It was the perfect week for the Sky Blues Under-23s as they made it three wins on the bounce with victory over Wigan Athletic yesterday afternoon.
Matty Godden got the goalscoring underway and his opener was added to by Jonny Ngandu and Julien Dacosta, as the Sky Blues ran-out 3-0 winners.
City were 4-0 winners on Monday and after securing another victory, Under-23s Head Coach, Luke Tisdale was delighted with what he saw once more.
“It was a cagey start, but we spoke about the DNA Wigan Athletic would come with and they’re highly competitive, aggressive so we had to match that, and I thought we did that.
“The red card changes things and it allows us to take control and play our football and keep hold of possession.
“Trying to beat the low block becomes difficult and we probably over played in the back third a bit too much in the first half and we had players dropping deep to get the ball and we didn’t actually do much with it.
“We had to make sure we were hurting them when we had the ball and second half, we did that a lot better.
“We scored three really good goals which were well worked team goals and they optimized the DNA and the philosophy of the football club which a pleasing aspect.”
The 23s welcomed the return to fitness of Josh Reid, who joined the Sky Blues from Ross County in the January transfer window.
Josh had an unfortunate start to life at City, after being ruled out through injury in his first training session, but since then he has now made three appearances for the 23s.
“Josh had a bad hamstring tear a couple of days after he signed so he’s been out for a while and it’s just been a case of building up his fitness and his minutes and he has great competition with Joe Newton.
“Joe has been keeping him out in recent games, but it was nice to give Reidy a start against Wigan and I think his legs were hanging off towards the end of it.
“You can see the qualities he has, and he was good in the air and he got things moving and he got other going and he has to keep building that up.”
There was also a special moment for Jonny Ngandu who scored a superb solo goal to cap off a good performance from the captain.
“It was an excellent goal by Jonny and for those of us who see him every day we know that he can do that, but there is still a lot of aspects to his game that need improving.
“He has to find some consistency, but that’s his fourth goal of the season and one of things we moaned about to him was not getting enough goal and he’s starting to add that now and it was a brilliant finish.”
The game ended a busy week for the Under-23s, who had two games to prepare for in the space of just three days.
After coming out with back-to-back wins, Tisdale praised the whole 23s group for their hard-work and their determination to succeed.
“I think overall this season our league form doesn’t reflect our performances, we’ve been unlucky in a few games, but the mentality of the group recently has been incredible and it’s everybody who’s part of the under-23s.
“The subs that didn’t get on today, the lads who have had to sit in the stand and not be on the bench in the recent weeks, we’re all one team and everyone gives everything.
“Adam Bridgeford who’s head of coaching at the academy, he’s come with us all week and been a 23s assistant as such and given us a real helping hand.
“He was in at 9am on Wednesday with us and then 7pm away at West Brom with the under-15s and then on Thursday he’s back with us again, so I can’t thank him enough.”