Player Ratings and What could have been

By Knowl. 

The best performance of the season in my eyes, after a shaky first 15, we dominated the game until the 58th minute when a needless sending off very nearly cost us a valuable 3 points.

Balls to the play offs, we are now 2 wins off being safe, how good would that be, to be safe with around 10 games to go?

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Three Parish Notices.

Firstly, the break through may well have taken until the 54th minute but it wasn’t for a lack of effort, chances and more than once did the ball flashed dangerously across the goal mouth awaiting a touch into the net. Clingan had a top quality free kick saved, Gunnar broke through but put his shot wide and Baker went on the sort of run that the Ricoh has never before, yet didn’t manage to find the far corner. In fact the only bizarre thing about the precluding dominance to the goal was the lack of chances that fell to either Stead or Clinton. The midfield was showing the sort of attacking ability we know is there but is very rarely achieved. This was the sort of display that would surely end in a bigger winning margin than we are used to, because even though the strikers weren’t getting their chances the introduction of the Freddies later in the game against a tired Scunny defence would most definitely result in goals.

Secondly, yet within 4 minutes of taking the lead we were down to 10 men and Scunny had the rather fortuitous opportunity to drag themselves back into a game they should have had no chance of gaining any points from. Now I have asked the question in the forum about why we clapped Barnett off, now when you read later you will see that like everyone else in the ground I thought he was having a good game, better infact than McPake, yet we could all the see the pitch wasn’t the sort that the ball was running on, it was the sort of pitch that as a defender you hack the ball clear and defend the resulting throw in. However, once you make the decision to dally around near your goal against a hardworking strike force like the one Scunny process then you had better react quickly. Now I have seen the tackle again and Leon may have fell but he made bloody sure that the Scunny striker wasn’t going to get through. Once both players hit the floor everyone waited to see the decision, when the ref pointed to the spot I heard no protestations from the home end and as soon as it was given it was quickly muted that Barnett had to go and off he did. Now that made me fucking angry, I was fuming, here we were in a game we had dominated facing a penalty and the last third of the game with a man down due to his own stupidity. Thank the good lord for giving us Westie, yes the save was brilliant but the way he reacted and closed down the angles for the follow up was outstanding.

Lastly, but lets not dwell on this, we were brilliant, even with 10 men we continued to attack and get on the front foot and in Baker we finally have a player who isn’t functional, and I don’t mean that as an insult to the likes of Bell or McIndoe, because functional is a far better than it was before SISU, but Baker makes me smile, he makes me get off my lazy fat ass to see what he is going to do, but more importantly than that he actually makes things happen and he makes the opposition look foolish.

Coventry: Westwood, Wright (Cpt), Cranie, McPake, Barnett, Baker, Clingan, Gunnarsson, McIndoe, Morrison, (Eastwood 87), Stead, (Deegan 84)

Subs Not Used: Konstantopolous, Grandison, Hussey, Sears, Turner

Booked: McPake, Barnett x2, Clinton

Sent Off: Barnett

Goals: Stead 54, Clingan 68

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Westie - 8 Makes one outstanding save a game and as alluded to earlier is wasn’t the penalty save that was outstanding but his ability to get off the floor and close down the space to on rushing striker. Apart from that had little to do, however, the goal that Scunny scored was nice to see, if we are to concede I would rather see a goal that was scored and not conceded.

Wright - 7 I have to start off at the start of the game, the amount of times Wright had the ball in space and with time yet elected to aimless punt the ball in the first 15 minutes was driving me to distraction. His distribution at times is getting me down, especially when the game needs to be settled down. Sorry had to get that out of my system. Defensively the boy looks fit, he looks at ease with his role and he is beginning to show the sort of form that many of us expected from, infact the sort of form we saw at the start of last season.

Cranie - 8 Lets not pretend that being played at left back doesn’t limit him when he has the ball at his feet. He often has to take an extra touch than I’m sure he would like. Scunny didn’t trouble him at left back and didn’t trouble him at centre back either, he was as commanding as I’ve seen him at left back and he deserves a lot of praise for his attitude.

