Coventry City cannot make similar mistake as Swansea City clash looms: View | OneFootball

Coventry's promotion hopes could hinge on ensuring their early season form doesn't deteriorate from here

Coventry City cannot afford another slow, sloppy start to the new season for the third year in a row.

The Sky Blues are aiming to earn their way back to the Premier League, but have only won five points from their opening five games.

While this isn’t a huge disaster just yet, this weekend’s game against Swansea could prove a big game in the early stages of their campaign.

A 1-1 draw with Watford last weekend means Mark Robins’ side have won just one of their league games so far this season, with the gap to the top six already being four points.

This is starting to feel like déjà vu for the Championship side, as a poor start in each of their previous two terms also hurt their promotion chances.

Coventry City’s slow start trend

Coventry failed to win any of their opening seven league games in the 2022/23 campaign, which left them bottom of the table by the middle of September.

Their first victory didn’t come until the eighth game, a 1-0 win over Middlesbrough, before they then drew and lost their next two for a total of seven points from a possible 30.

While the Sky Blues did go on to achieve a fifth place finish that year after a remarkable run of form after that, they gave themselves an awful lot of work to do to catch up to the top six.

And without that poor start, perhaps they could’ve even kept pace with the top two and possibly avoided the play-off final heartbreak they ultimately suffered.

Behind the scenes issues were a mitigating factor for this slow start, with four of their first five home games being postponed, along with a change of ownership midway through the term.

But there was a lot more stability going into the following season, with the biggest obstacle being the departures of Viktor Gyokeres (pictured above) and Gustavo Hamer.

However, Coventry won just one of their opening eight games, again beating Middlesbrough for their first victory.

Robins’ side earned 16 points from their opening 16 games and 48 from the next 30. If they’d kept up that pace for the whole campaign then they would’ve earned 73 points instead of 64, the same as sixth place Norwich City.

This year the team has been able to hold onto most of their best players, in particular keeping Ben Sheaf, with Callum O'Hare the only notable departure.

The club is at its most stable in quite some time, and should now be primed for a real push given the talent at their disposal.

Sheaf’s injury keeping him out of the side for the opening five games has been a blow, but five points so far is still a disappointing return after such a positive summer.

It puts some unwanted pressure on the clash against Swansea this weekend, a game they should be looking to win given the Welsh club’s own inconsistent form.

Another poor result could leave them six or seven points adrift already with a fixture against Leeds United to come a week later.

These next couple of weeks can prove that Coventry have learned from their past mistakes.

Otherwise, it would be another slow, sloppy start to the year and a real setback to their promotion chances.