Mark Robins says his side will ‘relish’ the challenge that awaits them, when they take on Leeds United this weekend.
City take on Leeds at the Coventry Building Society Arena, with seven games remaining in the Championship this season.
The Sky Blues boss spoke about coming into the business end of the season, as his side look to try and bridge the gap between themselves and the top six.
Leeds United are the first of those remaining games and Robins gave his thoughts heading into the weekend, as well as providing an update on the latest fitness of Jamie Allen and Matty Godden.
The next few weeks…
“We have a really big couple of weeks coming up and certainly a big seven days, we’re going to get down to four league games left.
We need to pick points up from each of the games, starting tomorrow. We know the challenge is there and we know the challenge is high, but we need to try and meet that head on and see where that takes us, but performance levels are the order of the day and we need to make sure perform to a high level.”
Coming up against Leeds…
“You have to relish the challenge. Leeds United coming to us, I think they’re a top, top team, managed by a top manager who has experience promotions from the Championship before with Norwich City.
He brings a squad full of quality and they pose threats all over the pitch.
We’re going to have to be at it and at our maximum all of the game and that’s the challenge for us.
We have played against good opponents all season. When we played Leeds at their place, they were outstanding in the game, but we managed to stay in it and we got the equaliser through Bobby Thomas and took a point from there.
We have to have a performance similar to that level to get something from the game.”
Looking ahead to the final seven games…
“When the games start to run out, this is where it matters, and you need to pick up as many points as you possibly can do.
We looked yesterday at how many points we’ve picked up and I think we’re three points ahead of where we were this time last season and then we picked up 13 points from the last 7 games, which took us to 70 points and we finished 5th, this year that won’t be enough.
We have to put a serious run together if we are going to mount a challenge to get into that top six, starting with the big challenge against Leeds United tomorrow.”
Being positive against Leeds…
“We’ve got to be positive, and we have to go into these games thinking we can get something from each of them otherwise what’s the point.
We know we’ve got good players and a good team; we just need to apply ourselves in a way that causes the opposition problems.
We know we’re going to get posed a lot of questions and we have to try and come up with solutions tomorrow and we know if we do that, we have good firepower and they will respect that, but they will also know they have some really strong firepower of their own.”
The Sky Blue Army…
“They are always a help. When they get behind the players and the team, anything can be achieved and they know and understand that.,
They’re fantastic every game and we look forward to the home games and the away following is incredible and the home following has been brilliant, and I don’t see any reason why that changes.
They will be 100% behind the players as normal and we look forward to giving them a good performance.”
Matty Godden update…
“Still not right, he will be missing tomorrow. He has a small problem with his calf, but it’s been a week now and he should be available at some point next week.”
Jamie Allen update…
“He’s not ready yet, he’s sill trying to work his way to full fitness after the time he’s had off, but he won’t be available tomorrow either. “
