Sideways Sammy

The poster child of the Frank Lampard era, Jay Dasilva has gone from someone who looked almost completely out of the first-team reckoning to one of the most important players in the starting XI. The key to Jay Dasilva’s turnaround in a Coventry City shirt has been in unlocking a determination and concentration in his game that had previously been missing. As someone of such a short stature playing in a back four in a highly physical division, any lapses from Dasilva have tended to be ruthlessly exploited. The past year has seen those lapses dramatically reduced with opponents starting to realise that he is no longer a weakness in the back-line to be targeted.

It is probably under-estimated just how important Jay Dasilva is to the team’s build-up play. Eschewing the role of the typical attacking full-back of bombing down the touch-line, Dasilva’s ability to retain the ball under pressure and keep play circulating is key in negating the press of opposing teams. With Ephron Mason-Clark pushed up very high on the left wing ahead of Dasilva, it isn’t the full-back’s role to supply the team’s width on that side, tending to tuck inside and operate more as a midfielder than a full-back. A lack of a final third output makes it hard to quantify Jay Dasilva’s level of importance but it feels telling that the team suffered a wobble during the spell of the season the left-back was missing for.

For all the improvements in Jay Dasilva’s game, he has yet to shake off the overriding sense that he’s never far from his next error. It is perhaps the impact of having made a negative first impression but it will probably take a much longer period of positive performances for Dasilva to fully earn the trust of Coventry fans. That probably counts for little when he clearly has the trust of his manager and coaching staff. It has been a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for Jay Dasilva over the past year and goes to show that signings don’t always have to be the solution for a problem position, good coaching can provide that instead.