Mark Robins praised the Sky Blues “character” after City ran out comfortable 3-1 winners to beat Bristol City at St Andrew’s on Easter Monday.
City went ahead through Leo Ostigard before Matty Godden doubled the Sky Blues lead from the penalty spot with Viktor Gyokeres coming off the bench to score a late third goal to secure the points.
The manager was delighted with how his side responded to their defeat against Queens Park Rangers on Good Friday.
Robins said: “From Friday to today, it’s chalk and cheese, the players responded, they’ve got themselves together and had a chat amongst themselves and come in today and they’ve worked their socks off and fought for each other.
“They’ve not played brilliant football at times, it’s a scrap, I’m happy for the scrap and I’m happy that they’ve performed the way that they’ve done and battled to a really good victory.
“They’ve got good players, give them a chance and they’ll generally hit the target, on the back of that, if we’re going to make a mistake you’ve got to stick in there and not implode and we didn’t do that.
“The character was there, that’s what it was all about, they’ve shown that they want to stay in the division and more than that, they want to do it in a good way, we’ve scored three goals, the experience in the team today paid dividends.”
He was also full of praise for Josh Eccles, who started at right wing-back, and lauded the work rate of his strikers.
“Josh Eccles gave us an element of control on the right-hand side, he’s also given me a chance to rest Julien Dacosta, we need everybody fit, Dabo may be back at the end of next week.
“It was a really good debut from Josh in that position, I’m happy with everybody, Matty Godden hit the post in the first half, a goal from Leo who’s been waiting for a goal from a set-play.
“The two strikers getting on the end of things, it’s through the work-rate of all of them, Tyler Walker in particular put a really good shift in today, Matty’s movement was good and he’s linked the play really well with the others.
“Callum was his usual busy self who created the third one and been involved heavily in anything good that we’ve done.”