What have Coventry done differently to us?

B_G said:
So exactly a third of teams that have lost in the play-off have been in promoted the following season. Or on average, one team per season.
None of the three last season are going to even get in the play-offs.
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Is this more of a reflection that the 3 teams coming down were strong and Ipswich have done well?
 
Morton94 said:
Why have Coventry been lauded as the powerhouse we should be aspiring to be 😂 Win on Saturday and we're garunteed to finish ahead of them in a season where our first team has been decimated by injuries, we lost our best players and replaced them with unknown quantities and we didn't get going until the 8th game of the season.

Gonna make a prediction now, we'll finish ahead of them again next season and we look like we have much better foundations. 3 or 4 key assets worth a potential fortune, tons of young players starting to get a grip on the first team squad and the unknown quantities bedding in and shining.
We add some quality and get some good depth in the summer and we'll be a damn good side next season. Very confident of that
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It's not that Coventry have been so much better than us. The thing is that they have lost their best players and replaced them with the money they brought in and it has had very little impact. They've finished a few points off last season's points tally (70 last year, 64-67 depending on this weekend's result this year). We also lost our best players but we have dropped from 75 last year to 66-69 this year. If we could have got to 75 again, and we might have done had we spent some of the money we have made from transfers out, then we might have been in the playoffs again.

It's not about us vs Coventry it's about Coventry 22/23 vs Coventry 23/24 and Boro 22/23 vs Boro 23/24.

They've had an horrendous run at the end of the season and it's almost certainly because of the FA Cup position or they probably would have been like for like with last season's points tally. I don't think our cup run affected us like there's did because of the timing. We were affected by injuries and selling our best players rather than being distracted. We won the game after the first Chelsea match but we got more injuries around then.

The question was really why haven't Coventry fallen off a cliff like we have? Not , why are Coventry so brilliant?
 
Nano said:
The question was really why haven't Coventry fallen off a cliff like we have? Not , why are Coventry so brilliant?
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By your own measure we haven't 'fallen off a cliff', we've lost 6-9 points from last year. The reasons for this are clear:

1) We had a much better starting line up last year, sadly 4 of our best XI weren't ours. We needed to replace them with limited funds. We have now done some, but not all of this.
2) Late recruitment meant we were massively undercooked when the season kicked off, meaning we had a horrendous start.
2) Injuries to key players meant we could not put out a settled side.

Coventry had to replace lots of players after losing key first team players and had a bad start. As they sold players they owned, they had more money to spend. Regardless, we're likely to finish ahead of them which should be seen as an achievement given our travails this season.
 
RedAsABeetroot said:
Is this more of a reflection that the 3 teams coming down were strong and Ipswich have done well?
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Not really. The points total required is high this season to get promoted automatically. It will probably end up being the highest ever required in the Championship.

The points required to get into play-offs are average though and had we matched our points total last season we'd have likely made the play-offs.

We've taken more points from Leicester, Leeds and Southampton (10 points) this season than we did against Luton, Sheff Utd and Burnley (7 points) so we can't really blame our lower points total on a stronger league. We just haven't performed as well as we did last season. Neither have Coventry. Neither have Sunderland. We all lost vital players so our squads are weaker.

Had we got 93 points and missed out on promotion like Leeds might, I would say yes we've been unlucky, it's been a particularly strong season. But the best we can do is get 69 points which has only been good enough for play-offs once in the last 10 years. (Last season when Sunderland scraped in on goal difference which is better than ours). So it's a bit of a stretch to say that we have been the victim of a strong league.

The last time we would have been promoted with 69 points and our goal difference would have been 12/13 when Leicester got into the play-offs with 68 points when they got knocked out in the semi by Watford.
 
Nano said:
The question was really why haven't Coventry fallen off a cliff like we have? Not , why are Coventry so brilliant?
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We haven't fallen off a cliff but we have gone backwards this season. It was probably impossible not to.

Coventry had to cope with the same issues as we did and have also gone backwards. In part due to a horrendous end to the season as injuries and a cup run caught up with them.

