Salako stars in the wings

Coventry City 0

Sheffield Wednesday 0

Attendance: 17,267

Given that these are two sides for whom goal scoring has become something of a lost art, the outcome was easy to predict. Coventry, however, had enough chances to secure the win that would have taken them out of the bottom three. A third clean sheet in four drawn Premiership matches was no consolation to the supporters, who voiced their dissatisfaction at the end.

With eight goals in 14 league and Coca-Cola Cup matches, Coventry's scoring record is the poorest in the four divisions. They squandered at least three opportunities to have improved on it against a Sheffield team whose decline from the heady days of early season shows little sign of being over.

For the most part it was John Salako, allowed a luxury of space to launch raids along the left flank, who supplied the ammunition but Coventry's strikers failed repeatedly to put the winger's crosses to good use.

The closest Ron Atkinson's side came to easing their plight was a powerful and well directed header by Dion Dublin a minute before half-time. But it was met with a save of equal merit by Kevin Pressman, who turned the ball around the post.

If that was a moment of huge frustration for the home crowd, however, there were others. Notably when Peter Ndlovu headed another Salako cross over the top midway through the second half, moments before a bold run by Gary McAllister ended with Dublin off-balance, failing to get enough weight behind his shot to trouble Pressman.

"A couple of months ago", Atkinson mused afterwards "Everyone was saying it was defence that was our problem."

In the event, the best chance of all fell to Wednesday, missed by Andy Booth who somehow managed to hit the side netting after Ian Nolan's pin- point cross rounded-off a nice link-up with Regie Blinker on the left. David Pleat's team are now nine matches without a win, seven of them in the league.

Wednesday's Italian import, Benito Carbone, showed some skilful touches, especially at the start, but spent too much time on the floor looking for help from the referee. "That's something he'll have to learn not to do," Pleat admitted.