Mark Robins felt his side lacked “energy” after playing out a goalless draw with Luton Town at St Andrew’s on Tuesday night.
In a game of few chances, Max Biamou headed City’s best opportunity inches wide of the post before a superb defensive header from Liam Kelly at the death preserved the Sky Blues unbeaten run.
However, the manager was pleased to keep a third clean sheet in six games and praised the contribution of Ben Wilson in the City goal.
Robins said: “We struggled to find the energy, we didn’t make any changes on the back of Saturday, I couldn’t justify doing that before the game, they came and set up to make it difficult for us, that’s what they do.
“They’ve had a year in this division which has helped them, we know each other from League Two days, Nathan Jones has been away and come back, kept them up last year and stabilised them and more than that this year, they’ve won some really tough games away from home.
“Ben Wilson’s contribution was really good again, his distribution was good, he kept goal really well, we were just lacking a little bit of energy, we needed to do a little bit at the front end to try and unpick the lock.
“It was a tough game, we’ll take the point and the clean sheet is a good clean sheet, at any level, but at this level it’s fantastic really.”
Robins also felt that his side were feeling the effects from their hard-fought win against Rotherham United last weekend, having struggled to produce the same intensity from Saturday’s success.
“If the two strikers had played anything like they had on Saturday, we would have won the game, Sam McCallum put two brilliant balls into the area, which were outstanding, but we didn’t have the energy to get into the box and Liam Kelly’s header at the end was an equally brilliant header to earn us a point.
“The energy levels just weren’t there, it’s a tough league and a tough season when you take the hits, we need Matty Godden back fit, that’s for sure, on the bench, Wes Jobello felt his knee was sore, I couldn’t use him tonight, it limited things that I could do to change things.
“I wanted a little bit more in terms of our energy from the midfield area and Shipley gives me that from time-to-time, the only other consideration was to get Ryan Giles on and get a little bit of width but we weren’t keeping the ball well enough and defensively we had to be solid.”