City V Blackburn Sky Sports Highlights

Last updated : 08 August 2017 By CNS Sport/AO

The highlights from Coventry City's 3-1 Carabao Cup First Round defeat to Blackburn Rovers are on-line via Sky Sports.

To see these, please click on http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/teams/coventry-city/10980119/coventry-1-3-blackburn

City boss Mark Robins felt the game was a good excuse to give some of his younger players some match time and told BBC Coventry & Warwickshire: "We obviously made a few changes and it was a good game to blood one or two of our younger players because we’re going to need them throughout the season, and the only way you can do it is by giving them a chance.

“Blackburn are a decent side and we always know how Tony Mowbray likes to set his sides up and it was something that I wanted to expose Max Biamou and Duckens Nazon to because they need to learn how to work that way up the front to try to stop teams from playing.

“To be fair to Rovers, they are decent at it and they took the lead. We worked hard to get back in the game and get a foothold in it with a decent goal after it had bounced off the goalkeeper, and Duckens stuck it in the net well.

“We then had a period of play where we were OK and went toe-to-toe with them and then gave a silly goal away, giving the ball away in a silly area and were punished.

“We had chances to get level and back in the game but they stretched us too often and we were a little bit naive with some of our decision making and gave them too much time at the back. And they were clever, and that’s what you get with what are Championship players.“But we will take a step back and look that it will be valuable experience for some of our young players.

“It was a different challenge from League Two and from our point of view we needed to get the tempo higher and go and press the ball at the top, and that’s something we have to work on with them, trying to put pressure on the lads at the back.

“But it was a big learning curve for our young players.”

Tony Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph about the match: “It was just what we needed.

“They responded really well after the weekend, it was a shame there was no points on offer but it puts us through to the next round and we are focussing on Saturday now when we will look to get the points accumulating.

“I thought they were all good.  Players have bad days at the office and there were more than one or two who did last Saturday and they have been told that.

“It can’t happen too often but they showed their quality and we have to see that more often than not.

“I thought we played well at times tonight, I thought we asked lots of questions of them, and we looked more like what we had been working on and what we had been trying to put together.

“I think it is important that the goals come from everywhere. I think we should have scored more goals, we had a few one on ones before they equalised.

“I thought the balance of the team was okay, they all worked really hard tonight and it is a good performance and the right result for us.

“We can all concentrate on Saturday now.”