Frank Lampard called his side’s performance “complete” after Coventry saw off 10-man West Brom 2-0 in front of a record-breaking crowd at the CBS Arena.
Jack Rudoni and Matt Grimes scored either side of half-time before Callum Styles was sent off for a second bookable offence.
The victory left Coventry three points ahead of seventh-placed Middlesbrough in the race for the play-offs, while West Brom dropped to eighth.
Lampard said: “We were aggressive and we played some really good stuff, very complete in the first half. In the second half we get our early goal, red card, they’re a good footballing team so they can handle 10 players to a degree, stay on the ball a bit, but we saw the game out.
“It’s a big game today and there’s more to come, it was a very, very good performance.
“It’s nice to get an early goal, when you’re playing at home and you start with the right energy, in the dressing room they felt that on the way out, they felt ready and focused and they were, and they got their goal.
“I’m delighted for Rudi (Jack Rudoni), we work loads on the training pitch on those sort of finishes and he gave me a little wink when he came over after because we’ve been working on it. He’s a top-class young player as we all saw so it set the tone for the game and gave us that element of comfort.
“It’s important against 10 men that you try and push them right back with a man advantage. Sometimes you don’t get your goal, I’d have loved to have had three, but at the same time I was happy with the way we saw it out.
“We’ve not achieved anything yet, we’re hoping to make the play-offs but today was a good performance.”
There were 31,167 for the clash – a league record at the venue.
Baggies boss Tony Mowbray cut a disappointed figure after his side dropped to eighth in the table and six points off the play-off places, extending their record of not winning away from The Hawthorns since mid-November.
He said “Disappointing, frustrating, didn’t perform at our level. Away, we just haven’t accrued the points that we need to.
“It’s frustrating that we aren’t getting to the level we need to be at in such big games.
“The team performed below the level that they’ve been showing they can play at, with it being such a big occasion I think they’re a bit unsure why that happened.
“Coventry are a decent team and they’re on a good run of form and yet I still felt that we would come here and dominate more.
“They played pretty well first half, tried to make the changes at half-time that would have given us more control of the football match and yet we lost a goal within three minutes and had a sending off pretty quickly after and obviously the dynamic of the game changed.
“We’re all disappointed and frustrated but it’s football, you have to take it on the chin. We have lost late goals in games where we felt we should have been winning and yet we’ve found a way to lose them or drop points but that wasn’t the case today.
“I think we’ve lost a little bit of the intensity that we normally play at.”
