Sideways Sammy

Brought in to be an impact player to lift the attack to the next level, Brandon Thomas-Asante has had his moments early into his Coventry City career while Mark Robins figures out the best way to use him. If the team overall had been functioning better, Thomas-Asante’s enthusiasm and pace could have been perfect either to kill off games late on or to rotate into the side to keep things fresh. Instead, the forward has struggled to carve out a definitive role in the side, often used as the first roll of the dice substitute by Mark Robins and expected to make things happen from a standing start.

There is a lot to like about Brandon Thomas-Asante, clearly someone who works incredibly hard and with blistering pace to complement that. The issue is that those positives come with some serious rough edges, such as his lack of finishing ability, physicality and skill in tight areas. Whether it’s at centre-forward, where teams can contain him by either marking him closely or denying him space to run into, or out wide, where he struggles to beat defenders that get tight to him, it is hard to see Thomas-Asante commanding a regular starting place. Nonetheless, the explosiveness to Thomas-Asante’s game has its uses and could be hugely effective under the right circumstances.

Often thrown on at the hour mark as a straight swap at centre-forward with the team chasing the game, Brandon Thomas-Asante isn’t suited to making an impact in tight areas against packed defences. While Coventry City have rarely had the winning positions against defences looking to push up the pitch that would suit Thomas-Asante better, perhaps if his introductions into games also coincided with tactical changes, such as moving to a strike pairing, he’d have a better chance of making an impact. At the moment, Thomas-Asante has almost been the embodiment of the tyranny of choice that has dogged Mark Robins this season.