Coventry’s FA Cup defeat of Stoke makes Grimmer viewing for Hughes
Coventry 2 - 1 Stoke
FT
FA Cup
Ricoh Arena
Coventry2
Home team scorers
Jordan Willis 24
Jack Grimmer 68
Stoke1
Away team scorers
Charlie Adam 54 Pen
Jack Grimmer, centre, scores Coventry City’s second goal against Stoke City in the FA Cup third round. Photograph: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images
Paul MacInnes at the Ricoh Arena
Sat 6 Jan ‘18 17.08 GMTLast modified on Sat 6 Jan ‘18 17.23 GMT
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Coventry City gave their fans something to jump up and down about as they recorded a memorable FA Cup win over Premier League Stoke City.
The chances of Mark Hughes clinging to his job in the Potteries look ever more remote after this defeat. For the Sky Blues, however, it was a moment of pure joy after a decade of decline with goals from Jordan Willis and Jack Grimmer coming either side of a Charlie Adam penalty.
Relegated to League Two last summer, the club’s lowest position in half a century, the one-time Premier League mainstays have bounced back under Mark Robins this season and sat third in the table going into this match. Robins opted to select his first team, with the addition of a debut for the loanee winger Jordan Maguire-Drew.
Hughes had promised to field a strong Stoke side in this match and at first glance his starting XI looked fit for the challenge. With two strong forwards in Mame Biram Diouf and Saido Berahino, and three experienced Premier League midfielders behind them in Joe Allen, Charlie Adam and Stephen Ireland, it looked like a team up for the fight and enough ability to unlock a League Two defence.
Appearances can be deceptive. Stoke started determinedly enough, Allen and Adam rotating as playmaker and looking to float balls over Coventry’s centre halves, Tom Davies and Jordan Willis. It was their only tactic and a simple one, but it was also effective. Ireland played the pass in the 11th minute that released Diouf and his shot on the spin had to be cleared off the line by Willis. Ten minutes later Ireland should have scored when Adam’s lofted pass was turned into his path by Diouf, only for the Irishman to drag his shot wide of Liam O’Brien’s right hand post.
Ireland’s effort was not a confident one and it turned out Stoke’s initial zest was short-lived. Coventry started to find their feet in the match, putting either Stoke playmaker under constant pressure whenever he was on the ball. On the right flank the fullback Jack Grimmer and Maguire-Drew were making hay against Stoke’s impromptu wingback Ramadan Sobhi.
Grimmer it was who got beyond the Egyptian in the 23rd minute with a direct run before cutting his cross back across goal. Max Biamou met it and laid it on for his partner and Coventry’s top scorer, Marc McNulty, whose shot was deflected behind for a corner. Maguire-Drew took the resultant set-piece and lofted it to the back post where Davies knocked it down for Willis to turn the ball home from six yards.
An already lively Ricoh erupted and the tension amongst Stoke fans was palpable. Groans only got louder when, in the 29th minute, Diouf missed a clear chance to equalise. Sobhi cut the ball back for Adam and his cross found the Senegalese clear at the far post, but he bounced his header off the floor and over the bar.
As the first half eked towards a close, Coventry began to smell blood and twice nearly doubled their lead. First the teenager Tom Bayliss played in McNulty one on one. The striker rounded Jack Butland but hit his shot wide of the far post. Seconds later McNulty was in again and shot on target through Butland only for Cameron to hoof it clear at the last.
It took only seven minutes of the second half for Hughes to hit the big red button marked “Peter Crouch”’. The former England man forced Diouf out to wing-back in a team now playing with four forwards. The change gave Stoke a boost of energy and almost immediately Sobhi won them a penalty, driving into the box and drawing a foul from the goalscorer Willis. Adams stepped up and calmly sent the spot kick low into the centre of the goal to equalise.
Crouch saw a crafty flick at a Sobhi shot fly just wide of the post in the 61st minute, but the energy flash had burned out and back came Coventry with a goal of real quality. Grimmer made and scored it himself, picking up the ball in an apparently innocuous position halfway inside the Stoke half in the 68th minute. The Scot, once Aberdeen’s youngest ever player, put his foot on the gas and cut inside. He lost Sobhi, evaded Allen and from the edge of the box cracked a shot that whipped past Butland and inside the goalkeeper’s left post.
Maxim Choupo Moting and Xherdan Shaqiri joined the fray to make it six attackers on the pitch for Stoke and things started to get hectic. Crouch had a 25-yard volley punched clear by O’Brien. Berahino, soon approaching the two-year anniversary of his last goal, had all the time in the world to place his shot from inside the box in the 78th minute, but saw it blocked by a sliding challenge. The same happened to Choupo-Moting’s follow-up effort.
With the clock ticking down Shaqiri saw a volley blocked, Crouch another volley saved and Diouf somehow contrived to miss a header even easier than his first. But Coventry’s resolve and organisation saw them through for an achievement lapped up by a crowd of 14,000.