Coventry manager Frank Lampard was full of praise for hat-trick hero Haji Wright after he scored his first goals since November in the 3-0 win over Sunderland.
The USA international last scored in the Sky Blues’ 2-2 draw with Sunderland in November – a game in which he also suffered an ankle injury that saw him sidelined for almost four months.
Wright opened the scoring with a low effort from distance before converting a penalty he won when he was fouled by Chris Mepham and completed his first hat-trick in English football with a superb finish over Sunderland goalkeeper Anthony Patterson.
“Three goals, a constant problem, great quality finishing and great movement,” said Lampard. “He won headers and went physically toe-to-toe with defenders and his work ethic off the ball was great.
“I haven’t worked with him properly and he’s had two sub appearances before the Derby start, which was a really tough game for him, but today was Haji in matchwinning form and great to see.
“He doesn’t say so much, but that’s him. He’s laid back and a really nice lad. He comes to work and does everything you want and he’s enjoyable to work with. My players don’t need to say too much. Some do and some don’t.
“Haji has a laid back way, which is his nature, but he wasn’t laid back on the pitch today. And I have to say the way he moved and the way he won the penalty was high-level stuff from him.
“As long as he gets his off-the-ball work and transition work right, which he did today, I’m happy. He can play like that, he can run into space, he can hold it up and he can move with it, so yes, I loved his performance.”
Sunderland manager Regis Le Bris also praised man-of-the-match Wright after his side suffered their first defeat in four matches and branded the defeat “a collective failure”.
The Frenchman said: “It’s good to have a player who is dominant like that. It gives confidence for the team and for the whole squad when you have someone who is dominant in duels and you can feel he can score from a single situation.
“As a coach it was really impressive.
“It wasn’t the best version of us this afternoon and Coventry played well, they played good football. They were incisive, they were intense and we were not able to maintain the level to defend properly.
“Even if the shape was OK our intensity in duels and the second balls were far from the level expected and with the ball we were sloppy because it wasn’t possible to keep the ball against the pressure.
“It’s difficult to find one reason to explain the whole behaviour of the team. I think we’ll have many different explanations and one of them is probably after the game at Leeds we broke our dynamic a little bit and probably our way of thinking about the automatic promotion and we played well but we didn’t get any points.
“Today we looked exhausted on the pitch and I think without the energy to be competitive.
“I think after the first half we could have changed 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 players but that wasn’t possible. At least we could expect a reaction. That wasn’t really the case, we created one or two chances but it wasn’t the team reaction it was more about individuals and after that we tried different options but it was a collective failure today.”
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