Michael Rose is “delighted” to have opened his account for the Sky Blues after scoring a late equaliser in City’s chaotic 3-3 draw with Portsmouth on Tuesday night.
The defender netted four minutes from time to rescue an unlikely point at Fratton Park, given City had been reduced to nine-men.
Rose doesn’t think his first Sky Blues goal could have come in a better way than it did on Tuesday night.
Rose said: “I’m obviously delighted to get my first goal for the club and what a way to do it. It was just one of them, it dropped to me and I managed to finish it.”
“It was a mental game! I thought we started well, we got the goal and then they came at us to be fair.
“It was our mistakes really that led to their goals which we’re really disappointed with but we showed character at the end to get a point from the game which was fantastic.”
Having earlier had a goal disallowed for offside, manager Mark Robins told the defender to remain in the penalty area when City had another chance to get the ball into the box.
“For the first one, I managed to get around to the back post, I thought it was their player that flicked it on, but it was Kyle, so I was offside, I was probably about a yard offside.
“The second one, I wasn’t even going to go up, but the manager told me to stay up.”
Rose celebrated his goal in front of the 950 travelling Sky Blues supporters, amidst wild celebrations in the away end.
“We all ran into the crowd and I was expecting somebody to jump on me or something, but nothing happened. We were all laughing about it!
“I thought everyone had run back, then I turned around and everyone was doing their own celebration. To score like that at the end of the game is brilliant. Everyone’s happy with a point.”
He believes that the players will learn a lot having played the remaining 12 minutes with nine-men.
“We all stuck in as a team, when you have nine-men everyone has to be in it together and when we went down to nine-men we were. I think we’ll learn a lot from tonight, and we’re delighted with it.
“We actually played better with nine men. We got the penalty and after that, it felt like we were going to get another one and luckily enough I did.”
He also admitted that playing with nine-men isn’t something he want to do again and praised the efforts of Matty Godden up front.
“I’ve never played with nine-men before, I don’t want to do it again though!
“I thought Matty was outstanding tonight. He led the line really well for us and caused them so many problems.”
Michael now wants the team to press on for the remainder of the season after maintaining their unbeaten start to the season.
“We’re delighted, it’s a really good start, being unbeaten as well keeps us right up there. We just need to keep getting better and improving every week.
“Obviously, we want to stay unbeaten, but we want to improve every week and I think we can still improve which is the important thing.”