{"id":301590,"date":"2026-02-16T23:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/301590\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T23:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:28:08","slug":"coventry-city-3-1-middlesbrough-haji-wright-hat-trick-takes-sky-blues-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/301590\/","title":{"rendered":"Coventry City 3-1 Middlesbrough: Haji Wright hat-trick takes Sky Blues top"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having taken 31 points from 14 games since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cn8zlzz8v8do\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">self-confessed Lampard fan Hellberg <\/a>replaced Rob Edwards in November, their attacking play in the first half had lacked some of the cutting edge seen in their recent winning run, despite having more than 60% of the ball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Morgan Whittaker put a free header over straight after the interval while Hayden Hackney&#8217;s tame shot on 55 minutes was their first on target.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But that inadvertently set the Sky Blues up to double their advantage with a goal that was throwback to football in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">From goalkeeper Carl Rushworth&#8217;s long kick out of his hands in one box, Wright bullied Luke Ayling out of the way and fired into the far corner inside the other.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McGree gave Boro some hope but they did not give themselves a chance to test any Coventry nerves as from the very next attack as play resumed, Targett sloppily put his hand out to block substitute Josh Eccles&#8217; cross.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wright stroked it into the bottom corner for his second Sky Blues hat-trick after one against Sunderland last March, and it is now six goals in five games against these opponents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Substitute Jeremy Sarmiento hit the inside of the post for Boro late on but they were unable to prevent Coventry from completing a vital league double.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having taken 31 points from 14 games since self-confessed Lampard fan Hellberg replaced Rob Edwards in November, their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-301590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}