COVENTRY City suffered their heaviest league defeat in nearly 15 years after being hit for five by Luton Town on Wednesday night at Kenilworth Road.
Elijah Adebayo and Harry Cornick both struck twice with Luke Berry also on target on a disastrous night for City in Bedfordshire.
It marked the visitors heaviest league defeat since losing by the same scoreline to West Bromwich Albion back in December 2006.
Despite the result, Mark Robins side remain in fourth place in the Championship table, just four points off the top, ahead of their game with Fulham this weekend.
The Sky Blues were unchanged from their impressive win against Peterborough United but produced an out of sorts performance that was punished by Nathan Jones’ Hatters.
Coventry were unfortunate to fall behind when Adebayo converted a third minute penalty after Jake Clarke-Salter was adjudged to have fouled the striker in the box.
However, replays suggested the foul had taken place just outside the area as Adebayo fired into the bottom left corner despite Simon Moore guessing the right way.
And the visitors were soon in trouble again when Kal Naismith headed the ball back across goal for Cornick to nod home after just 18 minutes.
That came less than a minute after midfielder Gus Hamer had picked up his fifth booking of the season – which rules him out of this weekend’s clash with Fulham.
A Sky Blues supporter then required treatment from physio’s and paramedics after falling ill – resulting in a seven-minute delay – but is now thankfully recovering.
City remained in a slumber when Cornick cut the ball back to Berry who finished coolly from 12-yards out to triple Luton’s lead on the half hour mark.
Things went from bad to worse when Adebayo grabbed his second of the night seven minutes into first-half injury-time.
The striker turned home from close range after Cornick flicked James Bree’s cross into his path to put the Hatters four goals ahead at the break.
In-form Sky Blues striker Viktor Gyokeres then saw his effort pushed to safety by Luton keeper Simon Sluga after cutting from the left in the second period.
Before City’s misery was compounded on 58 minutes when substitute Ben Sheaf was caught in possession by Berry and Cornick’s effort looped over Moore to make it five.
Coventry saw out the remainder of the tie without conceding and boss Robins was left far from impressed with his side’s performance.
Robins said: “I’m glad it’s over to be honest, we have to deal with things better, we ended up getting dragged in and we ended up our down before we could breathe.
“Our away form hasn’t been brilliant, we’ve scored a couple of goals away from home and that is something we’ve got to look at.
“We didn’t create enough and didn’t get near the goal, they were very good at what they did and we weren’t very good at dealing with it, that’s the disappointment.
“We’ve just got to dust ourselves down and learn from it and not let it happen again.
“One of our supporters was ill but I’ve been told that he is okay, thankfully that’s the case and we wish him all the best.
“On a difficult night for the football club, that is probably the best news we have had this evening, the supporters stayed with the team and that was fantastic.”
The Sky Blues are next in action against Fulham on Saturday with kick off at 12:30pm at the Coventry Building Society Arena.
