"A massive surprise" - Don Goodman offers Coventry City and Mark Robins promotion hope | OneFootball

The Sky Blues have had yet another underwhelming start to a season.

Coventry City have made a poor start to the season but Sky Sports' Don Goodman believes that history shows they can turn things around and have another good go at winning promotion.

Coventry's first eight games of the season have been very reminiscent of how they started last season's Championship campaign.

Off the back of two separate heartbreaking moments on penalties at Wembley, at the same end of the home of English football, Mark Robins' side have struggled to find their full mojo.

But they aren't playing that badly. A lot of the matches they've contested haven't been very lopsided in favour of the opposition, other than their trip to Elland Road to face Leeds United, and yet they have only won two out of eight.

One positive is that, despite sitting 17th in the league, their most recent display against Blackburn Rovers was much more impressive, and, crucially, they picked up three points from that match.

Coventry don't need to panic

As much as the start made by the Sky Blues has been a bit concerning for Goodman, the EFL pundit sees no reason for City to start getting all worried about what's to come, because they've been able to turn things round in the past.

"But, obviously, they have to improve. Before the Blackburn game, they had struggled at both ends of the pitch. I knew they had to improve defensively after letting in 59 goals last season.

"With the forwards they have at their disposal, however, I would never have thought that Coventry would have struggled for goals. To see that they had only scored six before Tuesday, with only three of them coming from open play, I was absolutely surprised.

"You have to apply some rationale, however. Yes, they were massively second-best against Leeds at Elland Road, as many sides will be, but their other three defeats were all by a single goal in games they possibly didn't deserve to lose. They cruised past Blackburn, too.

"There's no need to panic, despite it being a slow start. They actually have the same points as they did at this point of last season and have two points more than they did in 2022/23, when they eventually got to the play-off final. There's only been one game when they've been fully second-best and that was against Leeds."

Early season hangover shouldn't be a concern for Coventry now

It must be annoying for Coventry supporters to sit and watch their team at the start of this season and the last and be so baffled by why they start these campaigns so slowly.

Last season, it was certainly a worry. After so narrowly losing out on promotion to the Premier League, there was some fear that they had blown their opportunity to go up. But what they showed over the rest of the season, in the league and the FA Cup, showed this team's quality and capability to compete with the best.

Doing something once doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to do it again. What it should do though is give the players, the coaches and the supporters the belief that they can turn things around again.