A pun? In my blog? No way, man. It weren't me.

Anyway, I noted in my last post about how poor Ben Turner was against Watford. He had a git of a game. He was that poor, I felt he might be dropped.

So in typical Ben Turner fashion, he got the nod against Derby on Saturday and played an absolute blinder. Ben, you brilliant bastard.

Looking back at it, he was about the only player to have a decent game throughout. I've no immediate problem with that because as a team we showed discipline and organisation, and we bloody well won. I think Aidy knows that there was also a lot we did poorly though. He's no fool.

As stupid an excuse as it sounds, it didn't seem like our players coped all that well with the combination of an early start and slick pitch. Throughout the game they seemed slow to react to situations and to make decisions, while even the easiest of balls they managed to make a pig's ear of controlling. All, I must add, except Doyle, who was uncharacteristically solid in doing the basics.

I know, I was shocked too.

I have to say, even though Derby were passing the arse out of the ball, I was never too worried about them breaking us down. They had a few moments in the game, but there was never really anyone in the box to finish things off for them. Kris Commons still impresses me every time I see him, mind.

Our first goal came out of nowhere as everyone was still waffling on about how unlucky Carsley was to have his effort cleared off the line. In the resulting attack, McSheffrey showed us a glimpse of what he used to do back in 2005. Bloody gorgeous quick feet to draw in Leacock's tackle, leaving a penalty decision even Jorge Larrionda couldn't miss. Lukeyjukey walloped it away once again. Unfortunately that was to be Jutkiewicz's final contribution of note, as he pulled something and had to be replaced by big Clive Platini.

Clive was top again, and the good thing about having him in the team is you know that if you're not playing well and you're lacking the confidence and the touch to play flowing football, you can just tonk it up to him - he'll do something with it.

We were out very early for the second half and this achieved bugger all as we duly conceded an early equaliser. I can't really attribute blame to any single person, it was just slack defending all round.

It was the second half where Ben Turner came into his own. Marshalling the defence in a way that someone his size should. I watched the game back on Sky+ and it seemed it wasn't just home bias that noticed his performance - Ian Darke was particularly keen on him. And rightly so.

One thing that he didn't get much credit for was the quality of the winning header. It looked far from a simple finish from where I was. Either way, it was great to see him cap a great game with his first goal.

Not quite as great finding myself on tele when I watched it back later on that day. It wasn't quite a close-up of Fred Collins proportions, but after 15 years of going to watch them, it was nice to finally get my blurry mug on screen in some form.

Late winners are always the best.

It's a little late, but I have a selection of words to say about Coventry's first week of the season.

We're only 13 days in, but all in all, it ain't been too bad. First game was spot on. The League cup, nobody could give a fig about so we all ignored it. And Watford, we're all agreed we were diabolical, but the ending to that match was exactly why I send myself off to watch this football team. When things like that occur, it renders everything magnificent.

Of course, there are always gripes (some trivial) :

• I still can't see where Doyle has gained this reputation as a "hard-man" from. 
• Wins breed wins, so we could have done with smashing Morecambe.
• Why does Ben Turner make it so bloody hard to trust him?
• Drunken fat fools talking utter bullshine during the Watford game, then leaving 10 mins before the end. Some people.
• "You don't know what you're doing".... 3 games in, and people are already shouting this to Aidy. Have they run mad? Weren't keen.

But to be frank, I don't really care about the gripes at the moment. We've started well again, let's see if we've finally got a manager who can sustain it beyond August. 

And even if he can't, I've seen enough already to show me that he knows what he's talking about. He's all about winning, and that ticks a rather large box with me.

Positives so far..

Nathan Cameron - There's no way he's 18.
Richard Keogh - Like a maniac in the playground and I love him for it.
Freddy Eastwood - Boothy knows how to get best out of him.
Clive Platt - If I slagged Clive beforehand, I take it all back now. That point against Watford was his.
The fightback vs. Watford - You become so accustomed to us rolling over and accepting defeat, you don't expect things like that to happen. I'm going to Vicarage Road every year.

