‘Garbage, arrogant, lack-lustre, blase’

Chris Coleman did not attempt to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes after Coventry City’s 2-0 defeat by Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon.

‘We were garbage for want of a better word,’ he said, although the fans streaming out of the Ricoh Arena long before the end had their own descriptions of the game.

‘Lack-lustre, arrogant, blase.

‘All words you don’t want to be associated with and you don’t want your team to be associated with.’

The defeat undid all City’s hard work from earlier in the week at Birmingham and Coleman added: ‘We need to have a bunch of players who are strong enough to put back-to-back wins together otherwise we are always going to be in the bottom half.’

From the stands, it looked as though Crystal Palace were handed the win on a silver platter, but boss Neil Warnock insisted: ‘That’s as good as we have played since I have been at the club.

‘We kept possession, we looked a threat and I couldn’t fault any department. I thought we were super.

‘We’re disappointed where we are in the table because it is only down to us. It’s nobody else’s fault.

‘We should be way higher than this. The lads know how they got to perform and we know we can go anywhere and win if we perform like that.’