Coventry boss Mark Robins felt his side deserved 'at least a point' after coming from behind to salvage a draw against Sunderland on the opening weekend of the Championship season. The Black Cats took the lead at the Stadium of Light through Jack Clarke inside 15 minutes in a first half that Alex Neil's men dominated.
But Coventry changed personnel and system in the second half which helped bring them back into the game, and an individual goal from Sweden international Viktor Gyokeres six minutes from time earned them a draw. "In the end I thought we deserved at least a point," said Robins, who was overseeing his 300th game in charge of Coventry.
"Any point in the Championship is a good point. Everybody says that every week, but it's true. This is a tough place to come. particularly in the circumstances - first game of the season, back in the Championship after four years away - it was always going to be a difficult game.
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"I'll take a point and move on."
Robins admitted that his side were second-best in the first period, adding: "I thought we gave the ball away and there were too many turnovers in the first half. When you come to a place like this, Sunderland are now 17 unbeaten I think and on the crest of a wave having been promoted, with the support that is here and how noisy it can get, you have to try to defuse that a little bit by keeping the ball and trying to build some pressure - but we didn't.
"We gave the ball away too often, which is partly because of [Sunderland] and the way they are drilled, and partly because of us. We didn't create enough and they built a little bit of confidence through that period and ended up taking the lead.
"We didn't really create enough at all. We knew we needed to stay in the game because we could have gone another goal down, our keeper made a good save, and they missed a couple of good opportunities, but we hit the crossbar and could have got ourselves a goal and an equaliser.
"In the second half you have to look at doing something different because they had obviously drilled their team into nullifying us. The changes really gave us a bit of a leg-up and some impetus in the game, a bit of pace and we managed to create one or two things and got the goal through Vik. Then we looked like we could build that pressure to go on and get another one."
Robins felt the goal his side conceded was preventable, but he also gave credit to Sunderland's wide-men and was impressed with striker Ross Stewart's all-round contribution.
"We got things wrong slightly for the goal," he said.
"We gave them too much room, too much time, and from our perspective it was a poor goal - it wasn't defended well enough. They have good players, good wide players, and Ross Stewart is a real handful. It's his first game at this level, but he scored 26 goals last year which will have given him a lot of confidence."
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