Another disappointing away day as Coventry spawned their way to a first half lead then weathered a substantial second half City onslaught that for all its bluster, yielded few genuine scoring chances.

Ooo, I’m drawing some short straws just now. Last time I slid the gilt-embossed tiger-chat match reporter’s fountain pen (ask your granddad, young people) between my slim but sensitive fingers (ask your grandma, young people) I was forced to employ its Bolivian-silver nib to describe a rank gutless and incompetent display at Barnsley. Yesterday’s reverse was, I hasten to add, nothing so grotesque. But it was a real ‘ho-hum’ game. Forgotten as soon as you’ve come to the end of reading this report. And, unless I can root out something worth saying that transcends the humdrum fare on offer yesterday at the Ricoh, quite possibly forgotten well in advance of that.

For we defended poorly during the first half, allowing the home side, ushered helpfully to success by a compliant referee, to lead 2-0 at half-time and though we were by far the better side in the second half we failed to convert even one of several good chances. Overall we had as much possession as, probably more than, a modestly capable but hard-working Cov team. But we were inadequate in both penalty areas. And you won’t get me claiming we deserved anything more than what we got. A lame defeat.

Sighing in relief that the other results went favourably for us was the same side that bested Brum last Saturday:

Myhill
Ricketts Turner Coles Delaney
RaimondoParlour Ashbee Livermore
Forster Windass Elliott

And off we go, in the splendidly imaginative and appealingly intimate Ricoh Arena, two-thirds full but, in my view, a finer place to watch football than a sold-out St Mary’s, Britannia, Walker’s Bowl, etc etc – give me a slice of innovation over ‘here’s the plan, build it like the last one lads’ any time.

It’s a grey beginning though. Little between the sides, but already disturbing signs that the consistently powerful forward Dele Adebola is (yet again) going to cause us serious problems. He’s got the better of Coles from the first whistle and is the main reason why Cov look the better side in advanced positions as the game begins to take shape.

Ashbee is under pressure in central midfield and responds with that reliable stand-by in such situations, a wild scything chop. Referee Tanner administers a finger-wagging but no card. Ill-deserved mercy for Ashbee. A suspicion among the City support that we have a ref who may be on our side.

A suspicion that should be filed alongside the suspicion that Alan Shearer is going to develop into an articulate and perceptive pundit and the suspicion that Iraq is going to develop into the beacon of democracy that other Western-supported states in the region such as Saudi Arabia already are.

After a neat Windass first-time touch sets up Forster for a chance that is blocked by a convergence of defenders, it’s Cov’s turn to force the pace. Adebola’s strength creates a dangerous surge into the box and a home player goes to ground. Penalty given, and ball expertly whisked into the corner by Doyle despite Boaz guessing right and diving to his left.

I don’t think it was a penalty. In fact I think referee Tanner got it disastrously wrong. It looked like a perfectly judged clean tackle to me. That, it seems, was the view of our players too, as they surrounded the referee in dismay. The protests were of course in vain.

No penalty? That’s what I reckon. But I have to admit all this happened fully a hundred yards away from me.

In fact, near enough all the important action in this fixture occurred up the far end from me and the rest of the travelling support, which Cov attacked during the first period before we took over for the second. Although comments of an ‘I’ve just seen it on telly Mike and you’ve got that description all wrong’ nature are normally as welcome among your match-reporting community as a plague of blisters on a countryside yomp, I might on this occasion make an exception, and invite televisual inspectors to fill in details or correct small matters of fact that might here have gone astray, such as who scored, in which time zone, under which monarch’s reign, on which planet, that sort of thing.

But I know what happened next. Livermore knocked a hopeful chip into the box, Forster brought the ball down delicately, moving it past his immediate opponent, and that desperate defender then blatantly blatted it away with his hand. A cast-iron penalty. A ‘stonewall’ penalty in the modern idiom (though I have no idea what stonewalls, fine features of our hill country, have to do with penalty area crimes). As obvious as Britney’s caesarean scar.

Referee Tanner gazed blankly. And played on.

It cost us the match – or, at least, it was the decisive moment.

Elliott gets a shoulder injury. Ashbee’s tackled late, he’s hurt too. Who’s Coventry’s manager again? Mmm. Frequently a man’s managerial attitudes are wholly different from those he displayed as a player. Think of the functional teams fielded by Brian Little, a gloriously inventive player in his heyday. But sometimes a spotty exterior hides a spotty interior. ‘Ugly’ is a word that captures so very much about the Ian Dowie phenomenon.

On 34 bad becomes worse. Someone loses the ball down in the left-back position, near the by-line. It’s a long way away. I thought it was Coles. Others around me were simply unsure. No less an authority than Trev ‘Trev’ Holmes had the hapless Stuart Elliott carrying the can. Whoever: it was an atrociously wasteful error, allowing Cov space behind our defence, and a combination of firm cross, header by McKenzie and lucky deflection inside the six-yard box put the home side two up.

