Coventry City's Icelandic midfielder Aron Gunnarsson has issued a rallying call to his team mates and called on them to halt the run of poor form that has seen the club slip from eighth to 15th place in the Championship league table.
The Sky Blues take to the road on Saturday for the trip to Bramall Lane , where they take on in form Sheffield United. Despite the winless run, Gunnarsson is in confident mood and thinks they can grab a win.
Gunnarsson said, “We have to do something about it. We have to take a look in the mirror and get on with things and make sure we turn up at Bramall Lane on Saturday. I think we will get three points there if we stick together."
“We have shown that we can be a good team in this division, like we were at West Brom and Leicester in the second halves when we played them off the pitch. So we can play football. Everyone knows that but we have to show it and I think we will do it at Sheffield United, for the fans and for our manager."
We need to stick together and get some points between now and the end of the season because we can’t end up like this after all that we have done this season. We can’t!”
Looking back on yet another poor performance last week at Reading and on the other games where City did not start playing until the second half, the Iceland international reflected, “We didn’t turn up in the first half, it is as simple as that. The gaffer is getting tired of coming in at half-time and hammering us. We had to change the formation because Reading didn’t play the formation we thought they were going to play. We can play 4-4-2, 4-5-1 or 4-3-3 whatever we call it, and we can sit and talk about formations all day but the main thing is we have to turn up with our heads on the game and do our job together."
"We can’t keep making individual mistakes and hammering each other. We have to stick together and we had a long chat after the game and said to each other that we can’t do it on our own. We can’t let all the work we have put in all season go to nothing and end up like last season because now we are in exactly the same position as we were a year ago."
“We couldn’t go up, we couldn’t go down and we were just ready to get on the beach and we can’t do that. We are not Arsenal and we can’t sit and play nice football. We have to put our shift in and do our jobs together. It is a team sport and we have to show up at every game.”
Gunnarsson had some sympathy for the fans who have followed the team around the country and have endured some woeful performances from individual players and from the team as a whole. Gunnarsson thanked those fans, explaining, “Thanks for turning up because we didn’t. They came and stood behind us and I hope they will continue to do that because we need their support and we need to pull together as a club.”
He continued, “Their goals were too easy and we have to take one for the team and get a yellow card in the middle of the pitch because you can’t let players keep going and going and hope for the best, hope that Keiren will pull off another world class save. We were sat in the dressing room at half time wondering what we were doing. The gaffer said we had nothing to lose in the second half and we had to get out there and get our pride back because the first half was embarrassing and we know that.”
Gunnarsson believes the players need to rekindle the spirit they had when they went on the fine run that saw the team go from relegation threatened to play off contenders in a few weeks. He said, “I think we need to do more together off the pitch like go for dinner and do stuff together to bond as a team because we haven’t done that lately. I think the spirit in the team has gone off a bit. When we were doing well and winning games we were going out to dinner and playing golf together and now I think we need to pick that up again to raise the team spirit.”