After all that huff and puff, yet another perfectly winnable game has eluded us.

I think the first thing to acknowledge is that up to 70 minutes, we were the better team. Up to 70 minutes, we had more fight than Swansea. Up to 70 minutes there was only one side who really felt they could win the game.

But eventually, those 70 minutes were not enough, and that big 7-0 was a key point in the game (I'll come back to this later).

There's been a lot of keen words said about how well we tried. Now, I'm not one to go bandy about work-rate; the way I see it, it should be the norm that a player gives his all. If they're not working their arses off, they're not doing their job. That said, when you've 11 players on the pitch working together to make it impossible for the best passing line-up in the Championship to play football, you've got to give credit where it's due. We worked tirelessly.

The quality in the final third wasn't there though, that was clear. But we still did enough to worry them, and if we only had it in us to create genuine goal-scoring chances, we might have taken the lead long before our top-class fitness training kicked-in and our legs turned to frankfurters.

We should have been ahead though. Boothroyd didn't mince his words when it came to the penalty decision. He's right; it was a definite penalty, and the only question you've got to ask is why would a striker who has an open goal and is about to score his first goal in months, pass up that opportunity in favour of going down?

There's no reason other than if he was impeded. The goalie made a right hash of things, and the best he could do at that moment was to drag Jutkiewicz to the ground. He did so, and got away with it.

The referee got that wrong and we're right to be angry about it.

However, that was not the reason we lost the game. Boothroyd has complained that the referee did not "do his job". Well Aidy, he's not the only one.

Going back to my earlier point, as we hit the 70 minute point in the game, there was a very noticeable drop in our intensity. This isn't hindsight speaking, I was saying this at the time. Since half-time, we had pummled Swansea in every sense of the word, and they couldn't cope with our pressing. Gunnarsson was fantastic (if you know me, you'll realise that's not something I'll say regularly) and Lukas ran himself into the ground.

But if we were going to win the game, we had to keep the same level of performance up for the full 90 mins. As soon as the signs of tiredness appeared, that was the point to react and shuffle our pack.

There was a reaction alright, but it wasn't by Boothroyd. Brendan Rodgers was right on the money, making purposeful subs when he saw the game needed it. He bided his time, and did what our own manager is always preaching about - he managed the game. He recognised the point when his subs would have most impact, and sure enough the game was flipped on its head, while we were left persisting with a line up that had clearly hit a brick wall.

I want to be clear that this isn't a criticism of the players. As a team, we stuck to our task and did everything but create the chances to score. Nathan Cameron's inability to pass the ball to teammates is, as ever, a common gripe of mine, and Lukas needs to work on his sharpness around the box. But it's fairly clear to me why we did not win the game on Tuesday; a lack of adaptability and awareness by Aidy Boothroyd.

Our players were tired, and to maintain the intensity and domination we were enjoying, he needed to make changes, at the very least to keep the Swansea players on their toes. He didn't though. He just stood there conversing with Father Ted while the pattern of the game changed, and his opposite number pounced on our vulnerability.

Don't take this to be a Boothroyd-bashing post or anything. I'm not saying the bloke should be sacked. I'm saying we had a chance to win a game against a very good team, but he was unable to read the game and it cost us. That's his job, and if he'd done it better (like Brendan Rodgers) I'm sure there were points in that game for us.

It's worth noting that Swansea scored in the 76th minute, which gave plenty of time to rally and go again. 

But nothing. That was the most frustrating thing. He showed zero-bravery in his use of subs, and just watched for 15 minutes as his team went through the motions - surrendering another 3 points in the process.

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!

You know you've played badly when the biggest cheer of the afternoon comes 80 minutes into the match, after the opposing left back mis-times a clearance into the stand.

Yep. It's a pretty easy blog to write this one, as the entire team was so poor it left me with only a few choice adjectives to describe the performance. I don't think I can come up with a better word than "clueless", though.

After the Ipswich game at home, spirits were high, and rightly so. The shape, confidence and attitude of the team seemed entirely different to what we've been used to in previous seasons. So, even though we'd flattered to deceive a few nights earlier against Doncaster, my mindset against Swansea was one of "nevermind, we'll pick it up again".

That (as so often is the case with Coventry) was pretty naive. The game yesterday bore no resemblance to the high-paced nature of the Ipswich game, and that was what disappointed me most.

Clingan, McIndoe and Van Aanholt, the new players who'd previously looked so assured, seemed to have inexplicably developed a case of the Michael Doyles. Passes were going all over the place, and this eventually spread throughout the team to become one big game of "pass the buck".

All football fans have to be willing to accept that their team will lose games, and will have the odd blip. It's something as a Coventry fan we've grown to accept as a given. The one thing that is difficult to accept however is when the team follows up one game where they've been totally outplayed and have underperformed, with an exact replica performance in the next.

I got home and read through what some people were saying in the forums. As usual, anybody questioning the team was immediately branded "fickle".

This cliché is not something I agree with. I don't think it is fickle to be annoyed when they perform in the manner they did yesterday. 4 games in or not, if we're looking for any sort of consistency this season, it has to be addressed when there are signs that performance levels are dropping. That's not fickle, that's simply striving for the best. We are better than our performance yesterday showed.

I got involved in one thread, because while I don't like outrageous statements and hysteria just because we've lost a game, I also find blind-faith and undue praise when the players themselves must know they have played poorly, just as detrimental.

Here's an extract from my thoughts, or as I have fondly come to know it (in my head) - Rantathon 2009 :

"Get a Grip Guys!" ¦ IC Coventry Forums
alanmahon_uk wrote:

I agree, calling for the manager's head and saying we're now relegation fodder is over the top. But I think what we have to acknowledge is that we've just seen 2 wholly unacceptable performances in the space of a week.

As far as I can see, ignoring how poor we were against Doncaster and almost expecting us to be better today has led to an equally poor performance.

We didn't learn any lessons from the other night. The first touch and anticipation by our players was awful. The passing was aimless and uninventive, and by the end of game individuals simply began hiding rather than digging in and forcing the issue. There was an air of complacency because we were back at home, rather than a determination to get back to winning ways.

I don't think sensationalism after a couple of poor games is ever the way to go, but at the same time ignoring any performance which is as poor as the last two have been is very dangerous too.

The trouble we had last year was there was no pressure to succeed. If we had a bad game, the same old excuses would sound out about us only wanting to improve on the previous useless season. All that attitude will breed is an acceptance of mediocrity.

The accusation of being "fickle" is one that seems to be thrown at anyone who questions the team if they play poorly. The last 2 games have been very alike some of the nonsense we had to put with last season, and the one thing we can't afford to do is to fall back into the trap of ignoring when things go poorly.

And that doesn't mean calling for Coleman's head or berating individuals after 4 games. It just means letting the players know that there is a certain level of performance we all know they're capable of, and giving them the kick up the backside when like today, they fall way below that.

Listening to Coleman after the game, it sounds like his mindset is very similar. While he probably feels a duty to curb the fan's expectation to a degree, I have a feeling he is expecting more this season than another tiny improvement. That's the way it should be.

You only have to remember our performances against the top teams last season, as well as look at the teams that have gone up to the Premiership over the last couple of seasons, to see why most Championship clubs should be thinking the same.

They all show what is possible, so wiping out performances like the last couple is going to be key if we have any aspirations at all of following the likes of Burnley, Hull or Stoke this season.

Some of this might seem harsh, but since when has a team got anywhere in this league by being anything else.

Come on City, let's go again...