First win fails to move Mowbray

Tony Mowbray is keeping his feet firmly on the ground following his first win as Coventry boss as a 3-2 win at Chesterfield.

A ninth-minute header from Marcus Tudgay put Mowbray on course for his first Coventry victory only for a deflected Jay O'Shea shot to creep inside goalkeeper Lee Burge's near post in the 42nd minute. But Coventry showed the character they will need to stay up when substitute Sanmi Odelusi turned in a low cross from Grant Ward in the 65th minute and Frank Nouble raced clear to make it 3-1 10 minutes later. Gboly Ariyibi drove in a Gary Roberts pass in the 86th minute to set up a tense finish, but Coventry held on to give Mowbray hope that they can pull clear. "We know where we are and I'm not going to stand here and shout about how good we were," he said. "At times, we still gave the ball away far too much and they put us under a bit of pressure, but the pleasing thing for me was a very young defence withstood most of it. "If the players show the determination they did here, we should be ok but we know there's still a long way to go and a lot of tough matches. "But we are scoring a few goals now and that gives you a chance of winning games. "We have played against a good side, they moved the ball better than we did and yet we looked potent on the change of possession and scored three, so it's good that we are causing a threat to teams. In our predicament, any victory is important." Chesterfield manager Paul Cook was left to rue costly errors for a defeat that leaves his team five points adrift of the top six. "We are getting in the ascendancy in games and shooting ourselves in the foot and that's us," he said. "But we want to encourage passing and play and when it goes wrong now and again you must come out and back your players and I'll always be like that as a manager. "It's so important that people are allowed to make mistakes and here, every time we looked to get a foothold in the game we were on the back foot again and that's a problem when you give goals away. "But fair play to Coventry, it's one of my old clubs and it's a fantastic result for them. "But it's so disappointing for us because when you are in games like that, we don't know how to draw games, we haven't got that game-management, but every team has an Achilles heel and that's our's."