dele Adebola was withdrawn (Despite being a contender for MOTM in the first hour), to be replaced by Morrell, though a fair few supporters thought Scowcroft of John being replaced would have been a better call.

For this match it seemed Stern John had reverted to the norm, offering very little to the side (Though he did manage to pick up a booking!), and it's surely time that a player of his undoubted class was used to his full worth? You don't score 59 goals in 84 international matches if you haven't got something about you! Time for Micky Adams to buy a drawing board (Or for Mike McGinnity to ask fans to have a whip-round and buy one for him), and work out how to get the best from SJ, else he might as well just sell him.

Hughes, as he was versus Norwich, was virtually anonymous again, and it's to be hoped this is due to the shin injury that saw him sit out most of pre-season, rather than yet another Coventry City player going totally AWOL after being given a contract....

The positives from this match (Found some!) were that once again Bywater looked more than capable, and Heath and Page looked solid in defence (Though Page, and Millwalls' Lawrence, were fairly lucky to stay on the pitch after appearing to come to blows). And, as a result, we kept a clean sheet!

Most supporters would probably have taken two away points from the first two tricky away fixtures, but you can't help but get a little greedy after taking a cracking point away to the Championship favourites last weekend....

It's clear to most that we are severely lacking in pace, and there's only about two weeks left to put this right....