Beleaguered Coventry City manager Andy Thorn has said he is happy to take the flak in order to shield his players from abuse while they fight to avoid relegation.
Thorn has, until recently, had the support of the majority of City fans who apportion the blame for the failure of the team to the owners Sisu for their failure to back their manager with sufficient funds. However in the mood has changed in the last two games when the Sky Blues managed to snatch successive defeats from the jaws of victory, losing both games to very late winners.
Following the second of these injury time defeats, 2-3 at home to Ipswich, Thorn and his players came in for some abuse on a variety of forums and message boards.
A protective Thorn told the Coventry Telegraph's Alan Poole, “If there’s any blame to be apportioned give it to me, not the players.
“When you’re in bad situations it’s always very easy to start pointing fingers because everybody wants to blame everybody else, but I won’t let that happen to our group.
“They are giving it everything and I don’t want them affected by people who befriend them one minute and then slaughter them behind their backs the next. I’ve told them that if anything goes on off the pitch they should blame me because I’m big enough to take that.
“I don’t want the players affected by anything. I want them left alone so they can focus on playing football and giving everything to the club, anything else, send it my way.”
Conceding the late goals has been down to individual errors and Thorn is adamant he will not punish a player for making a mistake. He denied that his side's failure to prevent the defeats has been due to a lack of fitness.
Thorn explained: “It’s got nothing to do with fitness, although somebody was telling me the other day that I should sack all my staff, it’s incredible. I’m not going to destroy players when they’ve made mistakes; everybody makes mistakes and, despite what some people would have you believe, they don’t do that on purpose.
“It’s been very, very difficult and still is but there’s no point in feeling sorry for ourselves and making excuses, if we wanted to do that we could be sat here for the next fortnight. That’s all in the past, we can’t affect that; it’s all about how we apply ourselves over the next 17 games.
“We have to keep battling and working and see if we’re good enough and I think we are.”