Having been a fixture in a settled back-line in his first few seasons for the club, in the wake of Dominic Hyam’s departure last summer and a period of Kyle McFadzean being injured, this year was the time for Michael Rose to step up as a leader of the defence. Under that pressure, Michael Rose has wilted and looks to be coming to the end of his time at Coventry City with something of a whimper, having initially showed a lot of promise.
Michael Rose’s struggles over the past couple of years aren’t due to a lack of talent. Good on the ball, capable of reading the game well and, according to quite a few of his team-mates, one of the quickest players at the club (although, that has rarely been apparent when on the pitch), Rose can be a solid, sometimes outstanding, performer in central defence. The issue appears to be a lack of concentration, whether that’s in individual moments in games or a broader drop in intensity after a decent run of form. As someone who is not physically dominant either, Michael Rose is someone who appears to need his fellow defenders to play well in order to make up an effective back-line, which is why he has struggled when players such as Kyle McFadzean, Dominic Hyam and, latterly, Luke McNally haven’t been in the same team as him.
While concentration and finding ways to deal with physical opponents are shortcomings that can be worked on, Michael Rose is 27 years old and has had the best part of two seasons (with his first year at the level having been injury-hit) to get to grips with the challenge of Championship football and shows little sign of improving. That he had already been superseded in the team by much younger and less experienced players, in Callum Doyle and Jonathan Panzo, even before the arrival of Luke McNally in January underlines how Rose has stalled in his progress in recent years. Unless there are injuries to the players ahead of him, it is hard to see Michael Rose making an on-pitch case for staying beyond the end of his current contract, which expires in the summer.
Sideways Sammy 