Sideways Sammy

Coventry City slipped to an agonising late defeat at Luton Town where they had looked like holding on for a potentially invaluable point despite playing most of the contest with ten men.

The game’s first big flash-point was Jay Dasilva getting sent off in the 13th minute, when he got into a tangle with Luton Town’s Millenic Alli with the latter ready to run through on goal. It looked a harsh decision but it was probably the correct one. It set up a game that was almost entirely Luton attack against Coventry defence.

The Hatters subjected Coventry City to a bombardment from crosses and corner-kicks, with Brad Collins and the back-line doing a great job to keep the opposition out through some heroic last-gasp interventions. The Sky Blues looked to have ridden the storm when Liam Walsh was sent off for Luton after needlessly lashing out after his team had won a free-kick.

The home side looked out of steam and even threatened to allow Coventry City chances to win the game that the travellers looked too exhausted to take advantage of. All that defensive effort was put paid to late-on, when Brad Collins came and missed a cross that he didn’t need to come for, leaving Luton’s Shandon Baptiste to send a tame effort that Luis Binks contrived to fail to clear.

The Red Card

The key question coming out of this game is just how different it might have all been had Jay Dasilva somehow evaded a red card early in the first-half that saw Coventry City play for ten men for the majority of the contest. It became largely a one-way contest in Coventry’s direction, while the Sky Blues defended heroically at times, they were reliant on poor Luton Town finishing to evade what could have been a hammering.

Just what the game-plan had been with 11 men was not apparent from those opening 15 minutes. With Milan van Ewijk the latest to join the injury list, Frank Lampard looked to be playing a formation that was somewhere between a 4-2-3-1 and a 3-5-2, with Joel Latibeaudiere mixing right-back and centre-back duties, Jay Dasilva granted licence to push up the left wing and Haji Wright looking to float into central areas ahead of him.

The one thing that was apparent from early on was that Coventry City were looking to avoid falling into the trap of the Plymouth Argyle game of having slow, sterile possession that would invite a team fighting for their lives to dig in and wait for opportunities on the counter-attack. It was notable that Brad Collins took just about every one of his early goal-kicks long. The intent seeming to be to go direct to reduce the risk at the back and hope that something could come off at the other end of the pitch.

The biggest impact that the red card has was that it stymied the ability of Coventry City to threaten Luton Town’s defence. With Tatsuhiro Sakamoto the sacrifice to bring Jake Bidwell on at left-back, Ellis Simms was left with the thankless task of trying to making it stick with zero support up against three opposing centre-back while the service into him was all but non-existent, with the defence continuing to avoid taking risks on the ball.

For much of the game, the plan was to play for a 0-0, just three attempts on goal tells its own story. As much as Luton Town’s winning goal was down to a pair of individual errors – first, from Brad Collins and then from Luis Binks – offering so little threat put an incredible amount of pressure on an imperfect defence to be perfect. With just a little more impetus. the likes of Collins and Binks could have come out of this game as the heroes they arguably deserved to be.

The blame for this complete surrender of a performance probably has to be apportioned equally across multiple parties. From Frank Lampard not having a plan after going down to ten-men, another complete no-show across the attacking players, along with a series of really poor pieces of game management and decision-making in defence.

As much as an early red card is a cruel curveball to deal with, Coventry City did very little in this game to earn the result they so nearly got. If the Sky Blues fail to make the play-offs, this match would serve as a case study in the tactical intelligence and concentration levels this team has been lacking for much of the campaign.

The Goalkeeper Situation

After another high-profile error, the attention inevitably remains stuck on Brad Collins and his continued selection in the Coventry City goal. For the player himself, to have looked to have undermined what had been one of his best performances for the club with another silly mistake must have been an especially cruel blow. Just why he remains in the firing line is something only Frank Lampard can explain.

Without Brad Collins, Coventry City could easily have been a few goals down before that late, killer error. The goalkeeper not only made a series of good saves to keep Luton Town out but commanded his area pretty impressively. If he was a new goalkeeper coming into the side without all the history he has behind him, most Coventry fans would have viewed it as an encouraging display.

Brad Collins seems to have two kinds of performances right now. Either he doesn’t make big saves and just about everything goes past him, or he does make big saves and undermines that with rash, costly errors. The frustration with him is not necessarily that he’s a bad goalkeeper but that he cannot be relied upon. It is impossible to predict what he might do next and that is what is so worrying about having him in the team.

Whether suggestions that Ben Wilson may not be fully fit are true or not, Frank Lampard has staked his chips on Brad Collins. Perhaps it’s because Collins’ distribution is superior to Wilson’s, perhaps the coaching team see something from training that suggest Collins is the better pick, perhaps it is simply too late now to make a change in goal, but Coventry City’s success this season may well rest on hoping that Brad Collins doesn’t make another mistake.

An Out of Form Attack

As was mentioned earlier in the article, Coventry City’s failure to pose any kind of attacking threat in this game may well have been more fatal than that late error from messrs Collins and Binks. Troublingly, it seems to be part of a wider malaise going forward for the Sky Blues, who have mustered seven goals from their last seven games, and have rarely looked particularly fluent or confident in attack.

The front three that played the majority of this game lacked both the quality and wherewithal to threaten, even if they were handed a difficult task in order to do so. Simms was required to offer more of a presence up front to help get the team up the pitch, Jack Rudoni ran himself into the ground in the battle to protect the defence, while Haji Wright didn’t really look switched-on enough to begin to threaten the opposing defence.

Even if Coventry City hadn’t been down a man, it is debatable just how much that front line would have threatened the opposing defence. As was seen against Plymouth Argyle, there is something off about the balance in attack that is making it hard to create and score chances of quality. From Ellis Simms and Tatsuhiro Sakamoto looking short of form, Haji Wright being incredibly inconsistent, and Jack Rudoni being asked to do way too much to pick up the pieces, to have three shots on target in back-to-back games against relegation-threatened teams is not the work of a confident attacking unit.

The injury to Ephron Mason-Clark has robbed Frank Lampard of a valuable attacking option, while Victor Torp’s creativity from midfield is another loss. However, those that are left are – Jack Rudoni aside – entering the final day of the season looking completely off-colour. There’s only so much the manager can do if the players he’s left to work with are unable to coax themselves into decent performance levels.

As these last two games have shown, Coventry City really don’t want to be in a situation where they are reliant on their defence to hold firm.