Barnett - 4, yet an 8. The tackle when the Scunny player had got on the wrong side of McPake was inch perfect from what I could see. He wins everything in the air and his turn of pace gets him out of his positional immaturity. The sending off has been discussed above and lets not cower from the fact that is now twice in two appearances. He has shown what a player he can be but as we got rid of Ward for similar deficiencies?

McPake - 7 Not the blood and thunder performance many expect to see every game, none the less it was a solid game by the Scot. The only time he was found wanting he was rescued by Leon and his leadership has really come to the fore. Yesterday told me more about how good he could be than all the last ditch tackles will ever tell me.

Baker - 7 The only reason he doesn’t get higher is the pure fact that his creative spark isn’t resulting in more decent chances, his final ball let him down more than once and his decision making, I.e. whether to put the ball on the floor or in the air, to the near post or far, was poor. His ability to beat a man, his attitude, his workrate and the joy he brings to watching Cov is one reason I and many others look forward to go to the Ricoh at this moment in time.

Clingan - 8 What a performance, the full gambit in his range of passing, two top quality free kicks and a tremendous run that resulted in a thunderous shot from the edge of the box that was well held by Murphy the Scunny keeper. The midfield battle was controlled by the Northern Irishman, he read the game brilliantly, he kept us ticking over and even after the sending off he seemed to get even better. The best moment for me was seeing Clingan defending 10 yards in front of the back 4 and not on top of it as he has been at points earlier in the season. MOTM

Gunnar - 8 Now is it the returning Clingan which has turned Gunnars season round? IMO, no, the reason we have seen this upturn in form has been the signing of Deegs, Deegs has shown Gunnar that by breaking into the box, by being a little less fearless and by throwing a little caution to the wind what a player he can be. The run that led to the free kick from which we scored the second from was like a return to last season. He even had two shots from outside the area, I mean that was something which we should be seeing a lot more often.

McIndoe - 7 Gives 100% on the left of midfield and gave 100% at left back. Yes his final ball may not be perfect but to get more abuse for putting over a bad cross than the guy who got sent off is something I can not quite understand. He offers balance and ran the whole of the left hand side once we found ourselves a man in arrears.

Clinton - 8 Worked his fucking heart out. Now I can’t explain why we played long balls to Clinton instead of Stead I can’t answer but I can say that Clinton fought for every ball, he held the ball up by using his body as a shield and he linked up well all across the park. The most telling part of Clintons performance is that he didn’t have one shot in the entire time he was on the pitch yet still left the sort of impression I have not often felt about him.

Stead - 7 Plays very different from Best and is willing to drop deeper and wider to get involved in the play. He isn’t a direct replacement and that might help us get away from our panic punting of the ball. Took his goal well and if he can continue to link as well with McIndoe and Baker he will get more goals before the end of the season.

Subs.

Deegs - Came on to work hard and achieve that aim.

Eastwood - Put upfront to work the defenders for the last couple of minutes.

The Manager

Coleman - 8 We started slowly but we never really looked under any pressure even though we gave a lot of ball away. Coleman needs to get us to calm down earlier in the match, we need to get Baker and McIndoe in the game during these opening spells. Coleman now has a settled side and a midfield which can cause the opposition problems, the signing of Baker could well be the master stroke, Coleman loves his functional footballers, his no risk footballer yet the signing of Baker is the key to winning games. You can break teams down by passing through them but it makes it a whole lot easier when you have a player who can break past players and drags the opposition out of their comfort zone.

After the sending off, we didn’t sit back infact we probably should have had more clear chances than we ended up with. The moving of McIndoe to left back left us secure, the other chances are down to personal preference, I would have introduced the pace of Sears but we can’t all agree with everything can we?

That was the best performance of the season, the best attacking display that I have seen since Coleman took over and if we can continue to develop at this rate between now and the end of the season then we may well entice some of the fans who were looking to do something else with their Saturdays back.

In short. We won, we played well and apart from a moment of stupidity we would be slightly closer to a zero goal difference than we are today.

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