Mark Robins stressed the importance of his squad staying “together” ahead of City’s Sky live clash against Brentford tomorrow lunchtime.
The Sky Blues were beaten by league leaders Norwich City in midweek and have an equally difficult game against high-flying Brentford on Saturday, despite the Bees losing their last two league matches.
Robins wants his squad to remain together during a tricky run of fixtures and is expecting another tough match against Thomas Frank’s side.
Robins said: “If you lose some football matches in the way we are, some players become frustrated in open ways which teams can see and respond to it, we’re after a galvanised team, playing together and trying to get results together, the only way you can do it is together, that’s the message to the players.
“They’ve got to come here and start picking points up, for us it’s just about playing against a top team, the evolution of Brentford has been absolutely fantastic, it’s a great model and they’ve done fantastically well.
“They’ve got good players and they’ve got aspirations and a real determination to get to the Premier League, for us it’s about concentrating on ourselves and trying to limit any mistakes.
“We have to try and put them under pressure and make them drop because they can mistakes as well, we’re under no illusions, it’s a tough game.”
The manager also wants his side to remain confident on the pitch having proved they can compete with some of the division’s best this season.
“We’re playing the top teams over the next few weeks, from our perspective we can’t get carried away with defeats, we’re going to get those body blows from time-to-time and we have to keep getting up and moving in a forward direction to accumulate the points that we’re going to need.
“If we can get a goal, it changes the complexion of the game, we’re playing some really nice football and we need to maintain that, but we also need a little bit of devilment, a little bit of guile and some balls into the box that can be finished off.
“We can’t get too down on defeats because the games are coming thick and fast, we have to start picking points up, but we can’t put ourselves under any undue pressure to do that because that doesn’t help us.
“We have to go about our jobs the best way we can do and with confidence knowing that we can beat teams because we’ve proved that we can compete at the level.”