Roland Nilsson took another giant stride towards claiming the Sky Blues manager's job, thanks to Laurent Delorge's first goal for the club.

It was Coventry's second victory in four days since Nilsson was made caretaker manager following Gordon Strachan's departure on Monday.

Victories over Manchester City and Portsmouth at Highfield Road next week will surely be enough to persuade chairman Bryan Richardson to give him the job permanently to launch the club into another era.

This match was a messy affair which did not ignite until midway through the second half and to a large extent that was down to Jay Bothroyd's arrival on the pitch.

He began threading passes into the Sheffield penalty area and great holes began to appear for Julian Joachim and Lee Hughes to run into.

Ironically it was a heavy tackle which forced Joachim off the field, which brought the goal.

United's goalkeeper Simon Tracey clattered into the Coventry striker as he chased Bothroyd's pass. Nilsson said afterwards: "It was a penalty and the referee was the only man in the ground who did not see it."

Joachim had to be carried off by stretcher and as he disappeared through the tunnel to the changing rooms in the 72nd minute the goal went in.

Again it was Bothroyd who supplied the pass. Lee Carsley fought off the shirt-tugging challenge of a defender and then slipped the ball around the goalkeeper for Joachim's replacement, Delorge, to shoot into the empty net.

It signalled a frenetic last twenty minutes as United threw men forward and Sky Blues defended as if their lives depended on it.

Magnus Hedman made a brilliant save from Michael Brown and United had a couple of near misses, but the best chance fell to Sky Blues in the second minute of stoppage time.

Lee Hughes was clean through, but instead of rolling a simple pass to Jay Bothroyd, who was better placed, he chose to shoot and the ball skipped wide.

SHEFFIELD UNITED:
Tracey; Page, Nicholson, Murphy, Curle; Devlin, Ford, Brown (Suffo 84), Ndlovu (Santos 74); Asaba, D'Jaffo (Peschisolido 72)
Subs not used: Sandford, Uhlenbeek

COVENTRY CITY:
Hedman; Nilsson (Shaw 30), Breen, Konjic, Hall; Thompson, Carsley, Safri, Guerrero (Bothroyd 60); Joachim (Delorge 72), Hughes
Subs not used: Quinn, Goram

GOAL:
Coventry - DeLorge (72)

REFEREE: Mike Pike (Barrow in Furness)

BOOKINGS:
Sheffield Utd – Brown (foul, 78)
Coventry – Breen (throwing ball away, 33), Konjic (foul, 61)

ATTENDANCE: 16,168