ANDY Thorn has told his Coventry City side that they need to man up if they’ve got any chance of salvaging their bleak campaign.
Rock bottom of the Championship – seven points shy of safety – the Sky Blues limped out of the FA Cup on Saturday when they were overhauled 2-1 by table-topping Southampton.
And Thorn made no attempt to disguise his bitter disappointment after seeing his team fail to cash in on their first-half dominance before conceding two sloppy goals.
“When you’re in a battle you need men, not shrinking violets,” he said.
“On the whole I’ve had that this season but today we weren’t as manly as we should have been – if we had we’d have won the game.
"We started well, playing like we have been in the last three games, we took the lead and we had a lot of chances to put the game to bed.
"But we didn’t and we were sucker-punched because their desire in the penalty area – in both penalty areas – was greater than ours.
“That’s what cost us in the end and if I was a player I couldn’t accept that – that would hurt me because it’s hurt me as a manager.
“You’ve got to play for 90 minutes, otherwise all that hard work and effort you’ve put in goes to waste.
"And I’m fed up with talking about young players because that’s how we are so everybody’s got to be accountable – we’ve all got to stand up and be counted.”
A quarter of a century on from City’s triumphant 1987 campaign, Thorn was desperate to give the fans a morale-boosting diversion from their league struggles.
“I wanted to go through, I wanted to do well in the Cup,” he said, “and the game should have been over by half-time.
"We should have been two or three ahead but we just couldn’t find that killer instinct and even when you’re playing well you’re never comfortable at 1-0.
