Mark Robins spoke to the press earlier today and he told how confidence is high in the group heading into the weekend's clash with Preston North End.
The Sky Blues return home fresh from midweek victory, as goals from Maatsen and Gyökeres ensured that City secured a 2-1 win at Bristol City on Tuesday night.
“We go into this game absolutely full of confidence.” Robins reiterated.
“We’ve won three in four, and a defeat at Cardiff was down to fatigue and not being able to recover as quickly as we needed to at that point.
“It was a really good journey back from Bristol, even though we got back late it sort of makes up for that distance.
“We look forward to going into this game against Preston knowing that it’s another difficult game.
“They are a good side that are full of strong Championship players. Although they’re a few points behind, they’ve played a couple of games more than us and it was only a game or two ago that they were above us in the table.
“We want to try and get three points against them because we’ve not picked up anything from them on the road. We went in front at Deepdale earlier on in the season and ended up on the end of a sucker punch really, but we didn’t do enough to win that game.
“Last season it was a tough game, hard-fought, nothing really in it, and we gave away a goal that we needn’t have done and lost that.
“It’s one of those where we need to put in a good performance and a really solid performance to get something from the game. They’re a good side.”
Last time out also saw the return of Gus Hamer to the team, and the midfielder played an important role in earning the victory with a late assist for Gyökeres’ 13th goal of the campaign.
“The performances of individuals are getting back up there now, and whilst there’s more to come it’s been a welcome boost to get Gus back into the fold for the midweek game and he contributed greatly to the win, as did the others.
“It’s never positive when you lose players anyway, but to get that bit of a breather and because the games are coming really quickly it wasn’t too long, it was only a week, and it gives some work during the week that obviously kept him nice and sharp.
“It was good to get him back but obviously the other players had worked their socks off and there were some brilliant performances in there. Jamie Allen’s work-rate was unbelievable again, Viktor [Gyökeres] again gets a goal but leads the line brilliantly. There’s a lot of good performances; Ian Maatsen and Jake Bidwell were very good the other night.”
While the Sky Blues have been in good form lately, Robins also emphasised the need to focus on one game at a time, rather than looking too far ahead.
“We work towards each individual game, try and do it methodically and we try and get a handle on what may or may not be coming, what might be there for them tomorrow to face, what we need to do and nothing changes there.
“We work really hard on opposition, but also on what we want to do as well. We go into each game like that with clarity.
“We’ve still got fourteen games to play, the next one’s tomorrow, it’s a tough game and then you can sort of see things a little bit clearer.
“They’re all important games; if you want to try and stay in that pack and put pressure on then you’ve got to do what we’re doing and keep focusing on the job and not looking too far ahead.”
Supporters who wish to come along and cheer on the Sky Blues tomorrow afternoon (3pm kick-off) can view the matchday guide for ticket details and more by clicking HERE.