'That'll teach me' - Mark Robins makes big admission after Coventry City fail to turn up vs Swansea
Mark Robins held his hands up and admitted he picked the wrong Coventry City team to face Swansea while accusing his players of failing to carry out his instructions.
The Sky Blues boss kept faith with the ten outfield players who performed so well against Tottenham on Wednesday night but the decision back-fired on the manager as City fell woefully short against a well-drilled and hungry looking opposition who took control with a two goal lead in the opening 32 minutes at the CBS Arena.
Coventry pulled one back and were much improved after the break but a lightning storm resulting in the teams being taken off the pitch for their safety – a situation that served to interrupt City’s second half momentum. Questioned about his team selection, having stuck with his starting line-up, aside from in goal, against Spurs, Robins said: “That’ll teach me won’t it!”
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Asked if he put the poor performance down to tiredness, he said: “It can’t be that, can’t be that. The recovery that they have, they have had time off, had the international break. We have played a couple of games and you expect them to be able to go again and run. We didn’t. We just went out and sat in front and those weren’t the instructions, clearly weren’t the instructions.
“For whatever reason they haven’t followed them. The instructions on Wednesday, perfect. They didn’t get things right all the time but it was a lot better, a lot more spark. You’re right.
“And in hindsight, I picked the wrong team. I should have freshened it up, and generally I do, but I wanted to keep those together and give them another opportunity and it has come back to kick me, and it’s as simple as that. Hindsight is a brilliant thing. I have spent a long time procrastinating and I don’t normally do that either; shall I do it, shall I make changes...?
“I normally make changes and in the end I have gone with it and stuck with it, and you’re right, it hasn’t worked out right today. And for the most part there are no real positives to take because it just didn’t look like us at all. At all.”
City have just five points from their opening six Championship matches to leave them in 19th place in the division, just a point and three places off the relegation zone.
“We have to get back at it, and quickly, because we need to start picking points up,” he said. “And that’s what happens, if you start to fall behind and points aren’t being picked up. If performances are OK, and up to this point they have actually been OK, and sometimes better than OK. Last week was a decent week beginning on Saturday and then on Wednesday. Today was just a fall way back and we didn’t get what we wanted and needed, so we deserved to lose the game, didn’t deserve to get anything from it.
“So I have got to take that on the chin and get on with planning for next week because there’s nothing that I can do about this. It gives me some learning, clearly, and I have got to move this forward and get them ready for a really tough game at Elland Road next week. But the games are all tough, if you allow the opponent to do what they want, really, and that’s what happened.”