Coventry City defender Richard Wood will be fit to travel to Swindon despite suffering a badly bruised cheek, suffered in a clash of heads in the Johnston’s Paint Trophy win a York, which saw him substituted with just half an hour gone.
Wood had feared he had fractured his cheek bone in the incident, but fortunately it turned out to be severe bruising. To add to Wood’s woes, he has been playing with despite having broken his nose in two places.
Speaking to the Coventry Telegraph's Andy Turner, Coventry City manager Mark Robins said, “Richard was concerned that he might have broken his cheek-bone so we made the change and the lads did fantastically well.”
Having the experienced defender available will come as a welcome boost to Robins as he is short of experience in his defence and would have had to play some of his younger players out of position.
William Edjenguele missed the 4-0 win at York through injury and fellow defender Reece Browne was not named either, but both players may feature in Robin’s squad for the trip to Swindon.
When Wood had to be replaced, Robin’s brought on Jordan Clarke, but he went into the central defence while Nathan Cameron dropped into the now vacant left back slot. The pair did well enough despite both p[laying out of their preferred positions and Clarke would be more than happy to fill in again if called on to do so.
Clarke said, “I don’t know how we’re fixed for Saturday but I’ll fill in again if asked, no problem. It was a bit disorientating at first because York have got a lot of pace and we had to weather the storm a bit, but I have played there many times before and used to play alongside Nathan at the Academy.
“We were the centre-back partnership from the Under-16s onwards and then I switched to right-back, mainly because of my height and the fact that I liked to get forward in the youth team.
“So I felt comfortable in there and the back four had a lot of pace so we could deal with balls in behind and to feet. I am not the tallest and I think it would have been different if they had a big target man up front, but I am sure I would have got to grips with it.
“I think I have played OK this season. My distribution has been good, I’ve started to get forward more although my final ball could be better sometimes, but other than that I think my defending has been good. The other night was one of my best performances so far this season but there’s definitely more to come from me.”
Robins said:“I like Jordan, I think he’s a great athlete and a good defender. I thought he could cope with that area better than Cyrus Christie and he handled everything really well, but Cyrus did well last week and didn’t deserve to be left out.”
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