We lost Akpom plus 4-5 first team loanees.
They lost Gyokeres, Hamer and 4-5 first team loanees. They were also unable to persuade O'Hare to sign a new contract. Like us, they focused on replacing loanees with permanents. The loans they bought in this season don't seem to have been great but their permanent buys were very good.

Bear in mind also that they didn't even have a ground to play in at the beginning of last season so they have done well to have been in contention for the playoffs for as long as they have.

Right now, I reckon they probably have a slightly better squad than us but I think we have more money to play with to improve the squad this summer.

I think they'll be hoping that they can keep the core of the squad, minus O'Hare, together and manage a serious attempt at the top 4 next season after a year of bedding in this season.
 
LaPennaBianca said:
By your own measure we haven't 'fallen off a cliff', we've lost 6-9 points from last year. The reasons for this are clear:

1) We had a much better starting line up last year, sadly 4 of our best XI weren't ours. We needed to replace them with limited funds. We have now done some, but not all of this.
2) Late recruitment meant we were massively undercooked when the season kicked off, meaning we had a horrendous start.
2) Injuries to key players meant we could not put out a settled side.

Coventry had to replace lots of players after losing key first team players and had a bad start. As they sold players they owned, they had more money to spend. Regardless, we're likely to finish ahead of them which should be seen as an achievement given our travails this season.
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It looked like we had when this thread was started but there are other factors.

We really under-performed last year with 75 points because we were a 90 point capable team that didn't start our season until November (1.06ppg pre- Carrick, 49 pts total pro-rata vs 1.93ppg with Carrick, 89 pts total pro-rata) so the 75 points isn't our benchmark.

Comparing us finishing above Coventry doesn't make any sense. We finished 6 pts above Blackburn last season but if we did the same this season it would be a disaster.

To go from being a team capable of automatics and getting 90 points to one with fewer than 70 points and not really being in contention for the playoffs at any point in the season is definitely falling off a cliff.
 
Nano said:
I don't think our cup run affected us like there's did because of the timing.
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I think our cup run did hamper us to a degree, from memory I think we had a period where we played Sat/Tues every week for about 8 weeks, at a time our squad was very stretched, which coincidentally, was around the time we lost key games at home to Hull/Cov due to our squad being overstretched/decimated by injuries, things that were mentioned by Robins and Rosenior in their post match comments.
 
Bruce said:
We haven't fallen off a cliff but we have gone backwards this season. It was probably impossible not to.

Coventry had to cope with the same issues as we did and have also gone backwards. In part due to a horrendous end to the season as injuries and a cup run caught up with them.

We lost Akpom plus 4-5 first team loanees.
They lost Gyokeres, Hamer and 4-5 first team loanees. They were also unable to persuade O'Hare to sign a new contract. Like us, they focused on replacing loanees with permanents. The loans they bought in this season don't seem to have been great but their permanent buys were very good.

Bear in mind also that they didn't even have a ground to play in at the beginning of last season so they have done well to have been in contention for the playoffs for as long as they have.

Right now, I reckon they probably have a slightly better squad than us but I think we have more money to play with to improve the squad this summer.

I think they'll be hoping that they can keep the core of the squad, minus O'Hare, together and manage a serious attempt at the top 4 next season after a year of bedding in this season.
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Very much this - great post.
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
It’s the only bit of bargaining power the Football League still has. Long may the two-legged semi-finals continue.
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It's hindering any lower division teams getting a stab at the final.
Beating a Prem team over 2 legs is much harder than 1 leg.

1 game Semi. Neutral Ground,
 
TeaCider said:
They're absolutely *****.
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But they’re a necessary evil. If the Football League wilts to the Premier League and scraps them then that’s literally the last bit of power they still have completely done for. And it’s vitally important they don’t cave in. The FA has already given up. You can’t have the Football League giving up as well.
 
indeedido said:
We sold Spence, Tav and Akpom for similar to they have received for the brilliant Gyokeres and very good Hamer. Massive boots to fill, but collectively they have churned that money well.
We haven’t.
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What assets did they acquire with last summer’s sales? Simms, Wright, Sakamoto, that Dutch full back?


