Robins left unimpressed as Blues climb towards safety

Birmingham City 3-0 Coventry City

Josh Smith reports from St Andrew’s

Coventry City suffered their first league defeat to Birmingham City since 2011 after a 3-0 defeat at an electric St Andrew’s.

Sky Blues manager Mark Robins was left massively disappointed with his side’s performance after failing to make any real impression on the game.

Defender Bobby Thomas handed the home side the lead early on, before Ivan Sunjic and Jay Stansfield ensured the victory.

Coventry now sit eight points away off the final play-off spot where Robins labelled the challenge as a ‘mountain to climb’.

Robins was left unimpressed at his teams performance.

“It looked like a lethargic performance, people were not thinking, they were making poor choices in terms of their tactical roles and it cost us the three goals,” Robins said.

“We didn’t start at all.”

The home side took the lead in the 12^th minute courtesy a Bobby Thomas own goal before Haji Wright hit the bar from a poor John Ruddy clearance.

“Then we get chance with Haji and had that gone in you talk about moments in games that changes the momentum in the game,” said Robins.

The 54-year-old was quick to praise the opposition particularly in terms of their work rate: “They were first to the ball in every challenge, every first contact they seemed to win.

“Let’s face it they’ve got better players than there league position suggests 100 percent they are in a false position.”

After a number of big chances for the home side, Ivan Sunjic scored on the stroke of half time with a powerful strike.

“We didn’t organise properly from the set play where it drops to Sunjic,” Robins added.

“But even then, you’re still in the game but we hadn’t started.”

The dominance from Blues was represented in the immediate three changes made by the visitors ahead of the second-half.

“I made some changes because we needed to get a grip of the game somehow,” Robins said.

“We needed to try and play some football, and it looked like we started to play in the second half where we could pin them in for a period of time, but it wasn’t long enough.”

Jay Stansfield added a third to compile Coventry’s misery netting his twelfth goal of the season, after an exquisite ball from Tyler Roberts.

Robins was again left ruing poor defending.

“It is just a really poor goal, you’ve got to stay with the runners, you’ve got to talk,” Robins said.

“It beggared belief at times, because we made poor decisions off the ball, when we were defending, we were dragged all over the place.”

Despite beating Leeds United last week, the Sky Blues have picked up just one win in their last four.

The Coventry boss spoke on their play off hopes: “The last two games we just haven’t done enough, nowhere near enough today.

“You can’t do that if you’re challenging, so it is massively disappointing.

“Yeah, it’s gone.” [on the play-offs]

Coventry now have a break from the league with the FA Cup semi-final next week against Manchester United.

Robins previewed the fixture against the Red Devils.

“We’ve got to be better than we were today that is for sure, but we will be,” said Robins.

The 54-year-old was well aware of the importance of the fixture particularly with the fans: “Next week is a big game that the supporters are looking at.

“You can hear them singing about the FA Cup for the last few weeks.”