Frank Lampard has enjoyed a highly successful first year in charge of Coventry City with the club currently top of the Championship and the red-hot favourites for promotion
The mood around Coventry City was more sombre than sunny on this day 12 months ago when Frank Lampard was unveiled as the club’s new head coach.
Scepticism, rather than optimism, was in the air when it was confirmed that Lampard had been selected by Coventry’s powerbrokers to shake off the malaise that proved terminal for Mark Robins and elevate the club’s trajectory once again.
Perhaps there was merit to those mumblings of discontent. After all, for all of Lampard’s aura from his playing days, the Chelsea legend’s managerial stock had significantly waned as a result of a disastrous second spell at Stamford Bridge, albeit a role he only held in an interim capacity. There was little fanfare when his appointment was mooted for what felt like an eternity before the official confirmation that he would be replacing the idolised Robins; there was even less when the ink on his two-and-a-half year contract was dry.
To be blunt, