Marcus Braddock previews Sunday's trip to the Ricoh
This weekend Town play Coventry City at the Ricoh Arena in what could be Coventry's last game there. Differences between the club and the Stadium owners mean that City may have to find a new home for next season making this quite a high profile game. On the pitch the Sky Blues have had a reasonable season, at times they've lacked consistency and had a rough patch from November until the end of December but aside from that, results have been good enough to put them in 8th position with two games to play. Mathematically they could still make it to the play offs but they would have to win their last two games and hope that neither of the two teams above them (Doncaster and Peterborough United) win any of their remaining games.
City's form had been quite good with five wins and two draws in their last ten games, their most recent encounter was a defeat was a 2-1 away defeat against high flying Portsmouth and their last home defeat was against Oxford on March 23rd.
Top Scorers
Jordy Hiwula 12
Conor Chaplin 8
Amadou Bakayoko 7
Assists
Luke Thomas 5
Amadou Bakayoko 4
Clean Sheets
Seven at home and four away.
Coventry home stats
City have won 41% of their home games and drawn 27% of their home games and average 1.5 points per game. They concede less than a goal per game with an average of 0.9 goals conceded per game.
The second half sees more of the action at the Ricoh Arena with 61% of Coventry's goals and 74% of the oppositions goals occurring in the second 45 minutes. Their worst period of games at home is the first fifteen minutes of the second half with nine goals conceded but they finish strongly with seven goals scored in the last fifteen minutes at home.
Referee
Alan Young. Games this season: 34. Yellow cards: 148. Red cards: 4
Assistants: Adrian Tranter and Isaac Searle.
Squad News
Midfielder Tom Bayliss will be out for the rest of the season with a broken wrist. Midfielder David Meyler is out with a dislocated shoulder.
Dave Edwards and Steve Arnold are both on the sidelines for Town.
Summary
One of the good things about being so close to the end of the season is that you generally know what you need to do before the game. We need to win this to guarantee our League One status after we let the three points slip away against Oxford. Our away performances have been pretty good recently and we've already beaten Coventry at home this season so it is of course perfectly possible for us to take the three points.
p.s.
The A5 from Dobbie’s Island to Jct 3 (Cosford) M54 will be closed to all traffic from about 10.50am through to about 12.30pm to allow the Bike4Life charity ride to pass safely. So if you're travelling to Coventry you may want to factor this information in.
COYB!!!