Source: FOOTYMAD
O'Halloran fighting to keep his place
Defender has had torrid time Coventry City had hoped that the problem position of left back had been solved when Stephen O'Halloran returned from injury and put in a couple of impressive displays, but in recent games he has been adjudged as being at fault for two of the goal City have conceded. Having been cautioned at The Walkers Stadium, Leicester last week, the Sky Blues boss Aidy Boothroyd took the defender off in an effort to protect him from a possible second yellow card, only to see his replacement at left back, Martin Cranie be sent off for two bookable offences. It is looking likely that with Cranie serving his compulsory one game ban, O'Halloran will not now be relegated to the bench for the visit of Bristol City to The Ricoh next Saturday. O'Halloran conceded, “It is hard breaking into the team and once you get in it is even harder to keep your place. I have got to keep working and hopefully improving over the next few weeks.” The 23 year old O'Halloran, who joined Coventry City from Aston Villa in the summer has spent the five months of the season recovering from a back injury. He made an encouraging start to his Coventry City career at the beginning of the current season but has only started nine games for the Sky Blues. He said, “I feel I am finding my feet now. I am loving my run in the side because I didn't play much earlier in the season. The lads have been great and hopefully we can start turning these good performances in to wins now.” Speaking about his part in Leicester City's equalising goal in added time of the first half in which the Foxes own full back Kyle Naughton cut inside the defender before unleashing a powerful and unstoppable shot into the top corner of Westwood's goal, he said, “It was one of those that we could have stopped but the lad picked out the top corner which was frustrating for us because it was a great strike,but hopefully we can stop things like that happening in the future and maybe start getting a few clean sheets under our belt.” O'Halloran went on to analyse the game saying, “I thought we were always in the game against a good side who are well up the table. We competed well with them and deserved our draw in the end." "We had our chances. Marlon King took his goal well and we could have maybe added to that but at the end of the day we are happy with the result and hopefully we can keep it going for the rest of the season." “We were really gutted with the Swansea result because we really competed with a side who are second in the table and they beat Leeds at the weekend, but I thought we thoroughly deserved something against them." “So to come off the back of that and show the bottle we did at the Walkers Stadium, I thought we deserved at least a point at Leicester." “Swansea and Leicester play similar ways so we wanted to keep the same game plan and keep in their faces and stop them playing, and if we got our chances try to take them.”
