Mark Robins praised his Coventry City players for a thoroughly “professional” job after they romped to a 6-2 victory over Oxford United to book their place in the fourth round of the FA Cup. The Sky Blues boss, however, was unhappy that his team failed to keep a clean sheet in an otherwise dominant display in which he instructed them to go for the “jugular” against their League One opponents.
“Conceding two goals, second phase set plays, not great,” he said, speaking in his post-match press conference after an entertaining game at the CBS Arena. “Other than that, I thought we were really good and did a really professional job. There was some real quality there and the goals came at a good time.
“We blew them away in the first bit but what we didn’t do well enough at times was make them feel the speed and quality all the time. But on the back of the games that we’ve played it’s understandable that there’s a little bit of fatigue left over. But that’s not an excuse because you have got to give everything you have got until you can’t do any more, and then you can make the changes.
“But, other than that, I thought there was some good rotations and some good movement in all areas of the pitch. And the second half was good in a number of ways. When Joel went to right-back he rolled into it, so there was some really good rotation.
“The speed of Fabio (Tavares) was evident, the passing was incredible – it was incisive and penetrable passes, and we created a lot of chances and took six of them. And some of those were absolutely incredible, really.”
City raced into an early lead with Joel Latibeadiere in the eighth minute but Oxford were level through Mark Harris two minutes later before Ben Sheaf restored the advantage a minute later in the 11th. Kasey Palmer then hit a stunning effort from outside the box to extend the lead to 3-1 in the 17th minute.
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