Mark Robins makes ‘unacceptable’ admission but points to Coventry City frailties

Mark Robins makes ‘unacceptable’ admission but points to Coventry City frailties

Mark Robins branded his Stoke side’s defending as “unacceptable” on a day when he insisted his former Coventry City team were “there for the taking.”

The former Sky Blues boss was clearly angry with all three goals scored against the Potters on his first return to he CBS Arena – two from Victor Torp in the first half before Bobby Thomas popped up with a 97th minute winner after Sam Gallagher had pulled the visitors level after the break.

Providing his assessment of the game in his post-match press conference, a frustrated Robins said: “We started brightly. We created three chances before they’d had a shot on target. We didn’t trouble the goalkeeper really, you’ve got to take them. They’re there on offer, go and take them!

“That puts them on the back foot and then their first effort on goal ends up in the back of our net. It’s too easy, we’ve allowed him to jump into our centre half, who doesn’t see him coming, and allows him to get a header and flick it into the far corner.

“We can’t accept that as a team, the second one was even worse. It just allows the space of the penalty area to waltz through and score unimpeded and again, that’s unacceptable.”

He added: “Then at half time, you know you’ve got people coming back to fitness that can make a difference and the two that came on were those and they made the difference.

“We spoke at half time about getting the next goal which is what you can do, but it happened here when I was here. You end up being two goals down rather than one goal down and you can bring it back and go and kick on, but they showed good character.

“We got back into the game out of nothing really, little bit of good play, they were sloppy, we capitalised on it, whereas if we’d have capitalised on the first three chances we had then it could have been a different afternoon for us.

“From that moment on it looked like we could go and win the game, because their tails were up, they had a bit of belief about them. Wouter Burger’s backheel takes a deflection and ends up as a goal kick so that was disappointing.

“But to allow them to get a cross in, to allow Bobby Thomas to pick up a ball in our penalty area and allow him to drag it onto his left foot and then not stand in the way of a shot is unforgivable.

“The three goals were terrible and that’s where we’re lacking. We make really naive choices, we win the ball, knock it down to them in midfield, those are the things that are costing us in games and they need to realise that.

But the good thing is we’re getting players back who can make a difference in games and we need to see how quickly we can get them up to speed.”

Concluding his assessment, the 55-year-old said: “We could have caused them more problems, we turned it down, we were a bit negative and I don’t know why because these are there for the taking, I’ve got to say they’re there for the taking and today we could have won this game.”

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