Negatives (only where there's a genuine concern ... )

Poor performance vs. Watford - The comeback was great, everything else about the game (until big Clive came on) was a pile of Mark Bright. We can't drop to those levels again.
Turner's performance vs. Watford. I really want this guy to be good, but he really struggles to string back-to-back performances together. I'd keep an eye on him.

Well, those are my thoughts so far. Pretty standard start for us. 

I shouldn't say it, given how the team reacted everytime I wrote it last year... but let's keep it going.

As promised, my little piece is now up on The Two Unfortunates. They've done a cracking job tracking down fans from every Football League club, each with enough time on their hands to pull something together, so bravo to them.

As ever, I've predicted that we'll make the play-offs...

ergo, we probably shan't.

Well, after a relaxing break watching England bugger up the World Cup, the time has now come for me to return to my day job; saying the occasional thing about Coventry City.

I've pulled together a little season-preview wotsit for my new friends at The Two Unfortunates, so I'll let you see that once that goes up. They run a Football League blog, and they don't do it by halves. It's bloody comprehensive, so have a looksy.

In the meantime, I'll compose myself, gather my thoughts, and take some notes on tomorrows game against West Brom.

Looking forward to hearing everyone's attempt at pronouncing Lukas Jutkiewicz.

Due to moving house and generally not wanting to jinx anything, I've spent the last month watching and keeping schtum about Coventry, in the hope that things might have finally changed for us.

In case you've missed it (it happened so quickly, you may have), we've managed to throw a potentially good season away once again.

16th March 2010. We found ourselves 2 points off the play-offs, playing at home, against the team in 6th. It was all set up for us to finally make that step up.

What's happened?

Another capitulation. 

For one reason or another, our players and manager just couldn't seem to get up for the games when they really mattered. It's always "nearly" good enough. Apparently because we got so close to the play-offs, this now constitutes a successful season?

Not sure how. 

This happened last year. In fact, my tongue-in-cheek prediction for this season was that we would "go on a good run in February, leading us to all to believe we're going to make the play-offs... only for us to finish 17th".

No team should be so predictably feeble.

We've got 4 games left now, but the season has already gone and the players know it. Last season we finished with 54 points in what was a generally dire season. That wasn't good enough.

We're going to struggle to make that tally this year. All I can see is how we've managed to throw away a hard-earned period of good form with a flurry of abject performances again. So what do you choose to judge? The good form, or the capitulation?

We all buy our season tickets in the belief that our club will try for the entire season. For 3 years in a row, that hasn't happened.

It's all well and good saying you're being a good fan by giving them all the time in the world and showing constant acceptance of whatever tripe they give us, but is that really going to do any good?

Just look at the Scunthorpe game in December - finally the manager and the players came under widespread pressure, and amazingly won 3 games in a row. Coincidence? I don't think so. If you keep accepting rubbish, that's eventually all you're ever going to get. It's only when we question things that we ever see any change for the better. All we want is a team that we can trust to perform, regardless of the occasion.

The way we've folded this season - is that acceptable? It ruddy well isn't.
It's just embarrassing.

21 days into the month, I felt compelled to comment on February so far. It's been alright hasn't it?

Since the Blackpool game (when we were all questioning Coleman's motives and ambition) there's been a noticeable shift in attitude around the club. While Coleman spent January talking down our prospects, the talk this month has changed and there's far more determination and belief about our performances too. 

The interviews going into the Forest game were particularly refreshing, as they were all I'd been hoping to hear the entire season. Oggy obviously realised that cowering and pandering to teams in pre-match interviews was only giving them the advantage, so came out with some fighting talk. Nothing crazy, but just enough to make everyone realise that we weren't going into it playing for a draw for once. And the players appeared to respond, because we ended up putting in our best performance of the season. In the words of Richie Bernau, "marvellous stuff there".

And with 10 points out of a possible 15, it seems we've now told losses and draws to bugger off (in the main) and realised that wins are far better. 

Crystal Palace 0-1 Coventry 
Newcastle 4-1 Coventry
Coventry 1-0 QPR
Coventry 1-0 Nottm Forest
Bristol City 1-1 Coventry

The most telling thing recently is that while we've continued to take the lead in every single game, we're now managing to show some steel and get the points from the games too. Here's a stat; we've taken the lead 19 times in the league this season.. Newcastle have taken the lead in 20. To me, that can't be just a fluke. I'm just glad that we're now starting to believe in ourselves and realising that with some organisation and positive tactics, we can actually beat these teams.

