Tony Mowbray has warned his Sunderland side they are in for a ‘tough day’ at Coventry City this weekend as they face a Sky Blues side strengthened by their Viktor Gyokeres windfall. Sweden international striker Gyokeres was Coventry’s star man last season, and made his mark home and away against the Black Cats as he scored a late equaliser for Mark Robins’ side at the Stadium of Light in the opening game of the season, and then scored a last-minute winner in the return game at the CBS Arena in February.
Coventry went on to finish fifth in the Championship, one place and one point above Sunderland, and defeated Middlesbrough in the play-off semi-final before losing out to Luton Town – who beat Sunderland in the other semi – in the final at Wembley. Gyokeres joined Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon in a deal worth more than £20m this summer while playmaker Gustavo Hamer moved on to Sheffield United for a fee of around £15m, and while losing players of their quality is a blow, Coventry have spent the proceeds on bringing in the likes of former Sunderland loanee Ellis Simms from Everton in a deal worth around £8m, and breaking their transfer record to sign USA international forward Haji Wright from Turkish side Antalyaspor.
“Coventry have lost Gyokeres, who damaged us last year,” said Mowbray, who spent 18 months in charge of Coventry in the mid-2010s. “But they’ve reinvested the money from their sales.
“I don’t know the numbers – we never will know the numbers, probably – but if you read some reports they will pay a final fee of £8m for Ellis [Simms] potentially. I don’t know what the downpayment was or how it was [structured], but then they brought in someone who cost more than that, their record signing Haji Wright.
“They’ve reinvested the money in the team, they’ve got good players. They are very solid, defensively really well-structured, and it’ll be a tough day for us.
“We have to mindful of the team we are playing but they will also be mindful of the talents we’ve got. On any given day it’s a tight, tight, game.
“My hope this year is that we win the tight game as opposed to the one last year where we had a lot of possession away from home [and lost].”
Coventry lost their opening game of this season at Leicester City, before emphatically defeating Middlesbrough on home soil, and then drawing 1-1 at Swansea City last weekend. Mowbray said: “They’re a good team. We’ve been watching them.
“They beat Middlesbrough 3-0 at home, and they’ve had a couple of away games either side of that at Swansea and at Leicester. They play a back three, they have wingbacks that are quite aggressive and support the attack, they play with two centre-forwards and a number ten, two sitting midfield players.