Jamie Allen is “glad to be back” after starting for just the second time this season in the Sky Blues thrilling Emirates FA Cup away win against Ipswich Town last night.
Allen played a big role in City’s second goal when he slipped a pass through to Jordan Shipley who in-turn squared the ball to Max Biamou who applied the finish to a wonderful team move.
The midfielder admitted to feeling tired towards the end of the match at Portman Road, managing 82 minutes under the floodlights, but knows the fitness will come with more game time.
Allen said: “I was talking to my family beforehand and said ‘it’s December and I’m only just starting my first game’ but I’m happy to be back playing and hopefully there’s more game time and wins to come.
“I don’t feel rusty, I felt a bit tired towards the end, but the fitness will come with more game time and I’ll only get fitter and stronger as the season goes on.
“This is the longest I’ve been out for and miss as many games as I have done. I thought I started pre-season well and tried to get off to a good start but then the injury happened which was disappointing but I’m glad to be back now.”
Allen was pleased with the Sky Blues performance last night and in particular their performance in the first half which saw them race into a two-goal lead.
However, he would have liked City to have taken their chances in the second period to avoid the nervy final five minutes following Luke Garbutt’s late reply.
“It was an enjoyable first half, I thought we played really well, we got on the ball and moved it a lot quicker and created chances.
“It was more or less the same in the second half, but we dropped off a bit and let them keep the ball and get on top of us, but we still had chances to kill the game off.
“We picked up from where we left off in the second half on Saturday. We tried to start fast, and they couldn’t get near us. We got the two early goals and we just needed to see it out in the second half, which we did.
“They were both really good team goals. We’ve won the ball back, played it quickly upfield from one side to the other, a couple of good passes in and then ended up with a goal.
“We need to take our chances in the second half and then we don’t have to worry at the end.
“They would have then had to drop off and feel defeated, but that goal gives them a bit of hope for the last five minutes.
“When you play a team three times in nine days you know how they play, and we felt that the way we play we could hurt them today and we did that.
“We need to take the two victories we’ve had away from home in the FA Cup into the league now and that should stand us in good stead for the rest of the season ahead.”
The 24-year-old also spoke about achieving something special this season and praised the competition for places in Mark Robins squad.
“We hope we can achieve something special. We want to finish as high up in the table as we can this season and we feel like we’ve got a group of players that means we’re able to do that.
“We’ve got players coming back now. Matty Godden’s coming back, which is good, myself coming back as well so we’re getting close to the squad we had at the start of the season.
“We’ve got five midfielders that are all good players, so the competition is very high and that’s good in a team because you have to fight for your place in training.”