Graham Turner's thoughts after the 1-0 win at Coventry
Graham Turner was delighted after watching his side win away from home for the first time this season. Marvin Morgan’s goal after 62 minutes settled affairs at Coventry’s magnificent Ricoh Arena to inflict only a second league defeat in 12 for the Sky Blues.
“My overall feelings are ones of relief,” said the Town boss. “There have been several times this season where our play has deserved a bit better then the results might suggest. I think I’m right in saying that we were the last side in our division to win away from home and it’s a great place to do it. We had a good following and they’ve seen a good performance particularly defensively. They had one or two misses but we worked our way into one or two terrific positions of our own. It’s pleasing that we have another clean sheet. That’s two on the trot now and it gives us a base to work from.
“Coventry have some good players with real quality and craft and as they were chasing the game late on they had as many as four players up the field. We should have done better on the break two or three times when we strayed into offside positions due to our enthusiasm. It was an outstanding defensive performance typified I thought by our goalkeeper who had another outstanding afternoon for us.”
Morgan got the winner and GT was pleased for his striker who hadn’t had the best of times in front of goals in recent weeks: “He’s worked hard and so has Luke (Rodgers) as they never let the Coventry defenders rest. He’s relieved and he has his reward by scoring the winner in front of our supporters and in a big stadium.”
Turner was asked what the tension was like at pitchside given that it was almost unbearable in the press box: “I think the anxiety comes from the record we’ve had,” said the gaffer. “We’ve had a tendency to concede late equalisers and even late winners so you get that anxiety where we are and on the pitch too but for a change we’ve come through it.”
Attention now turns to the weekend clash at Scunthorpe but Town are unlikely to approach the game any differently as GT explained: “We won’t change our philosophy home or away. We always come with the intention of getting the ball down and passing it irrespective of who the opponents might be. We did it with some success today and will try to replicate that at the weekend. There’s still a bit of work to be done but there’s a solidness and a determination about the side which was perhaps lacking 6 or 7 weeks ago and I think that’s one defeat in nine now so that attitude for hard work is there in abundance.”
Graham spoke about potential transfer targets with the January window again open for business and one would suspect that recent capture Yado Mambo won’t be the last player to make the move to SY2. “We’re in talks with a number of clubs and have made a couple of offers. Whether any of those materialises we don’t know yet as agents will always suggest they can get their players a bigger move than us. Work has been done for a number of weeks now just as it had with Mambo. We waited a while to close that deal and we’ve done the same on several others. I’m simply looking for good players in any position as they’re few and far between.”
Turner ended the piece by being cautious about upcoming games against relegation-haunted Scunthorpe, Hartlepool and Bury: “We have to make sure that after coming to a big ground, with a big atmosphere and a big result to go and undo it all in those types of games because it’s easily done. People can sometimes get carried away but if we keep working at it we can get the required results and that doesn’t half ease the pressure.”