Wayne Rooney has urged Coventry City to bounce back swiftly from their opening Premier League loss at Arsenal or risk a decline in self-belief.
The Sky Blues’ comeback to the elite division after 25 years began with a 3-0 defeat to the English champions. Securing anything from the Emirates Stadium was always going to be a significant challenge, with Frank Lampard acknowledging his squad found it hard to handle Arsenal’s defensive structure and physical approach.
Coventry’s upcoming schedule offers no respite, as they make the trip to Manchester City in a fortnight. Before that, they host Hull City at the CBS Arena following their midweek Carabao Cup tie against League One outfit Plymouth Argyle.
Hull, who alongside Coventry and Ipswich Town earned promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs in May, began their campaign perfectly by defeating Manchester United 2-0. Ipswich also secured maximum points in their opening fixture with a 2-1 win over Sunderland.
On Match of the Day, Rooney emphasised the significance of the Sky Blues putting defeats behind them promptly. He explained that the hardest aspect is that having won numerous matches in the previous campaign, coming into the Premier League and losing one match which then becomes two or three, one’s confidence suffers and it becomes extremely tough over a long season. He stated that the sooner they move past this fixture, with a difficult match against Hull approaching, they could suddenly find themselves six points adrift of Hull. The faster they can recover, the better.
Alan Shearer endorsed Rooney’s assessment, noting that mistakes which went unpunished in the Championship will not be tolerated at this level. From Coventry’s perspective, they will not be evaluated harshly for playing Arsenal away as they are comfortably the finest team in the country. However, the faster they adapt, the greater their prospects of remaining in the division, and that must be their objective this term. Errors are costly – Van Ewijk made a mistake but within three seconds of that error, the ball was in the net. They must eliminate this. The manner in which they lost possession for the Havertz goal exemplifies this. In the Championship, there is time to recover, but not in the Premier League.