Coventry City midfielder Gus Hamer’s goal at Wembley on Saturday was not enough to fire the Sky Blues to the Premier League
Gus Hamer says all that Coventry City can do next season is go one better after painfully falling at the final hurdle in their quest for a return to the Premier League. City were beaten on penalties by top-flight bound Luton Town at Wembley on Saturday after a two-hour stalemate.
Midfielder Hamer, generally regarded as one of the best performing midfielders in the entire division this season, had drawn Sky Blues level with a fabulous second-half goal when he finished off a fine counter attacking move which also involved Callum Doyle and fellow star player Viktor Gyokeres, but his afternoon ended prematurely through an ankle injury.
The Dutch-Brazilian, who when equalising cancelled out Jordan Clark’s first-half opener, will naturally be the subject of plenty of speculation this coming summer. It’s accepted that Hamer, who has a year remaining on his City contract, is deserving of a crack at the Premier League, and it was of course hoped that that chance might come in a sky blue jersey.
What the summer holds for Hamer remains to be seen as of yet, but for now he’ll take a short break like the rest of the squad and, until he hears otherwise, will head back to Ryton for pre-season and aim for promotion again.
“I don’t think we would necessarily have won the game if I had stayed on the pitch,” he said. “The team did an amazing job – it’s a team effort, we didn’t lose the game and we win or lose together. It was a story of chances and mistakes on both sides, and in the shoot-out it was always likely that the first one to miss would lose the game, and unfortunately it was us.
“It’s hard to take, and it will be hard to take for a while, because we came from so far back in the table to reach Wembley and we were so close.
“It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, it’s sad – but that’s football. We must start again and work hard to do it all again, hopefully one step further, but it was an amazing achievement to come from three points in our first seven games to the brink of the Premier League.”
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