Coventry City v Stoke City: Will this Midlands derby go to form?
- Published
Stoke City's Jack Bonham had a clean sheet at Coventry in last season's 4-0 win and has not shipped a goal in their past two games
It looks, on paper, an away banker at the CBS Arena on Saturday.
Mark Robins' Coventry City, on the back of four straight defeats, up against Alex Neil's Stoke City, who are unbeaten in their last four, including three successive clean sheets.
But then it was the same sort of thought process last season when Stoke arrived at the CBS Arena, having failed to win their previous two home games, to face a Sky Blues side unbeaten in nine.
End result: 0-4. A bad home defeat. And yet another reminder of one of the oldest football clichés in the book - that often "form goes out of the window in a derby game".
All Stoke manager Alex Neil can say is that his side's four-game run, to lift themselves from 21st to 13th in the Championship side, "speaks volumes for the effort the players have put in."
"It should give the players confidence," he told BBC Radio Stoke. "But, in the Championship, you're always one game away from the momentum going against you. It changes all the time."
And he warns his side that Saturday's latest trip down the M6 will be just as tough a test as the four-game run that has brought successive home wins over Sunderland and Leeds United, victory at Middlesbrough and last weekend's home goalless draw with Cardiff City.
"If you look at Coventry's games, they've been hard-fought and they've just come out on the wrong side of a result.
"Consistency levels are very difficult to come by for every team in the Championship. But, if we get a result on Saturday, that will have been an excellent five games for us going into the international break."
Based on this season's radically altered Stoke side who played against Cardiff a week ago, Neil may only have three men on duty at the CBS Arena - goalkeeper Jack Bonham, full-back Ki-Jana Hoever and midfielder Josh Laurent - who also played on that previous Potters visit only seven months ago. Having said that, on-loan Burnley defender Luke McNally and Michael Rose were both on the park that day, playing for Coventry.
Hoever got the fourth goal at the Arena on April Fools' Day, when Stoke so made fools of the form book. A win that put them six points behind the Sky Blues and on course for a late tilt at the play-offs.
Instead, they picked up only two points from their final seven games to slump to 16th, while Coventry did not lose again until the penalty shoot-out in the play-off final at Wembley.
And that was on the back of a long run that began in October when, after their false start to the season triggered by their stadium saga, they hauled themselves off the table with three wins in a week - the last of them another form book upsetting 2-0 victory at Stoke.
Coventry striker Haji Wright doubled his season's haul with his brace at Deepdale last weekend
This time round, Robins' side have just not quite clicked in front of goal. But it remains to be seen just what sort of positive energy US international Haji Wright will take from scoring twice last week at Preston North End, to double his goal tally for the season.
And Robins remains convinced that, despite successive away defeats at Bristol City and Rotherham, followed by the home loss to West Bromwich Albion and letting slip a lead on their bogey ground at Deepdale, that his side are really not far away from finding their touch.
"We go into this game obviously hoping we can turn round our results," he told BBC CWR. "But, at the same time we have to maintain our level of performance, which I've not been unhappy with.
"The goals we have conceded in this run have been poor, but there have been a lot of good things from the way we've been playing.
"And, with Callum O'Hare back in contention again, we're now just Kasey Palmer away from having a fully-fit squad".