By CovSid67
August 18 2007

Fairly much a re-run of the Barnsely match, with Coventry City making fairly hard work of opposition they should beat in the first half, before, seemingly, the half-time team-talk having the desired effect. Can we just have said team-talk at 2.55 before the Hull game? It wil make staying top-of-the-table more likely....

Only four players from the weekend win were in the starting line-up, Osbourne, Borrowdale, Doyle, and Gray, with Marshall, Page, Hawkins, Stephen Hughes, Cairo, Adebola and Best,  given the task of avoiding the banana skin we nearly always slip up on. There was also a place on the bench for Robbie Simpson.

Sam, Dudfield, and Lee all had decent chances for County, while Best did put the ball in the net for the home side, only to be wrongly adjudged offside. Adebola enjoyed a decent first 45 minutes, giving the sort of display that might have stopped his manager bringing in so many new strikers if he were able to produce on a regular basis.

It took only a minute of the second half before the home side opened the scoring, with Adebola latching onto a Best header to open the scoring. Adebola almost re-paid the favour,setting up Best soon after, then Adebola blazed a 55th minute chance over the bar.

Adebola and Cairo then combined to set Doyle up, with the midfielder slotting home from six yards out - only to be (Wrongly) denied by the linesmans flag. A minute later, a long distance Doyle effort stung the keepers hands.

Birchill replaced Cairo with an hour gone, and soon after a quality pass from Osbourne saw Best race free of Notts County's defence, and lob Pilkington (Who could only help the ball on its way) for the second goal.

Tabb replaced Gray after 69 minutes, and Simpson replaced Adebola three minutes later.

With just under 20 minutes left, a fair few Coventry fans made for the exits (Why? It's not as if there would be queues in the car parks!!), and those supporters missed Robbie Simpson's first goal in a Coventry shirt - and he could quite easily have scored a debut hat-trick.

Marshall was called upon to make his only save of the second half minutes later, and in Coventry's next attack, the referee missed a blatant hand-ball that denied Jay Tabb a goal.

Two games, two wins, seven goals, and six of them scored by six different strikers? This isn't the Coventry City I'm used to watching! Long may it continue though....

With a family ticket (Two adults and two children) costing £49 for the match versus Hull, let's hope the decent start to the season results in a few extra supporters coming through the turnstiles this weekend.

Optimist of the night, Tim Flowers: "We would like nothing more than to have 20,000 there tonight...." -  6,735 bothered.

Team: Marshall, Osbourne, Borrowdale, Page, Hawkins, Cairo (Birchall 63), Doyle, S. Hughes, Gray (Tabb 69), Adebola (Simpson 72), Best.
SNU: Konstantopoulos, Ward.