Coventry City born player Gary McSheffrey has said that the players must accept some of the responsibility for their manager Aidy Boothroyd getting the sack last Monday.
McSheffrey revealed he heard the news about Boothroyd losing his job from his parents, who heard about it on the news,
He said to the CT: "I first heard about it on Monday morning when my parents rang me and said they had heard it on the news and it was a bit of a shock to me."
"It is disappointing because you never want to see anyone lose their job. Aidy is a decent fella and I have got a lot of respect for him. He has got a young family and I am a bit gutted for him, but everyone knows that football is a ruthless business and management is a cut-throat job and you live and die by results. I don't know what it was down to in the end."
"Obviously the players haven't got a say in the decision and we have just got to adapt and play for whoever is in charge, and give our all, which we did on Tuesday night."
Chief scout Andy Thorn and head coach Steve Harrison were in charge of the team for the midweek trip to Burnley which ended in a creditable 2-2 draw with McSheffrey scoring City's second goal which put the Sky Blues into the lead.
McSheffrey was asked if he thought Boothroyd had lost the confidence of the players to the extent that they no longer gave their all for him?
He replied: "I think we were but on Saturday, for example, I felt like I worked my socks off but the game seemed to by-pass me and I didn't really get a touch of the ball, which is disappointing for a player like myself. I think we just got stuck in a rut and, like I said, it is a ruthless business where managers aren't given much time these days."
The difference in playing style at Burnley on Tuesday was in marked contrast to the style of play under Boothroyd and it paid dividends as Burnley manager Eddie Howe admitted after the game that Coventry had taken them by surprise and they had difficulty in coping with the 4-3-3 attacking formation.
However McSheffrey couldn't say for sure whether the style required by Boothroyd had a detrimental effect on the players. When asked about it, he admitted as much when he said:"I don't know. I think it is easy for the players to hide behind that one. People might say it did but we are still out there and at the end of the day the manager gives you a game plan and the type of game he wants you to play, but we should have been bigger and braver to get on the ball in my opinion. So we have got to take a lot of the responsibility."
"We played some lovely football against the likes of Palace and Sheffield United and it was similar the other night against Burnley, so we have shown that we can do that and I think we have always known we have got the ability to play like that."
"We are the players out on the pitch and we make our own decisions out there and I think we have got to take a lot of the blame for the last 16 games and results, but we have shown in some of those games that we can play some decent football and Tuesday's game was arguably one of the best games of the season, if not the best for long periods when we applied sustained pressure and it gives us something to build on in the last nine games."
Whether the change in fortune for Coventry City was down to the change of manager or whether it was a one off remains to be seen, but it certainly appeared that the players responded well to the style demanded by caretaker manager Andy Thorn.
"He did a lot with Aidy and a lot of scouting and watching the teams we were playing," revealed McSheffrey. "He does a lot of the set play work and he's fun around the training ground along with Steve Harrison so we will see what happens."
"We have just got to try to make something out of the season and give the fans something to look forward to and maybe something to get excited about for next season because we have certainly got the players and the ability here, and hopefully we can put that all together and finish well."
Talking about the game at Burnley and the game plan Thorn and Harrison devised, McSheffrey said, "They wanted us to keep possession, be brave on the ball and for the midfield to work hard and release me, Freddy and Juke, and the instructions to us were to go and win the game for us."
"We had a game plan where the midfield three had to cover every blade of grass and work their socks off, which left me and Freddy to try to get into areas and get on the ball and be a nuisance and hard to pick up, and I thought that worked really well."
McSheffrey put Coventry City 2-1 ahead with a superb individual goal in which he beat three Clarets defenders before lobbing the 'keeper after Lukas Jutkiewicz had equalised a Rodriguez opener for Burnley.
Unfortunately for City they conceded an equaliser just four minutes later to make it 2-2
"It is disappointing we didn't take three points but the way results have been going lately, a draw at Turf Moor isn't bad in the bigger picture, but it is definitely two points dropped," admitted McSheffrey.
"Everyone worked for each other and goals change games. When Juke scored we were pinning them and you could see the confidence coming out in all the players. I think we dominated the game and we should have walked away with three points."
"We were disappointed to go a goal down and that was probably our only slack bit of play in the first half and they punished us for it, and that's typical of the fact that we are being punished for most mistakes at the minute. I think our response from that was decent until half time and then in the second half we came out and just bossed the game."
"We are just so annoyed that we conceded such a short time after going ahead because we should see the game through there, but again, that was the only time I thought we overplayed from our defence in the second half and we got punished from the resulting corner."
McSheffrey was asked about his goal, "It was nice. We got the ball in the box and Carl Baker had a volley that was deflected out to the corner and I thought Jack Cork was going to get there first but I just nicked it in front of him."
"I remember thinking I might get a penalty because I skipped past a couple, and it was just nice that when I stood it up I managed to put it in the far top corner. It is long overdue personally but those are the sort of areas that I want to be on the ball because they are the areas that got me a name in this league, so it is nice to know that it is still there."