Sideways Sammy

Coventry City never really got going during a 2-2 draw with Bristol City at the CBS Arena on a cold January night.

Ben Sheaf going off early seemed to rob the Sky Blues of the ability to settle into the game, with Bristol City enjoying the better of the opening exchanges. However, an excellent Tatsuhiro Sakamoto finish mid-way through the first-half seemed to settle the home side down as they proceeded to control the period up until half-time.

That was until Rob Dickie glanced in a teasing Taylor Gardner-Hickman delivery for the away side just before the break to restore Coventry City into their earlier pattern of frantic, panicked, ponderousness. While neither team created much of note during the second-half, Bristol City looked content to wait for chances to present themselves, while the Sky Blues were guilty of forcing things.

There was almost a sense of inevitability as Nahki Wells pounced on a poor Bobby Thomas touch inside his own penalty area to give Bristol City the lead with seven minutes remaining. Fortunately, a Liam Kitching piledriver soon after forced Max O’Leary in the opposing goal to parry and set Ellis Simms up for a tap-in that ensured what was a deserved sharing of the spoils.

The Problems Begin In Midfield

An early injury to the influential Ben Sheaf laid bare that Coventry City don’t seem to have much of a midfield without their key man. In Sheaf’s stead, Joel Latibeaudiere and Josh Eccles toiled their way through much of the game, struggling to sustain spells of possession while Victor Torp looked bright from the bench later on, the team lacked control for the majority of the contest, which caused issues in attack and defence.

Going forward, Coventry City struggled to build prolonged spells of pressure on the opposing goal. Bristol City made things awkward for the Sky Blues by managing to simultaneously press high and cut off passing lines into the forward line. It forced Coventry into having to choose between risky balls forward that weren’t quite on or playing safely across their back line. With Joel Latibeaudiere often dropping in between the centre-backs in order to get on the ball, the onus was on Josh Eccles to act as that link between the defensive and attacking players but he had a pretty rotten showing in possession.

Tatsuhiro Sakamoto’s opening goal was pretty much the only spell up until that point where Coventry City had managed to play around that Bristol City pressure and pen them into their own half. Interestingly, the move involved Joel Latibeaudiere playing as the furthest forward of the two central midfielders, before Jake Bidwell’s looping cross fell fortunately to Sakamoto to curl into the far corner. The Sky Blues seemed to settle from that period onwards, with Eccles and Latibeaudiere looking more comfortable on the ball and the front four able to get into the game, but a sloppy goal conceded just before half-time restored City’s jitters in the centre of the park.

Coventry City couldn’t be accused of a lack of urgency in the second-half. They seemed desperate to play at a frantic pace, but it meant attacks could just as easily break down as they would present themselves. With Victor Torp wanting to play so positively after he came on, that stretched Joel Latibeaudiere, who constantly struggled to track runners beyond him in midfield and resulted in the defence having to make covering challenges on the turn. That the Sky Blues conceded a sloppy goal and then scored from the rebound of a pot shot summed up their evening – frantic, urgent and desperate.

The prospective absence of Ben Sheaf for an extended spell looks a potentially defining issue for Coventry City this season. Between the inconsistent Josh Eccles, Jamie Allen, who isn’t considered enough on the ball, the attack-minded Victor Torp and Joel Latibeaudiere, who probably isn’t a midfielder, there doesn’t look to be that consistent, calm head to tie things together. Maybe that might change once Victor Torp gets up to speed, but it looks like one of Eccles, Allen or Latibeaudiere is really going to need to step up to provide Coventry the control they need to stamp this recent spate of sloppiness from their game.

Neither Godden Nor Simms Are In Form and It Might Not Really Be A Problem

A quiet performance from Matt Godden in this game, followed by Ellis Simms coming off the bench to score a crucial equaliser seemingly nudges the debate as to who should start at centre-forward closer to a resolution. However, it really was a thankless task for Godden to endure, as he toiled with little support against a physical Bristol City back-line before Simms went on to score a tap-in.

While there is some merit to the argument that Ellis Simms provides a more rounded threat at centre-forward than Matt Godden, due to Simms’ superior pace and physicality, both strikers have struggled for form this season and that can’t be a coincidence. This was a game where the two strikers had one shot between them over 90 minutes, which was scored, highlighting that this team isn’t set-up to generate a volume of chances for the centre-forward.

Looking at the stats, Matt Godden is slightly better at finishing than Ellis Simms but generates fewer chances, with Simms better at generating chances but worse at finishing. Godden and Simms perform different functions at centre-forward and while they both could have scored one or two more goals this season, nether are drastically underachieving.

Perhaps the centre-forward role shouldn’t be fixated on, with Haji Wright, Tatsuhiro Sakamoto and Callum O’Hare more than making up the goalscoring slack, it hasn’t really been an issue that neither Matt Godden nor Ellis Simms have been in form in front of goal over the last couple of months. Going back to the stats, O’Hare and Wright have been getting just as many chances as Godden and Simms have, and have been converted them better, while Sakamoto is an outlier in scoring a lot of goals from fewer chances. Scoring isn’t an issue for this team, why should be an issue that it isn’t the centre-forward doing so?

The overall point from this game is that Matt Godden’s suitability for the role going forward should not be judged on a single difficult assignment for him. Furthermore, if Ellis Simms struggles when he next gets the chance to have a run in the side, the issue is probably not the centre-forward themselves but the team’s style of play. Then again, maybe that tap-in really will inspire Ellis Simms into scoring form?

How To Frustrate The Sky Blues

With just one defeat in their past 16 games, winning nine of those, it is inevitable that teams will set out to contain and frustrate Coventry City, as was Bristol City’s game-plan here. The most surprising thing about Bristol City’s approach was that teams haven’t tried to do this earlier in this excellent run of Sky Blue form.

As mentioned earlier in the article, Bristol City were supremely well-drilled in their set-up off-the-ball in this game. They denied Coventry City passing lanes into that dangerous front four while also being able to press high enough to unsettle the back six players in their build-up play. They challenged the Sky Blues to be inventive in trying to break them down and, despite conceding two goals – one an excellent finish out of almost nowhere, the other from a deflection – were largely successful in their game-plan.

It was a strategy that was primarily focused on waiting for chances to come their way, either through set-pieces or from forcing mistakes via pressing – which is where both of Bristol City’s goals came from. While Coventry City could be accused of being sloppy in this game, it was not entirely out of character. The Sky Blues have only kept five clean sheets during this excellent run, three of which came at the very beginning and haven’t kept one in eight games.

Coventry City have found success of late by embracing an element of chaos in their games in order to get their dangerous attacking players in promising areas against stretched defences. That led to some promising breaks throughout this game, with Kasey Palmer, Callum O’Hare, Tatsuhiro Sakamoto, then Victor Torp and Haji Wright later on, threatening to explode on Bristol City, but they were often stymied at key moments by the opposition’s disciplined defensive shape.

The strategy of late has been to out-score opponents in open, slugging contests. The issue is that when opponents refuse to participate in them and instead look to contain Coventry City’s attacking effusiveness, that exposes the soft underbelly at the back. While the Sky Blues remain unbeaten, there is a need to find more control in their performances as teams start to wise up about City’s explosive threat.