Coventry City boss Mark Robins believes that Preston North End simply did the ‘dirty side’ of the game better on Friday night.
PNE headed to Coventry in search of another win after a strong upturn in form but few would have expected such a convincing victory.
Emil Riis put PNE into an early lead before finding Will Keane to make it 2-0 with just 20 minutes on the clock.
A superb counter-attack then saw Bobby Thomas turn a Riis cross into his own net, handing PNE a 3-0 victory on the road.
PNE were able to see the second half out and make it four wins in five games, beating some impressive sides along the way.
Mark Robins reacts to PNE display
Coventry boss Mark Robins has offered his verdict on PNE, believing that Ryan Lowe’s men did the dirty work brilliantly.
Robins told Coventry’s official website that his side just couldn’t cope with how North End performed.
Robins pointed to an ‘experienced’ PNE lineup and admitted that North End ran harder and battled harder than Coventry, doing the ‘dirty side’ better.
The Sky Blues boss even felt that his side were ‘scared stiff’ of PNE and allowed North End to get on top of the game from the first minute.
“It’s been as bad as it’s been for a good few years. Even the Stoke game when we lost 4-0 last year, it was worse than that. Sometimes the game gets away from you early in the game. Today was that. We conceded after a minute with a really poor goal, and we have to defend that better.”
“We can concede goals form corner, you don’t always get it your own way, but they set their stall out from the first minute and we didn’t cope with that. We’ve been old-maned, they have an experienced line up and they have run harder than us and fought harder than us and they have done the dirty side better than anyone who has been here and they deserved to win there’s no doubt about it, it’s just the manner of the defeat.”
“There was no pride in that, it didn’t even look like a performance it looked like a group of individuals who looked scared stiff and let them get on top of us. There were some poor individual performances and decisions, and we have to look at that and its even difficult to pick the bones out of it because it was so poor. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves, we have to be ready to go again Monday. We have to take this on the chin and take all the criticism we’re going to get and stick out chest out and put in a performance Monday,” he added.
PNE have become a real bogey side for Coventry over the years.
Coventry haven’t won a league game against North End since September 2007 and have lost eight of the last 10 meetings between the two sides.
North End have now completed a double over Coventry this season, scoring six goals in the process.
We could hardly blame Robins for being fed up of facing North End at this point, with Friday’s result a particular low point having witness PNE dominating from first whistle to last.