Coventry City 0 - 2 Ipswich Town

Ipswich end leaders Coventry's unbeaten home run



Runaway Championship leaders Coventry fell to a first home defeat of the season as promotion-chasing Ipswich boosted their own top-two hopes with a deserved win.

Jack Clarke's effort took a huge deflection off former Town defender Luke Woolfenden to put the visitors in front with less than 20 minutes to play and sub Wes Burns' finish wrapped up the points.

The away side had dominated the first half and only a superb save from Carl Rushworth in the Sky Blues' goal stopped Jack Taylor scoring.

Coventry improved after the interval and Christian Walton had to be sharp to get down to Haji Wright's effort from outside the area but that was as good as it got for the oddly out-of sorts hosts.

Victory for Kieran McKenna's side was their second over Coventry this month - following their 3-0 win at Portman Road - and cut the gap to second-placed Middlesbrough to two points for the time being.

Frank Lampard's men remain eight clear of Boro but that could be cut to five should they beat Hull City later on Monday evening.

McKenna's side have now won four of their past six games to move into the automatic promotion race after an inconsistent start to the season.

They were dealt a blow pre-match when influential left-back Leif Davis was ruled out through illness.

However, while stand-in Jacob Greaves had an excellent game in his absence it was another change from Boxing Day's goalless draw at Millwall who stole the show.

Winger Clarke was given a start ahead of Jaden Philogene and regularly created havoc in the Coventry defence in the first half.

The former Leeds and Tottenham man broke the deadlock when defender Cedric Kipre won the ball back high up and played it to Marcelino Nunez to switch it from right to left to Clarke, who drifted inside and then saw his shot loop over Rushworth off Woolfenden.

Clarke was then key to the decisive second goal as he streaked down the left before squaring to Nunez and the Chilean teed up Burns to slide home a second, via a small deflection.

It was a great moment for the Wales international, who only returned from 11 months out with an anterior cruciate ligament injury in Friday's game.

Although on the surface there is little cause for Coventry to be unduly worried at just a third defeat of the season, the previously free-scoring Sky Blues have now scored just four goals in their past six matches.

They scarcely threatened in the first half and were indebted to Rushworth's brilliant save to turn Taylor's shot on to the post to keep the scores level at the break.

Wright's deflected shot was as close as they came to opening the scoring and once Clarke had put Ipswich in front, they never looked like getting back into the game.

Their drop-off in scoring has coincided with top scorer Brandon Thomas-Asante being ruled out with a hamstring injury.

He should be back soon and Lampard may also look to the January transfer window to bolster his options as he looks to end Coventry's 25-year wait for Premier League football.

Coventry City head coach Frank Lampard told BBC CWR:

"It's disappointing but sometimes you just have to say we weren't quite at our usual best and the opposition are a really strong team and we lost the game.

"I think we can pat ourselves on the back as a whole group because of where we've managed to get to - if you'd asked people at the start of the season where'd you want to be at new year and then see where we are, you'd go 'wow'.

"The important thing now is the reaction behind the scenes, it's our job to analyse it pretty quickly because the next game comes in a few days and I'll be asking a lot of the players to go again.

"We had 20 minutes in the second half when we looked a bit more like ourselves but otherwise they played well so I'm not going to cry about a deflection (which put Ipswich in front), sometimes that happens."

Coventry travel to Charlton on New Year's Day, while Ipswich welcome lowly Oxford on the same afternoon.