Viktor Gyokeres, the Sky Blues’ leading scorer the previous two seasons, would leave the team for new opportunities after the team lost in the Championship play-off final and missed promotion to the Premier League.

After spending the last two years of his Coventry career scoring 38 goals in the Championship, the Sweden international left for Portugal to join Sporting CP for an estimated €20 million.

Naturally, this left the Championship team desperately in need of offensive potency, and Haji Wright was one fresh face brought in to help fill that vacuum.

Wright joined Coventry this summer after playing for top-tier Antalyaspor in Turkey for the previous two years. The Sky Blues paid a club record €9 million for the player’s four-year contract.

However, it is perhaps fair to say that, as of now, things have not quite gone as Wright or Coventry would have planned, having completed that relocation to the CBS Arena.

How has Wright started his Coventry career?

Wright has participated in at least 15 of the league games the Sky Blues have played since the beginning of the season since joining the Championship in the summer.

But if Coventry wants to make up for the loss of Gyokeres in front of goal, it’s arguable that the American international hasn’t yet begun to produce the kind of goals Coventry would want to see from him.

Only twice in 14 league games for Coventry since the start of the season had Wright scored for his team, Preston North End, coming into their match at Deepdale.

Given that his role as a striker is to score goals, the 25-year-old undoubtedly wanted to score more frequently than that.

In Wright’s instance, that will be made even more difficult by the record-breaking price Coventry paid for him and the pressure to improve the team’s performance after a dismal start to the campaign that has them nervously staring over their shoulder at the relegation zone rather than fighting for a spot in the playoffs once more.

The events of that encounter against Preston, though, may give Wright and Coventry supporters optimism that this Saturday’s game at Deepdale could be a turning point for the striker at his new team.

Why could Saturday’s match with Preston be significant for Wright and Coventry?

In the end, the match against Preston at Deepdale over the weekend would leave Coventry with even more disappointment.

That encounter saw the hosts triumph 3-2, sending Mark Robins’ team to a fourth straight loss that leaves them in 20th place in the Championship table, four points above the bottom three.

The fact that Wright scored twice in that game gives the team a much-needed lift, even though Coventry’s two goals in that name came from the same player.

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The 25-year-old had already opened the score just after the half-hour mark with a close range finish on the rebound, displaying a goalscorer’s instinct. Late in the game, he added his second goal of the match in a similar fashion, making it 3-2 and giving the Sky Blues a chance to tie the score that they were ultimately unable to get.

Wright should at least have the confidence to move into those positions again in the future because he was able to double his goal total for the club and contribute significantly for Coventry when they needed him, even though it may not have been enough to win the game.

Consequently, he will undoubtedly have additional opportunities to score goals, which will enable him to have a comparable effect on the field to Gyokeres’ before him. It will also increase the likelihood that Coventry will receive more favorable outcomes as a result of his contributions.

Considering all of that, it appears that Coventry may benefit significantly from what was yet another trying Saturday afternoon, at least in part because of Wright’s influence.