LEAGUE One is so tough that good teams don’t need favours. Coventry City are one such side, and there was a nagging doubt after last week’s game that from the moment they equalised, it was too easy for them to see the game out.

The pivotal moments all occurred in the first half. Coventry had caused us early problems, but after yet another goal by Macaulay Bonne we had them rocking.

The critical moment was when the ball came to Marvin Sordell on the edge of the box. The obvious ball, the right ball, was to lay it off to Bonne. But Sordell lives to score and he sniffed a goal. He worked the ball onto his left foot, creating the opening for a shot, and smashed the ball against the inside of the right-hand post from where it rolled across goal and was smuggled to safety.

It was an agonising moment. If the ball had gone in for 2-0, the psychological battle would have swung in our favour. But the ball rolled the wrong side of the goal line, preserving Coventry’s collective belief that it was to be their day. All too quickly they were 2-1 up.

As the second half got underway two became three and from that point all Coventry had to do was put up a wall in their defensive third of the pitch, ensuring that the second half was the lull after the storm.

Sky Blues’ manager Tony Mowbray has a Premier League background and a football brain the size of Dedham. We knew that. We knew that he would think on his feet as the game unfolded, and he didn’t disappoint, with the result that we were unable to knock his defensive cordon out of shape.

Asked by the press corps after the game to single out individual players for praise, Mowbray rebuffed them with ‘Do you want me to go through the whole team?’.

It was true that Coventry were on song and had few weaknesses, but they fell short of looking like a side which will storm out of this division and thrive in the Championship.

Crucially they are a big club with the ability to pull in star loan players, much like MK Dons did at this level with the likes of Patrick Bamford, Benik Afobe and Deli Alli (technically a loan back). Or Wigan with Yanic Wildschut, who wreaked havoc in our 0-5 defeat in October while on loan from Middlesbrough. And that is increasingly how the lower league game is going. Top clubs need to get their best young players battle-hardened by making use of clubs such a MKD, Coventry and Wigan.

There are few better examples than Saturday’s match-winner Jacob Murphy, whose every move was scrutinised from up in the West Stand by Norwich City’s loan manager Neil Adams. Murphy was playing centrally, standing in for another star loanee Adam Armstrong of Newcastle.

Near to Adams, sat Charlton interim coach Karel Fraeye having an extended look at our loanee Callum Harriott. Up the road at Ipswich, the star player, has been Ryan Fraser, a loanee from Bournemouth . And so it goes on!

At the top end of the game, plastic Academies produce countless players who hope to be among the 12 per cent of home-produced players who emerge from mammoth youth squads to make the first team.

It feels almost as if Greg Dyke’s dream of having Premier League ‘B’ sides competing in League One is being achieved by subterfuge. It is not healthy for League One if success and failure are determined by the size of a club’s loan budget.

Just like the top clubs, the U’s have the challenge of getting their best 20 and 21-year-olds to bridge the gap. We are doing it by blooding them in League One, which is such an unforgiving league. There will be bad days.

The experience being gained now will pay off in a few years as the likes of Lapslie, Kent, Gilbey, Vincent-Young move into their peak years.

Is that any consolation to us after a frustrating defeat? It should be, but after a defeat it doesn’t always feel like it.