Sideways Sammy

The need for a ball-winning midfielder has become the key concern for Coventry City fans over January, which has led to a clamour to secure the rumoured signing of Frank Onyeka. Now that the Nigerian is in the building, the question now is whether he will change everything in the manner that is hope for or has been hyped up into being the quality and type of player he never really was. The 28-year-old arrives at Coventry having spent the season firmly down the pecking order at Brentford, and as someone the Premier League side were keen to move on for at least a year. An impressive African Cup of Nations with Nigeria has shown Onyeka possesses pedigree despite a lack of minutes, which he will have to continue at the CBS Arena if he wants to make the quick impact expected of him.

Expectations with Frank Onyeka have to be tempered by discussing the kind of player he actually is versus what Coventry City fans hope he will be. Billed in some quarters as being a physical defensive-minded player who will either sit in alongside Matt Grimes or directly take his place at the base of midfield, Onyeka may offer the team a bigger physical and ball-winning presence, but he is someone who wants to play box-to-box rather than sitting in to screen the defence. Onyeka is someone who will play in a midfield with Matt Grimes, rather than instead of him, lacking some of the discipline and ability on the ball to play the latter’s role. Nonetheless, having someone alongside Grimes who can put a tackle in may go some way towards reducing Coventry’s vulnerability on the counter-attack, even if Onyeka isn’t going to be directly responsible for cutting out balls into the channels which have troubled the back-line recently.

The hope with signing Frank Onyeka is that he will provide a fresh injection of energy and physicality in a Coventry City midfield that has looked especially short of it recently. That could be enough to improve Coventry’s ability to press teams more energetically and thus limit opportunities to start counter-attacks. What Onyeka isn’t going to do is reduce the Sky Blues’ recent tendency of giving the ball away sloppily in dangerous areas or reduce the tendency of the defence to ball-watch when caught on the break. He may prove to be a great signing but Frank Onyeka isn’t going to fix Coventry’s recent form on his own, no single player is.