Tottenham Hotspur loanee enduring Coventry City frustrations after January Portsmouth exit

Submitted by daniel on
Picture
Remote Image

Minhyoek Yang scored three goals in 16 appearances for Pompey during his loan stint from Tottenham Hotspur.

Sign up to our Portsmouth FC newsletter

Sign up

Thank you for signing up!

Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.

Submitting...

Minhyeok Yang’s loan spell with Coventry City is yet to hit the heights many expected.

The South Korean international made the surprise move to the CBS Arena in January, having had his season-long loan at Portsmouth prematurely ended by Tottenham Hotspur.

The winger amassed 16 appearances during the first half of the campaign at Fratton Park, where he netted three goals and registered one assist.

His final kick for the Blues saw him grab a last-minute winner against Charlton Athletic in December, just days before Spurs triggered his recall option.

Minhyeok would go on to join promotion hopefuls Coventry early in the transfer window on a temporary basis for the remainder of the campaign.

But the winger’s stint in the West Midlands hasn’t gone to plan as yet, having registered just three substitute appearances in the Championship to date.

Despite starting the Sky Blues’ FA Cup defeat to Stoke City, the Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate has since gone on to total just 31 minutes of league action as their promotion bid stalls.

That has been largely due to the impressive form of Ephron Mason-Clarke on the left-wing, with the 26-year-old cementing his spot in Frank Lampard’s attack.

The Coventry boss also has the likes of Brandon Thomas-Asante, Tatsuhiro Sakamoto and January Pompey target Jahnoah Markelo who have made sizeable impressions on the wing.

Indeed, Lampard’s assistant, Joe Edwards, explained the reasons behind the ex-Blues loanee’s lack of game time at the CBS Arena was due to tough competition out wide.

Follow the latest updates from Fratton Park and beyond with our dedicated Pompey newsletter

Why ex-Pompey man isn’t playing at Coventry

He told Coventry Live at the end of January: ‘Mini’s come in and looked good in training, showed some really nice bits in the game against Stoke. I think one of the difficult things for him is he’s come in to play predominantly on the left for us and Ephron is in outstanding form and physically in as good a condition as probably I’ve seen him since we’ve been here.

‘Yeah, that’s the thing and game by game we’re now in a position at the moment where we’re a lot happier with our bench than we’ve maybe been at times in the past in terms of the different types of impact we can have. That’s no disrespect to players that have been on our bench, but it’s the different types of impact that we’re able to make.

‘But obviously that’s determined by the state of the game and the result, and the two league games that we’ve had since Mini’s come in, we’ve been in a position where in those final sort of 10 minutes it’s been us really trying to manage the game and make sure that we’re defensively on it.

‘And it’s always that balance when you’re talking about making attacking subs of a player coming on to make an offensive impact, yes, but then when you’re a wide player, like Mini is, like Ephron has been in the last two games, sometimes when you’re in the rhythm of the game and in the momentum, it’s easier to stay switched on to do your job and track your runner than it may be used to come in cold for just five minutes where it could be five minutes of chaos of the opposition, throwing long balls in the box, people gambling and making runs forward. And I think that’s kind of been our assessment so far.

‘There will be games where it looks completely different. There’ll be games where it’s on us to go and chase and get the next goal in the last 10 minutes and I’m sure things will look different then.’

Despite the departures of Minhyeok and Callum Lang in the transfer window, Pompey recruited Millenic Alli, Keshi Anderson and Gustavo Caballero before the deadline.