Dom Hyam is expecting a “tough” game on Friday night when the Sky Blues take on Bournemouth in the Sky Bet Championship in front of the Sky Sports cameras.
Hyam is looking forward to tomorrow’s clash and believes it will be a good test for the Sky Blues given Bournemouth’s Premier League pedigree having spent the last five seasons in the top flight.
The Cherries have retained the majority of their squad from last season and Hyam is anticipating a tough clash against Jason Tindall’s side, but thinks the Sky Blues have nothing to fear having made a promising start to the new campaign.
Hyam said: “We’re looking forward to tomorrow night where we’ll be up against Premier League players, it’ll be a good test for us, they’ve retained most of their squad, they’re all technically great players, it’ll be a tough game, but we’re confident and we’ve got to believe in ourselves that we can get a good result.
“There’s nothing to fear, they’re all good players, but we want to test ourselves against the best and there’s not a better opportunity to do that than tomorrow night under the lights on Sky and we’ll give it a good go.
“A clean sheet is something we all want, we want to keep as many clean sheets as possible, last season that’s what our success was built on, strong defensive displays, we had one of the best defensive records in the league and we want to try and carry that on.
“Everyone has spoken about how good the team spirit is between the group, if we’ve got a good team spirit mixed with good players that can take you a long way and it got us promoted last season, so that’s something we’re looking to carry on this season.”
City recorded their first clean sheet of the season away at Barnsley last weekend and Hyam admits that concentration levels need to be higher than they were in League One last season.
“It is a little bit different, you have to have patience and deal with constant waves of pressure, towards the end of a game in the division below it would be slung in the box and loads of bodies forward, but it’s so much more patient and timed and the technical ability in the Championship is a step above and I think we’ve adjusted to that quite well so far.
“We have to concentrate more, especially as defenders, any lapse in concentration and they could be in and that could be a goal which might not have been a goal last year, it’s all a challenge for us and we’re all relishing it.
“We look through the goals that we’ve conceded so far this season and they’ve not had to work for many of them, they’re avoidable and we can adjust little things so it doesn’t happen again, I think we did well on Saturday and did our jobs well which is an improvement.”
The 24-year-old was full of praise for summer signing Leo Ostigard and believes the youngster’s addition to the squad adds healthy competition for places and increases the Sky Blues goal threat from set-pieces, having hit the woodwork at Oakwell.
“Goals are something we want to add to our game as defenders, in training we’ve become more of a threat and we’re trying to take that into games just by freeing up some space for someone else or trying to get a header on the ball, the delivery is there, Gus Hamer’s delivery has been fantastic so far, we’ve just got to attack the ball, it’s something we’re looking to improve.
“He’s brought competition for places, it’s good for us that we’ve got another centre-back to challenge us in the Championship, that’s what we need if we want to perform to the high standards in training, you know you’ve got someone who is raring to go behind you.
“He’s a threat at set-pieces, he wins a lot of headers, that’s something we missed a little bit last season, he adds competition for places which is really healthy at any level.”