Who To Pick From Coventry

Drafting from Coventry

Coventry finish twentieth and last on a power rating of 75, and the thirty-three names in the squad make that point rather than soften it. Frank Onyeka at 79 is the best player at the club and there is no elite man anywhere in it; Haji Wright is on 78, Jack Rudoni on 76, Bobby Thomas and Matt Grimes on 75 apiece. Only Chelsea carry more bodies, on thirty-eight, and Liverpool and Tottenham match the thirty-three, but every one of them is doing something with the numbers that Coventry cannot.

The squad is tightly banded, a spread of five from top to bottom, and that is worth having so long as nobody oversells it. Newcastle are flatter still on three, and their band sits six points higher on power, which is the difference between consistency and consistency of the wrong kind. The best department is defensive midfield, 77 across two, where Onyeka and Grimes give you the one area of the pitch Coventry can genuinely contest. The worst is left-back at 68 across three, poor by any reading, though not the poorest group on the wheel; that belongs to Hull's right midfield on 67. Eleven Englishmen head the nationality list, with pairs from Nigeria, Jamaica and Ghana behind them.

So the legend matters more here than at any club above them. Dion Dublin at 91 is the highest-rated of the four and a centre-forward, which is the position Coventry most conspicuously cannot fill: he arrives thirteen above Haji Wright and twelve above Onyeka. Draft Dublin, take the defensive-midfield pair for their price, and treat everything else in this squad as filler you would rather not play.