Amadou Bakayoko is “really proud” of his Sky Blues teammates after City scored a last-minute winner to defeat Bolton Wanderers in Sky Bet League One on Saturday afternoon.
The striker opened the scoring with a well-taken header after just three minutes, scoring his second goal in as many games, before Dennis Politic pulled Bolton level with 13 minutes left to play.
However, Bakayoko’s replacement, Max Biamou, was on hand in the final minute to restore City’s lead with a powerful finish and extend their unbeaten run in League One to eight matches.
Bakayoko was proud of his Sky Blues teammates for once again showing their never say die attitude to claim all three points at the death.
Bakayoko said: “We can’t always win in a pretty way, we started off really well and then slacked off a little bit, but we’ve got the belief and we’ve got a good team spirit and that’s what we needed today.
“We can’t always play pretty football, but I thought we did really well to get the win in the end.
“You would have thought straight after the goal, especially early on, that we would kick on straightaway and get going, but it didn’t happen that way.
“They didn’t cause us problems, I just think we weren’t at it like we usually are, you get scrappy games sometimes and we’ve shown that we can deal with that and we should be really proud of that as a team.”
The forward also heaped praise on goalkeeper Marko Marosi, who made two stunning saves, as well as fellow striker Biamou for their contributions in the victory.
“I thought Marko was unbelievable today, he done us a couple of massive favours by making two unbelievable saves to keep us in the game.
“It was frustrating to concede the goal, you could kind of see it coming but we weren’t playing to our full potential.
“We worked hard, we did what we needed to do, grafted and didn’t give up as we always do, so I think we did well in the end to get the win.
“Max is always unbelievable in training and pushes me and Godden, we push each other to be honest, we know what each other has got so we know that whoever is playing you are going to get something out of one of us.
“It’s just good that we can share out the goals, we’re both different kind of player’s and we bring different things to the game, even when we play two up top, it’s a joy that we’ve got so many strikers doing so well at the moment and hopefully we can keep it up.”
Saturday’s game was the 24-year-old’s first league start in just over two months and knew when his chance came, he would have to take it.
“The team has been doing so well, when you’re involved, you want to continue doing well for the team, individually as well.
“Godden’s done his bit, Max is continuously doing his bit and I’ve got to chip in myself, we need everyone on top of their game to push forward.
“I’m working hard for myself, for the manager and for the team, we all want to achieve the same thing as frustrating as it might get sometimes.
“We know what we want to achieve, and you have to just sit out sometimes and look from afar at what the rest of the guys are doing.
“When you get your chance, you have to go and take it and be part of it. I’ve been training as usual, working on myself as usual, there’s nothing more you can do than carry on working and continuing to progress yourself and it’s worked out in the end.”
He also looked ahead to the mid-week clash with Portsmouth and feels that now is the time for everyone to dig in as City hunt for a top-two finish in the league.
“Every game is really big now, that’s why we’ve all got to dig in, no matter who is and who isn’t playing, we’ve really got to dig in because every game matters a lot. Hopefully we get the results and focus on the next game now.
“We’re confident that we can get automatic promotion, but we have to take it game by game and the next one is Portsmouth, which is a really important game.
“They’re doing well at the moment, hopefully we can go out there, put in a good performance and get the result that we want.”