Coventry City 3 Leicester City 1: Foxes come unstuck with ten men
After a twelve year interlude in the Coventry v Leicester derby days, it was a short trip down the M69 for Foxes fans, even if it turned into a long, troubled afternoon in the end. Helen Thompson made her shortest trip of the season to see if the Foxes could continue a good start to 2024.
The last time Leicester made the trip to Coventry was August 2011, a very different time. Sven-Goran Eriksson was in charge, the club were throwing money at players for big transfers and bigger (ill-advised) contracts. What’s now the CBS Arena was still the Ricoh Arena, Coventry were under different ownership. There were two red cards that day, one a piece (Darius Vassell after just thirteen minutes!) but ‘big spending Leicester’ got the three points.
There's an entire generation of Coventry fans who hadn't experienced a home derby game or win. Seemingly, there's a portion of fans looking to escalate this fixture too. The game felt more aggressive off the pitch than it really needed to, some fans on both sides could have represented themselves better and the police didn’t particularly help things. The banners made by some Coventry fans didn’t help things either. Needless to say pre match tensions were running a little higher and between reports of Foxes fans being pepper sprayed and skirmishes, it kicked off.
On the pitch, Enzo Maresca named a largely unchanged team, Cesare Casedei chosen to plug the Ndidi gap and James Justin was selected over Callum Doyle for the matchup with pacey Sakomoto. Leicester faced an in-form Coventry side. Having taken a first half lead, it turned out to be a second half to forget for the Foxes, the home side coming away the deserved victors, scoring three goals within fifteen minutes against ten men.
Tarp removal service
How often can you walk to an away game? Life choices, my marriage, mean this is essentially a home fixture to me. A blessing and a curse as it means spending the said walk with three Coventry fans. Luckily, they're measured ones who chose not to gloat at the end. Being home less than an hour after the full time whistle was little compensation in the end though.
The CBS Arena isn't a particularly great away day from the point of the match going experience. It's located far out of the city centre so limited food and drink choices, it's usually a mess to get into the stadium, the police herd you at the end and this time, it also came with the added bonus of costing £37. But it did provide me with a football first.
Have you ever got to where your seat should be only to find it, plus a whole section of others, covered by a tarp that's taped to the seats saying in the vein of ‘don't remove’? No? Me either and the three separate stewards who all made me show my ticket before letting me pass didn’t mention it either. Thank you to the guys on the row behind for helping tear it off. Only when we did so were we able to understand the reason it was there in the first place: the roof was leaking! Maybe they can put some of the extortionate ticket fees towards fixing it. Instead, it just meant a few lads spent the game getting dripped on before they found alternative seats.
First half choices
With how many away tickets you're allocated, it lends itself to creating a good away atmosphere (ignoring a few who preferred to spend their ninety minutes just berating the nearby Coventry fans) and the mood was good as the first half got underway. Mark Robins likes his Coventry team to attack and pass the ball, so it did make for some end to end action before the Foxes took a little more control. Not quite the usual first half script, but not too far off it when we were facing a side who wanted to bring the game to us for a change.
The home side played some risky, and then poor balls in their own box, giving Maresca's men plenty of opportunities but we were a little wasteful in possession. Not enough touches in the box led to shots or chances. Casedei had the first half’s best chance, putting the ball wide but it looked like we'd be heading into halftime level. Robins’ men hadn't really tested Mads Hermansen in the Leicester goal despite some counterattacks and tidy looking moves.
With the break looming, Coventry were guilty of some complacency that led to a chance before Thomas brought down Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and a penalty awarded by referee, Darren England, who wasn't popular with either set of fans.
It wasn't expected that Dewsbury-Hall would take the penalty but it was a convincing one and who better to give Leicester the lead than our local starboy? The away end enjoyed that one based on the amount of people that fell over or smashed shins into seats. Ah, away days!
Three minutes of madness as Abdul two foots the script
Life comes at you fast, hey. Barely three minutes had passed from Leicester taking the lead before, under no real pressure and with the ball still in Coventry’s half, Abdul Fatawu had a moment of madness and dived, two footed, into a tackle on Bidwell. The end result luckily wasn’t an injury but you can’t fly into a tackle like that and it wasn’t a shock that the referee immediately flashed the red card. The first thought for most of the traveling 4,500 fans? Game over.
This was the sliding doors moment that changed the game for the Foxes. Enter the break 1-0 up but with eleven men and yes, Coventry would have upped the ante for the second half and likely still made their substitutions but we would have had our own options and been able to stick to our gameplan. Instead, Enzo had to tear up and rewrite his half-time script and Leicester gave themselves a mountain to tackle in the second half. Not to mention the prospect of facing three games without Abdul.
As much as you felt Abdul had this in his locker at some point, he’s flown into tackles in several other games, it’s difficult to be angry at him this morning. You can’t overlook that he’s still only eighteen. He’s learning with every game and these sort of naive, rash tackles are a key part for him to address. He isn’t a player who wants to injure his opponent, these aren’t cynical tackles. They’re tackles of a young, excitable winger who wants to win.
Even if you did wake up still annoyed about it, his Instagram post addressing it and apologising is so heartfelt. Even if a social media manager typed it up, it’s definitely his words and you know he didn’t mean for that to happen. It also provided some amusement to the less or non-religious of us. I may well try saying ‘God is in control’ the next time I have a nightmare in the office.
A new ask for Maresca’s men
Being asked to defend a lead with a numerical disadvantage away from home is a new problem for Maresca. Hopefully one Leicester won't face often, but it is a little concerning that we didn't seem to have a clear plan for how to approach it. It felt more like we made it up as we went, which possibly wasn’t helped by the bench options. But the decisive moments came in the final quarter of the game.
Coventry made two key substitutions and we followed suit with one. The home side got theirs spot on and I’m less convinced we did. The game changed as the 80th minute approached; the Foxes had frustrated their hosts for the first half an hour of the second half.
It wasn’t a comfortable watch in the away end seeing us trying to defend the one goal, but we were just about doing it and the Coventry players were starting to look a little annoyed. Maresca had already pulled the trigger on taking off Mavididi at half-time for McAteer, which seemed sensible but did remove some of the upfront swagger.
The pressure was building though and Coventry’s first goal came from arguably their best player, Callum O’Hare who as we tired we seemed to have less of an answer for. With the game level, the momentum naturally swung to the Sky Blues. A second goal felt horribly inevitable. But taking off Tom Cannon felt like the nail in the coffin for any hopes. He was tiring, and we are in a mini striker crisis, but he was our last outlet and he’d been trying to offer the counter-attack and to hold the ball up.
Enzo has some work to do to look at our options in a position like this, how we set ourselves up, the block options. Ultimately though, we didn’t deserve to win and Coventry played the final fifteen minutes to perfection.
The big game problem
A loss is never fun, but it doesn’t need to be panic stations. There is a pleasing togetherness about this squad and how measured Maresca comes across in his interviews too. If you didn't already love him to bits, Dewsbury-Hall's comments after the game set the scene quite well. All things considered, we simply didn't deserve to win this game and we need to learn from it collectively, not just Abdul.
Ipswich is the next game, back at the King Power on the 22nd. It gives the team some time to rest, not a bad thing after the extra energy required today. The gap is still significant but bouncing back is something both the fans and Maresca will expect.
Questions are being asked. Of the current top four, we have only beaten Southampton, and they were a bit of a mess when we faced them. Our record against the top or better teams isn't convincing so far. Ipswich provides a chance to start to change that.
