After missing out on a crucial, winless-run ending victory at home to Huddersfield Town in the final minute of stoppage time on Monday night, what had looked a slow start to the season for Coventry City is in danger of becoming a bad one. It’s not just the lack of results, but the lack of any indication of what this team is about which is making it increasingly hard to believe a turn around is to come.
The Sky Blues make the trip to a Queens Park Rangers side that were expected to struggle this season who they are level on points with. Instead of this being the kind of away game that Coventry City should be looking to win, this is now an important match to avoid being dragged down into the wrong end of the table. If this team is better than it’s currently showing, now would be a good time to do so.
Expected Line-Up
With the injury situation being what it is, it is entirely possible that Mark Robins will not change the starting XI from the one that lined up against Huddersfield Town on Monday night. That might be hard to take for anyone expecting big changes in reaction to recent poor performances, but there is very little scope to do so.
The one area of the team that the manager has options in is at centre-back, however, there has been a fair amount of chopping and changing in that position recently and it might just be time to let the current occupants have a run together in an attempt to foment some vital defensive solidity. If there is a change, that might involve Liam Kitching taking Luis Binks’ place, purely to ensure one of the key summer signings gets a chance to stake his place in the side.
A lot of the attention at the moment is on the pairing of Liam Kelly and Josh Eccles in midfield and their limitations in possession, unfortunately, there isn’t really the option to change that up at the moment. With Ben Sheaf injured, Jamie Allen not fit enough to start games yet, and Yasin Ayari seemingly not trusted to play in a deep midfield role, the focus right now has to be on finding a way to play to Kelly & Eccles’ ball-winning qualities and around their ball-playing skills.
If there is to be a change to the side, that could come at right wing-back, where Mark Robins might want to have more defensive solidity for an away game against a team that can be pretty direct than Tatsuhiro Sakamoto can offer. That should see Joel Latibeaudiere come into the side, which would limit the scope to change up the defence.
Last Time We Met
It was yet another example of a game last season that Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer won for Coventry City almost entirely on their own. With an early lead resulting from the former sending the latter through, the Sky Blues sat back for much of the rest of the game, confident that their two aces would kill the game off later on.
With Queens Park Rangers unable to make much of the possession and territory they were handed, it was a question of when and not if the three points would be secured. It took until the 86th minute for that to happen, when Gustavo Hamer bundled in an effort on the goal-line at the third attempt. The final score was then made more comfortable when Ben Sheaf won the ball well in midfield, picked out Hamer with a wonderful pass in behind, who then teed up Gyokeres for the finish. Purposeful, deadly and with a clear clarity of approach, the current Coventry vintage seems a far cry from where they were just six months ago.
The Opposition
The Manager – Gareth Ainsworth
The former Wycombe Wanderers manager embodies a scaling back of ambitions that has taken place at Loftus Road over the past 12 months. Around this time last year, Queens Park Rangers were flying around the top of the Championship under Mick Beale, but the departure of the manager to Glasgow Rangers saw the bottom fall out of the club. Gareth Ainsworth was the man who replaced Beale’s replacement, Neil Critchley, and just about kept the team in the Championship with confidence at rock bottom ahead of a summer of budget cuts.
A 4-0 hammering away to Watford on the opening day suggested that Queens Park Rangers might be well below the level this season, however, that has engendered a sense of adversity that has played into Gareth Ainsworth’s strengths as a manager. Focusing on hard work, togetherness and an, at times, rather simple style of football, QPR have improved immensely under Ainsworth since that shellacking, often turning games into scrappy, tight contests to give themselves a chance of claiming results.
Who To Look Out For?
The star turns in this Queens Park Rangers team in recent years have been the duo of Ilias Chair and Chris Willock in the attacking midfield positions. While Chair remains a regular starter as the flair player with licence to float between the lines and attempt the spectacular, Willock’s importance has diminished as a result of injuries and a summer where he was heavily linked with a move away from the club.
With Gareth Ainsworth’s preference for direct football, the physical presence of Scotland’s first-choice striker, Lyndon Dykes, is important in this team. However, the emergence of youngster, Sinclair Armstrong, has added a new focal point to Queens Park Rangers’ attack. There are shades of Viktor Gyokeres to Armstrong with his combination of physical strength and dribbling ability, while he has yet to add consistent goals to his game, Armstrong is a significant handful to deal with and also helps draw attention away from Dykes and Chair.
Further back, Queens Park Rangers have leaned heavily on experience in the last transfer market, with veterans, Steve Cook and Morgan Fox, key members of their defence and the 36 year-old, Asmir Begovic, the first-choice goalkeeper. While that can leave QPR short on pace at the back, the recruitment of that trio has gone a long way to addressing the frailness that was shown in that opening day to Watford.
Protecting the back-line is Sam Field, who is a tackling machine and no stranger to a yellow card. The Hoops will be without another key experienced player, in Jack Colback, who is also currently the team’s top-scorer, due to a red card picked up against Sunderland two weeks ago. However, that will allow Andre Dozzell to start in midfield, who is starting to fulfil his potential as a ball-player in the centre of the park having struggled to impose himself at Championship level earlier in his career.
Where The Game Will Be Won Or Lost
It is little surprise that Queens Park Rangers rank as one of the more direct sides in the division, but there are teams that get the ball forward much quicker and earlier than the Hoops, showing that Gareth Ainsworth has altered his approach somewhat to integrate more technical players like Ilias Chair and Andre Dozzell. Nonetheless, Coventry City have to be ready here to compete in physical battles and dominate their penalty area aerially.
Queens Park Rangers like to load the box and get their wing-backs high up the pitch – especially, Paul Smyth, who is much more of a forward than a defender at right wing-back – which is going to make it important to prevent crossing situations, rather than having to defend the ball into the back. In Coventry City’s 3-4-1-2 set-up, that means the central midfield is going to have a difficult task covering a lot of ground to get out to potential crossers, which might also leave them exposed to QPR playing around them via Andre Dozzell and Ilias Chair if the pressure isn’t applied correctly.
With QPR willing to throw men forward and having a pretty slow defence, there should be opportunities to exploit that on the counter-attack. The question is whether players like Ellis Simms and Yasin Ayari are capable of taking advantage of those situations, especially given that Matt Godden may have limited involvement in the generation of chances, meaning that if Simms and Ayari aren’t on it, Coventry City could end up with very little attacking threat.
Sideways Sammy 