Just to reiterate the relative unimportance of draws. You see how we lost to Newcastle (as everyone is), then beat Palace a few days later, having gone for the win in both games? How many people would have taken 2 draws before those? We all would have wouldn't we, mainly cos it sounds good - 2 games unbeaten blah blah.

Fact it though, it's all about 3 points in the Championship. Ipswich will tell you that. They've lost far less than anyone else in the bottom half, but they're still fighting a relegation battle, simply because they've drawn too many.

A loss followed by a win will always leave you better off. 3 points plays 2.

I'm just mighty glad to see the attitude has changed recently, and unsurprisingly this has coincided with decent a climb up the table.

We just need to guard against complacency though, that's our biggest enemy. We had that great run last February, and we all started talking about play-offs. But that soon fell apart, so we need to make sure we maintain the same levels of positivity, concentration, determination and effort so we can finish the season on a high.

We're playing the bottom 3 in the next 3 games - we couldn't ask for a better opportunity to really thrust ourselves up the league even more. 

I know we're often scared to talk about winning runs because we've been burnt before, but I think it's time the players and manager forgot about guarding against failure and go for it. Like we always say, if they at least give it a go, we'll be happy with that. What we don't want is negative interviews, tactics and targets of mediocre league finishes. They simply don't work for us.

We're not the finished article but you don't take the lead in 19 games (21 if you count the cups) if you're a bad team, do you?

Has been confirmed on the official website.

Best completes Magpies move

I doubt we'll get to hear the details of what we've received for him. You have to remember we paid a decent sum to bring him to club, and he's become a full Republic of Ireland international in that time.

A tribunal would have seen us get far more than the £500k that it's rumoured we received for him. I'm sure of that.

We've lost him on deadline day, with no sign of a replacement coming in and seemingly minimal compensation.

And on a separate note, his farewell to the club turned out to be a crescendo of undeserved boos, even given how vital he's been for us this year.

I reckon we're going to miss him.

Very difficult to believe our manager actually set out at home to achieve a draw against the mighty Barcepool. He bloody well did though.

Following on from praising Swansea to the rafters and dismissing ourselves as a bunch of talentless prats (not in so many words), Coleman's build up to this game again focused on how the team that he's spent 2 years creating is actually no bleeding good at playing football, so we're just going to try well hard at kicking things and hope we get a clean sheet from the match. (Again, reading between the lines).

That's really going to install confidence in the team isn't it? He seems to forget that we'd won 3 league games in a row at the Ricoh, and were playing a Blackpool side who'd only won once in their last 5 so were hardly setting the league on fire.

Quite obviously, this never came into his thinking. This was best demonstrated by him deciding to persist with a formation from the Playing-away-at-Old-Trafford Handbook.

Leon Best got the nod to play up front. On occasions, you hope that a 4-5-1 formation will turn itself more into a 4-3-3. Listening to our manager prior to the match, the focus was very much on our one and only striker doing "a lot of unselfish running with no reward".

What this means in real terms is that our lone striker, in a home fixture (i.e. the one person who you'd really want to be selfish and being on the end of all the chances we would create) was being told that his job was not to bang them in the net - but to perform Coleman's favourite move; run around like a lunatic leaving no-one in the box.

Annoyingly, Best chose Saturday to have one of his most ineffective games of the season, so we didn't even get the lunatic side of things.

The first half was bad. None of the attacking players (and I use the term loosely) seemed to have a clue about where they were supposed to be playing. All except Bell that is, who impersonated a life-size table football man for the first 20 minutes of the match. This was essentially him patrolling an area no bigger than a pair of Jay Tabb's pants.

A slight ray of light was Carl Baker, who was at least trying to link up the midfield and attack in a hoof-less way. Chances fell to McIndoe and Best early on, but neither could finish. Even Baker was far too tentative though. Throwing him into the middle of the park and asking him to dictate the play of a Championship match seemed to be a bit too much.

