All to play for

01 March 2010 09:01
Coleman upbeat and confident Coventry City boss Chris Coleman is in an upbeat mood following his sides 2-1 win over Scunthorpe at the weekend. The win, Coventry's fourth in five games, has strengthened their hold in the top ten of the Championship and are now just three points from the teams now in the play off positions. Coleman is now confident that his side "have it all to play for" with jut 12 game left to play, although most teams below  do have  game or two in hand over Coventry City. Mr Coleman said, “We are very much looking up rather than behind us. We have played more games than most around us but they have got to go and get the points. “The gap last week was ten points from the bottom and five from the top, but now it is 12 points from the bottom and three from the top so I am not going to be all coy because we are looking forward and pushing as hard as we can at the teams above us.” Coventry travel to the Championship's bottom club, Peterborough, next Saturday, full of  confidence of victory. It was a home win over Peterborough last December which ended the dismal run of ten games without a win for the Sky Blues, a game which if 'City had lost, might have cost Coleman his job. “If we had lost the Peterborough game I probably wouldn’t be here now, looking back at the 3-2 win that ended City’s ten-match run without a victory. That’s football, it changes just like that. Some of the performances weren’t good enough but it is great now because we are winning games, we’re up the right end of the league and there is a great team spirit." " I don’t judge people’s character now, I judged everyone around me  and myself  when we hadn’t won for ten games. I think the players we have brought in have made a difference. The work ethic, to be fair to the lads, has always been there." "When we were on our bad run we just didn’t have that little bit of luck and on Saturday we had that just at the right time when Keiren Westwood pulled off a tremendous penalty save." “If you are going to be successful you have need things like that to go your way, but the harder you work the more luck you get. It was a bit scary when we went down to ten men and they got a goal back, but over the course of the 90 minutes we deserved to win the game.” The team performance at the weekend divided opinion to who was the man of the match. No one in a sky blue shirt had a bad game, although some players saw much more of the ball than others.  Stead got the headlines for his first goal on his home debut and Sammy Clingan contributed much and scored a blinding goal from a free kick on the edge of the area. Gunnarsson was much improved over some of his recent performances, but 'City boss singled out Carl Baker for praise, saying,“Carl is a very good player who can play on the right, the left or down the middle and you can see he’s a product of Liverpool’s academy.” “He is a lovely player who glides past people and while I don’t want to put any pressure on the kid he reminds me of Tommy Hutchison, who I played with towards the end of his career and was a legend here, the way he looks like he is not going to get there and then he toes it and does a drag back. “He is a very good player and I think he has surprised a lot of people, he hasn’t surprised me but I don’t think a lot of people knew too much about him. He knows when to release the ball off and he has got great awareness. He is not rapid quick but he has got that stride that can get him away and extra yard of pace to get away from the full back. He can also reverse a pass, see a pass and his work ethic is tremendous."

Source: FOOTYMAD