Not good.

We’re a mess now, intent only on reaching half-time without suffering further damage. Adebola is close to unplayable. For sure, Coles can’t cope. When we come forward the delivery is uniformly poor. A dull boot into the box asks too much of Windass against central defenders as solid as Ward and Hawkins. Forster, down the right, wants the ball but doesn’t get given it often enough. Elliott, down the left, plays as if crippled by asthma.

On 45 the gloom is lifted briefly as power and guile from Windass sets up Livermore for a shot, but the midfielder’s intelligent supporting run into space is not matched by his finishing and the shot whistles just over the angle of post and crossbar.

3 added minutes. Half-time. 2 down. Not good.

Second-half’s better. But we don’t score.

There are no substitutions at half-time but there is a change. Coles is banished to left-back, while Delaney takes over as the left-sided central defender. Our defence looks a great deal more secure. Is that because Delaney is a much better central defender than Coles or is it because Coventry, two ahead, placed less emphasis on attacking in the second half? Both are true, I suspect, and the question therefore remains: who plays at left-back while Dawson is unavailable?

It’s a bit rubbish now. Scrappy football, fussy refereeing.

Just before the hour Marney replaces Livermore. Deano II takes over as right-sided midfielder, while Raimondo Parlour, not at his most effective today, shifts to the left. And then Forster picks up a yellow card in circumstances that sum up this rotten referee. Forster bounces the ball in frustration as a throw is given against us. It’s scarcely dissent at all. It’s utterly trivial. But into referee Tanner’s notebook he goes. The sort of referee who can’t spot a handball penalty, doesn’t understand the difference between a proper tackle and a late tackle, but who knows every line of FIFA’s manual entitled ‘Players who do things that aren’t in the slightest physically dangerous to opponents but which have to be stamped out because the sponsors really don’t like shows of emotion even if it’s only a bit of frustration’.

We’re on top now, mind. Forster drives vigorously down the left, cuts into the box, shoots across the face of Marshall’s goal but the ball eludes the far post. A header is pushed out gamely by Marshall. On 70 a delightfully Gallic pass by Raimondo Parlour finds Ricketts in space down the right and his equally delightful cross plops onto Deano’s forehead just six yards out, but the header is groped away by Marshall and the rebound falls kindly for a panicked defence.

On 74 Forster sets up Marney inside the box but he can come up with nothing better than a tentative mis-hit.

One of these chances should have been taken – most conspicuously the Windass header. And had we got one goal, we might well have got two. Coventry were by now on permanent retreat and looked severely short of both leadership and physical strength. But we failed.

Parkin came on for Parlour and improved things not one jot. A lumbering cameo. Mind you, even the ineffective Parkin performed better than Cov sub Chris Birchall. World Cup star for Trinidad last June. Twenty minutes of surrendering possession every time he sniffed the ball this March. But we don’t take advantage. Ashbee off, Welsh on, but too late to make a difference. On 89 Cov’s midfielder Hughes, twenty yards out from Boaz’s goal, shoots too high and it’s their first serious attempt to score since they went two up nearly an hour earlier. We’ve dominated the second half. But we’ve lost the game. And, in both attack and in defence, Coventry were better than us in both penalty areas.

You don’t need extravagant footballing gifts to tuck into mid-table in this Division. Colchester, Stoke, Plymouth, Leicester, Coventry. Not a shred of flair to be seen in any of their line-ups. Enemies of Football like Tony Pulis and Ian Dowie are drawing a decent wage for producing thuddingly barren, muscularly dull, uncompromisingly grim teams that will kill the game if allowed to prosper and become the norm. Ugly. But not relegated. What they know is that You Can’t Afford To Make Mistakes. That’s got to be our short-term objective too, I suppose. It won’t be pretty but pretty can wait. We’re good enough to stay up some games, not others. Eleven fixtures left in which to be slightly better than three other teams in the Division.

HULL CITY (4-3-3): Myhill; Ricketts, Coles, Turner, Delaney; Parlour, Ashbee, Livermore; Forster, Windass, Elliott.  Subs: Marney (for Livermore, 57), Parkin (for Parlour, 76), Welsh (for Ashbee, 88), Doyle, Duke.

Goals: None

Booked: Ashbee, Forster, Livermore

Sent Off: None

COVENTRY CITY: Marshall, Virgo, Hawkins, Ward, Hall, Osbourne, Doyle, Hughes, Tabb, Adebola, McKenzie.  Subs: Birchall (for Tabb, 73), Mifsud (for McKenzie, 83), Fadiga (for Osbourne 89), Steele, Bunce.

Goals: Doyle 21 (pen), McKenzie 34

Booked: None

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:  S Tanner

ATTENDANCE: 21,079