For a team that has supposedly been working on making it hard for the opposition to create, we didn't do a very good job of hassling Blackpool. They looked confident, and stroked the ball around us with ease. While they were doing what all footballers are taught at the first day of football school (passing), our boys were playing as if they'd had that side of the game trained out of them. Every pass seems to be an effort to us this season. There's no eagerness to get onto the ball, and when we do get it, we soon run out options and end up giving it a way. I'd suggest this is a by-product of spending all our time focusing on how the opposition might hurt us, rather than looking at how we might attack them.

The second half should have been a different story. Again, Blackpool were the more attacking, with young Villa prat Barry Bannan looking like an absolute world beater for them. Then again, you could put Paul Trollope against Stephen Wright and I think he'd come out of it looking good. Unfortunately, while I'm making a joke of it, Bannan really was brilliant.

But things should have all changed when Ormerod got his marching orders for supposedly belting Gunny. Now, I didn't see it, but if our own player has to go off because of it, and our own fans around that bit say that he's been whacked - I for one believe them. I hear Blackpool have concocted about 4 different versions of what happened, but a bit of solidarity wouldn't go amiss from certain quarters (Clive).

Anyway, here's the "equation".

Coventry (11) v Blackpool (10) @ Ricoh Arena + more attacking formation + motivation = 4th home win in a row.

Simple maths.

Here's what happened instead

Coventry (11) v Blackpool (10... but still playing like 11) @ bewildered Ricoh Arena - home ambition - positive tactics + negative manager = EXACTLY THE SAME TEAM, TACTICS AND PERFORMANCE UNTIL WE CONCEDE AND HE'S FORCED TO ALTER HIS STANCE.

Seems to be a recurring theme of games just lately. No really drive to go and win.

Freddy, Morrison and Deegan all came on to try and salvage the game for us. I'm still trying to work out what Leon Best has done in the last 2 weeks that suddenly warrants him now being booed off the pitch though. He may have had a less than effective game, but booing him? Very odd behaviour. Maybe I misread it and it was actually a booing of Coleman's tactics - I'd guess it's a bit of a mix.

Having moved Baker over the wing, we immediately looked threatening, and the goal came from him getting to the byline and pulling the ball back. Something that all good wingers should do. Neither of our current first choice wingers possess any sort of pace to be able to do this, so in normal circumstances, you'd be entitled to expect a change. Under the current regime, I can't see them looking beyond McIndoe and his new yellow boots with go faster stripes (which don't work).

All in all - unbelievable that we didn't look to take the game to them until we went a goal down. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but I'm gobsmacked by our management and ambition at the moment.

We've gone from having decent momentum over Christmas, gearing us towards a push up the table - to the immediate brakes and reins from our manager.

Needless to say he thought that the result against 10 men Blackpool team at home was "a point gained".

It beggars belief.

Disclaimer:
It's getting embarrassing writing much the same after every game. So for this, I apologise (sort of). I'm well aware that some fans enjoy optimism and the "keep the faith" attitude towards the club and its current progress, and I respect that. While I like to think I'm quite a rational person, I can't bring myself to congratulate consistently below-par performance and hold blind faith, as I genuinely think it does more harm than good. This is my angle when I write things in this blog - some will agree, some won't.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, even though it might seem it, I'm not the negative git.

Coleman is.

Haha, etc.

A team who have only scored 11 goals at home all season, against a team set out by their manager to defend, defend, defend.

Only going to be one result wasn't there.

Quite where the logic is in going all-out-defence against a team that find it notoriously difficult to score goals, only Christopher Coleman will know. Everyone seems well pleased with it though.

We're now 17th by the way, but that seems to have gone unnoticed. It's become the norm.

I also find it strange that our manager seems to think that one successful element of play has to be to the detriment of another. If we want to keep a clean sheet, we have to completely abandon any attacking tactics. After 60 mins he decided that our window for winning the game had gone, and shut up shop. I always thought it was the job of a manager to develop a team that is capable of both. It seems that ours has one aim, to hold on.