And us… Dieng, VDB, Rogers, Lath.




Think it’s pretty unfair to say they invested wisely and we didn’t.
 
I seem to remember Coventry invested nearly all the money they received in the Summer, while we seemed to invest only 50%

Example Akpom sold for £10.4m and Latte Lath bought for £4.3m

We tended to buy players that needed development work i.e. players that were either young or had come from different cultures. Dieng was on the only signing that could slip straight in.

We also sign some players quite late - O'Brien, Greenwood, LL. When we played Coventry in August they had their new players playing and we had quite a few not ready or not signed. There was a change of signing strategy at the Boro in the Summer with a move to sign more younger players on contracts which resulted in a painful transition period.
 
AytonMews said:
What assets did they acquire with last summer’s sales? Simms, Wright, Sakamoto, that Dutch full back?


And us… Dieng, VDB, Rogers, Lath.




Think it’s pretty unfair to say they invested wisely and we didn’t.
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They looked a very good team in their FA Cup run and were closing in on the playoffs.
They lost at Ipswich 2-1 on Dec 3rd and from then they advanced to the FA Cup semi final and took 38 points from the next 19 league matches, with 11 wins, 5 draws and 3 defeats.
Their April this year is very similar to our April last year. They've taken 4 points from 7 matches, including thankfully beating Leeds.
They had the distraction of the Wembley semi, we just switched off.

They will be there or thereabouts next season and have every bit as much scope to invest as we do should their owner choose to.
 
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Nano said:
It's not that Coventry have been so much better than us. The thing is that they have lost their best players and replaced them with the money they brought in and it has had very little impact. They've finished a few points off last season's points tally (70 last year, 64-67 depending on this weekend's result this year). We also lost our best players but we have dropped from 75 last year to 66-69 this year. If we could have got to 75 again, and we might have done had we spent some of the money we have made from transfers out, then we might have been in the playoffs again.

It's not about us vs Coventry it's about Coventry 22/23 vs Coventry 23/24 and Boro 22/23 vs Boro 23/24.

They've had an horrendous run at the end of the season and it's almost certainly because of the FA Cup position or they probably would have been like for like with last season's points tally. I don't think our cup run affected us like there's did because of the timing. We were affected by injuries and selling our best players rather than being distracted. We won the game after the first Chelsea match but we got more injuries around then.

The question was really why haven't Coventry fallen off a cliff like we have? Not , why are Coventry so brilliant?
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Did their form fall off a cliff simply because of a fixture pile up, or because they had tough games? They’ve lost 5 of the last 7…but 3 were against Southampton, hull and Ipswich which they probably would have lost anyway. They failed to
Win at Rotherham, Sheff Wed and Plymouth earlier in the season to failing to win at Birmingham and Blackburn is aligned to their away form all season.

I think their lack resilience away from home (lost to some poor sides) and lack the ability to beat the top sides has killed them. Against top 6 teams they’ve won 2, drawn 3 and lost 7
 
Redwurzel said:
I seem to remember Coventry invested nearly all the money they received in the Summer, while we seemed to invest only 50%

Example Akpom sold for £10.4m and Latte Lath bought for £4.3m

We tended to buy players that needed development work i.e. players that were either young or had come from different cultures. Dieng was on the only signing that could slip straight in.

We also sign some players quite late - O'Brien, Greenwood, LL. When we played Coventry in August they had their new players playing and we had quite a few not ready or not signed. There was a change of signing strategy at the Boro in the Summer with a move to sign more younger players on contracts which resulted in a painful transition period.
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We also signed Engel and Rogers for fees between £1-2mil
Dieng was £2mil
There were small fees for Rav, Silvera and Bangura.

We were pretty close to a neutral net spend last summer. We spent what we received.
 
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