Coventry City Fans Verdict: Assertive Win Pleases Loyal Royals

It was a long wait for us fans between the 2-1 win over Huddersfield Town and the game against Coventry on Tuesday evening, but the players managed to get a result that made that wait more than worth it.

After a bit of a sloppy start, which gave the visitors a couple of golden opportunities that they really should have taken, Joao did what Joao does and put the Royals ahead midway through the first half before Ejaria hit the woodwork.

On his 100th appearance in the blue and white hoops, Andy Rinomhota grabbed only his fourth goal for the club just 30 seconds after half time to double the lead and Swift wrapped up all three points with a stupendous free kick after McFadzean had been given his marching orders.

It was by no means a vintage performance and for quite a while Coventry looked the most threatening team of the two, but sometimes it’s even better seeing your team not quite at their best but still win by a comfortable three-goal margin.

There were three main talking points that the fans were buzzing about on Twitter after the game: the three goalscorers...

Lucas Joao

I’m sure, like me, most of you have run out of superlatives to describe this man - so I'm just going to let some statistics do the talking...

14 league goals, 17 in all competitions, third top goalscorer in the league and the best minutes-to-goal ratio in the top two tiers. Now I'm not usually one for stats, but they are just too good to ignore.

Not only are the stats with him, but he has well and truly cemented himself in the hearts of every single Reading fan. He’s the best striker we’ve had since the Doyle and Kitson days - it’s as simple as that.

Another wonderful goal on Tuesday night did no harm at all to his relationship with the fans...

Andy Rinomhota

We all know how good Andy Rinomhota is and how important he has been to us since he broke into the first team - but unfortunately because of the type of player he is, he very rarely gets any headlines.

That changed on Tuesday as he marked his 100th appearance by channelling his inner Lucas Joao with a clinical finish from the edge of the box.

He's one of those players that goes under the radar, but i think it’s fair to say that the fans absolutely love him judging by these tweets...

John Swift

We should really be used to John Swift pulling off moments of magic like this, but he still manages to blow my mind whenever he does it.

He had absolutely no right to even think about trying to shoot from that far out, but he did so anyway and planted it right in the top corner. I'm sure I wasn’t alone in being left in utter shock by what I saw.

On his day he is up there with the best in the league, and the fans are delighted that he’s back in the first team picture, especially when he scores goal like that...

Conclusion

Nowhere near our best performance of the season, but a really, really important result and one that shows why we are where we are in the table. We have match winners all over the pitch who can produce magic moments at any time, and sometimes it doesn’t matter how you play when you have players like that.

Next up is another trip up north to Preston, as revenge month continues...

URZ