The more I write, the more I realise what I say will be unpopular. I can't really do much about that. If I thought what I'm thinking was unfair, I'd keep it zipped. But I'm very clear in what I think it should be fair to expect from our football club and manager. Consistently negative tactics and a refusal to aim higher than 16th isn't really anywhere close. I seem to say it in every post, but we're still not progressing, so it seems to me that our approach is way off.

Looking at the bigger picture, we're talking almost 23 years now without even a sniff of success, and we're still being told that "we're not ready", "we have to be patient", "we're building".

Stupid clichés all the time, guarding against defeat. Too easy.

I'm sure there must be a few people out there who find it worrying that our manager has such a low opinion of the team he's created. Basically, you can tell that he thought the best we could achieve last night was a 0-0 draw.

What chance have you got!

Right, probably about time I let my thoughts be known about this match. I'll just write a list of my musings as they come to me.

1) Yes, Clinton scored a nice goal...but he shouldn't be our first choice striker. I read him say in the paper today "If Forest can rotate, why can't Coventry?"

I'll tell you why Clintonio - it's because the Forest team has developed a style of play and winning mentality over many months that the best teams do. We won 3 in a row (which would normally be classed as the beginning of a winning run) and thought that we were suddenly brilliant, all over again.

Maybe if we'd stuck with a winning team as far as possible, we'd have a mentality and fluency about us by now. Instead, Coleman's still fiddling with the formula, and even when he comes across something that works (Best and Eastwood up front), he tries to be clever and bring you (Clint) back in.

All because he fancies you.

It's been the Clinton Morrison show all season.

2) Following on from this thought, Martin Cranie was playing out of his skin at right-back when we won those 3 games in a row, so shoving him over to left-back is rubbish. Wright did okay in the previous league match, but if you're talking longevity, Cranie is the best right back at the club. You've got to play him there.

3) There is something wrong with our tactics and ability to adjust during the game. We've played 29 games this season (league and cup), and gone ahead in 16 of those. That's a whole load of opportunities to win and progress.

We've won 8 games all season. To me, that's a very poor ratio from winning positions.

We went ahead against Ipswich, and almost immediately went into our shell and seemed scared to go for the win. People who "know" football say that's sensible. I don't think so, I'd say that's unrealistic and a negative mentality. You've got to understand the ebb and flow of a game - when to attack, when to defend. We can't do either it seems. One thing that is for certain; you can't rely on holding teams out for the entire game if you score in the first 10 minutes.

That's ludicrous.

It seems simple logic that if we play well up until we score, it might actually be because we have got something about us when we play our natural game. So why we're constantly trying to curb that and just encourage teams onto us once we do go ahead, I don't know.

4) Substitutions. Christopher, bloody identify when players aren't doing it, and change them.

And this doesn't mean identify them in the 80th minute. It's pot luck if they're going to even get the ball in that time. Give people the chance to make an impact.

Basically, take McIndoe off if he's rubbish again and bring on Carl Baker. He earned a decent crack by showing McIndoe up in the previous game.

5) We can't concentrate for an entire game. It happened against Portsmouth, and the same keeps happening again and again. Right before half-time, right after half-time, right before full-time. There's no professionalism to get the job done and they just switch off too often.

You could see it so clearly on the TV. We scored, and were so pleased with ourselves (lots of high-fiving and inane grinning) we thought it was perfectly okay to forget about shape and concentration. Gunnarsson may not be a right back, but he was an absolute country mile out of position. McPake then decided to commit himself when there was no cover, and the rest was just shocking.

It's all about decisions, and we make some crazy ones sometimes.

6) Coleman embarrassing me with his rant.

Oi, Chris. Why not focus all that rage and anger at the players who can't defend for 10 seconds?

Fact is, we scored after 6 minutes injury time, so your argument is void anyway. I appreciate the passion, but if you can't defend for 10 seconds, you don't deserve any points.

All you've done is deflect from the real issues of the game - bad tactics and our team's lack of professionalism. I bloody hope this is all a front and behind the scenes you're working like you've never worked before to address these problems.

I doubt it though.

All in all - the result was gutting. All the momentum and confidence the players built up in December has probably gone now because of this fiddling and piddling with the formula.

Bloody hell fire.