MARK Robins hailed his Coventry City side for dealing with a "phenomenal" Riverside atmosphere and limiting Middlesbrough's attacking players as the Sky Blues booked their place in the Wembley play-off final.
The visiting boss had to endure what felt like the "longest game of his career" as Coventry stood firm to keep a second successive clean sheet against Boro, and found the winner thanks to Gustavo Hamer's second half strike.
Robins tinkered with his approach after Sunday's first leg, adding an extra midfield player that served to crowd out Hayden Hackney, Alex Mowatt and Chuba Akpom in the central areas. That forced Boro wide and, to Robins' relief, the Coventry boss felt the home side's quality from the flanks was "unusually lacking".
Robins said: "It had to be [a fantastic performance] because we were playing against a top, top team. I think that is the longest game of my career and it didn’t even go to extra time.
"It just shows you the quality of the opponent, and to beat them over the two legs, with two clean sheets, it’s a testament to the boys. You could tell how much they wanted it, but you could also tell how much Middlesbrough wanted it. The atmosphere was phenomenal, and we had to deal with that as well, which I thought we did pretty well.
"We settled OK, started to find a rhythm and once we were calm and moved the ball we opened up some avenues for ourselves to create chances, which is something we didn’t do in the first game.
"We just knew if we could be calm we would create some chances against them, and thankfully we did.
"All the way through, goalkeeper to attack, we did really well. We kept them to a minimum. Thankfully, some of their quality from out wide was lacking tonight, which was unusual. That maybe comes down to the magnitude of the game.
"Our supporters deserved that - from the start of the season to now, it’s been incredible. From when we played Middlesbrough the first time around… I feel a lot better now that’s for sure!”
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Matchwinner Hamer was a doubt for the game after picking up an injury in the first leg.
Robins said: “Gustavo was brilliant. He had to have a big injection in his knee to even play the game after the first leg and I thought he was going to faint getting it!
"When Vik (Gyokeres) runs through and he takes it past the goalkeeper and it falls to Gustavo, it was just a feeling of breathe out because he does that thing every day. To see it hit the back of the net was special.
"Then the onslaught inevitably came and we had to defend well to see the game out. They threw everything they could at us but we managed to see it out. A clean sheet is phenomenal, especially here, phenomenal.”
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