It was a disappointing evening for the Sky Blues as they bowed out of the Checkatrade Trophy at the hands of Cheltenham Town.
Goals either side of half time from Jacob Maddox and Will Boyle secured Cheltenham’s place in the next round of the competition, knocking City out in the process.
Speaking after the game, Mark Robins said: “It’s a young team, I think the last game had an older team in and I thought it was good.
“I thought Jack Grimmer helped them through pretty well, he talked them through it. I think Jonny did ok, he could have done better because he’s been better in the training sessions but getting in to the first team environment is invaluable for him.
“We were talking to the Under 23’s coaches Jason Farndon and Luke Tisdale and talking about that raw material they’ve got to work with because you can see your lads playing against a first team and you can use that to develop.”
Despite the defeat, the manager believes that it was a good experience for the youngsters in the side and was pleased with how they adapted to first team football.
“For me, its been a difficult experience but a decent experience, you have to give them that game time.” He said.
“I thought the two centre halves were brilliant. Tyrone Barnett has given defenders plenty of problems over the years and I thought they were brilliant against him.
“I think that the booking to Josh Eccles early on didn’t help him. I thought that was then difficult for him to get close to anybody and he was trying to play worldy passes instead of playing it easy. For the most part there was some decent football played down the left-hand side. I thought Sam McCallum was magnificent when he came on and I was delighted with his contribution.
“I thought the supporters were brilliant. They’ve understood what we were trying to do and even though it was frustrating in terms of the outcome on the night, the outcome over a period of time will be what we’re looking for.”