Coventry City chairman Bryan Richardson believes his side can pull off one of the greatest escapes in cup history when they take on Tranmere Rovers tonight.

The Sky Blues trail by a huge 5-1 margin after taking a beating at Prenton Park last week, and must win by four clear goals to have any chance of going through to the next round of the Worthington Cup.

But the Chairman is confident that all is not lost and is hoping the crowd will get behind his teams’ mammoth effort.

He said:

"I think it is very doable. If Portsmouth can go to Tranmere and score four goals then there is absolutely no reason why we cannot score four goals at Highfield Road.

"It is a mountainous task but mountains are there to be climbed and the players are going to get out there and really go for it.

"We also have Youssef Chippo, Moustapha Hadji, Carlton Palmer and Paul Telfer back from injuries so we will have a much stronger team than the one that played at Tranmere."

And Richardson is in no doubt as to what the most important spell of the game will be.

He said:

"If we can score in the first 15 or 20 minutes then it will really be game on, but hopefully even if it takes longer than that the supporters will remain patient.

"There is absolutely no point in being anything but supportive of the team, it does no good at all – that’s not to say our supporters have done that at any stage this season, they haven’t.

"I think the crowd can make a huge difference on a night like tonight, which is what I describe as an atmosphere occasion.

"Tranmere are only expected to bring 700 – 1,000 followers with them and at the moment the crowd stands at about 6,000.

"We would like to get that up to 8,000 people all getting behind the team and help them to give it a really good go."
  

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