Mark Robins felt the Sky Blues gained a “good point” after playing out a goalless draw against Barnsley at Oakwell in the Sky Bet Championship on Saturday afternoon.
City had the better of the first half in South Yorkshire, but neither side could find the breakthrough in a hard-fought contest played in cold and blustery conditions.
Robins was full of praise for the way Barnsley pressed his side throughout the contest, but feels City let them off the hook in the first half.
Robins said: “Any point away from home is a good point in the Championship, it’s a brilliant point, having said that, I don’t think we played brilliantly, we let them off the hook in the first half, I thought we were better.
“They are an out of possession team, they’re one of the best pressing teams I’ve seen outside of the Premier League and they really come after you.
“They’ve had a year at the level, previously to this, but it’s a totally different season and a totally different set of circumstances, you’ve got to take into consideration what they’re good at and we really negated their strengths.
“From our point of view as a team, we created a lot of chances in the first half, we were really unlucky not to take one, we let them off the hook, but they don’t give too many chances away and we created more opportunities than any other team has against them so far this season.
“The fact that they weren’t able to press us like they have other teams is testament to the lads and the way that they move the ball around.”
The point marks the Sky Blues first on the road this season and Robins was happy enough with his side’s performance.
“The second half it became a bit more of a leveller, the temperature dropped, the winds got up and it made the conditions a little bit more tricky, but they’re a decent side who are probably a year in front of us and we managed to contain them.
“You’ve got to take the point and be reasonably happy with it, the work rate was there, we were a little bit on the backfoot, it was a little bit scrappy in the second half, we got into good positions to create opportunities, but the final ball wasn’t brilliant.”
The manager was once again impressed by City’s threat from set-pieces with Leo Ostigard’s header from Gustavo Hamer's corner hitting the crossbar in the first half and hopes dead ball situations can become a prominent feature of their play going forwards.
“Marko has made a really good save at the end, Cauley Woodrow got himself into a good position bounced it into the floor and Marko has stood up and saved it, other than that, there weren’t too many chances that they had.
“We hit the bar from a set-play, we looked really dangerous from set-plays, we’ll continue to work on those because they’ll be a big feature for us moving forward, but also some of the play in the first half was really, really, good under a really tough press.”