Can Coventry City's new boys steer the Sky Blues to safety?
THOSE who harboured doubts about the capability of Andy Thorn's January acquisitions to bring about a change in Coventry City's fortunes must have seriously reconsidered their point of view following Saturday's emphatic dismantling of playoff hopefuls Middlesbrough.
Whether Alex Nimely and Herman Hreiðarsson are capable of lifting the Sky Blues from their lowly position at the bottom of the Championship table remains to be seen, but both players provided plenty of reason for optimism in their first appearances at The Ricoh.
With the news that James McPake has sealed a loan move that sees him journey north of the border for the remainder of the season, all eyes are now on the City gaffer to see whether his third throw of the dice will come to fruition, and more importantly, whether it will be a signing of sufficient quality to give the squad one last kick up the backside.
There was no denying that the January window would be make or break for our survival hopes, and without wanting to get ahead of myself after what on paper is simply a win against 9 men, it's fair to say that the omens are good so far.
That is certainly not to say that we will avoid the drop, far from it. My point is simply that the squad is still in fairly good shape despite the loss of the talismanic Lukas Jutkiewicz.
I'm fairly ashamed to admit that coming into Saturday's match I was far from enthused by Thorn's January additions. An unproven youngster who failed to net whilst at 'Boro and a full-back who's suffered the pain of relegation far more times than he will care to remember were not the kind of signings I was hoping for, but this was clearly a case of the proof being in the pudding.
Obviously we can't make any decisive judgements until more games have been played, but as far as first games go, Saturday was certainly successful.
There's also the question of whether the mess that we got ourselves into prior to January was of such severity that any number of signings would fail to catapult us out of the drop zone.
The situation is bad, clearly, but it definitely could be worse. There's no longer a significant gulf between ourselves and Doncaster, with Forest also well and truly in the relegation mixer.
The fact of that matter is that just two wins could see us take our first uneasy steps into the safety zone for what seems like an eternity. There is still hope.
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