Mark Robins pleased with Coventry’s progress

Mark Robins expressed his delight after Coventry reached the third round of the Carabao Cup for the first time in 12 seasons following a 1-0 win against Oxford.

Summer signing Brandon Thomas-Asante scored his first goal for the Sky Blues which saw Robins’ men beat the U’s for the second time in 11 days.

He said: “It’s great that we’re in the hat for the next round.

“It’s been a pretty good start to the season all things considered, it’s difficult when you play teams for a second time in a short space of time and I thought we made hard work of it.

“In the first half we came out and you want that speed of thought, speed of passing, speed of movement and we didn’t get that.

“There were a lot of things that weren’t right but a lot of things that were almost right. I thought we could have gone on and won it by more goals.”

Des Buckingham was keen to stress that his Oxford side are focusing on the league after their promotion from League One last season, making eight changes from the 2-1 defeat by Blackburn at the weekend.

He said: “Up until the sloppy goal that was given away it was a pretty even game.

“The goal gave them a bit of momentum for 10 or 15 minutes and Matty Ingram made two good saves off the back of that.

“We should have arguably scored two at the end.

“The league has always been our priority, but it’s given us the chance to look at players and we’ve done that.

“Dane Scarlett started up front, Owen Dale we welcomed back from injury, Malcolm Ebiowei and of course Louis Sibley. It just gives us a chance to see what they can do for Saturday.”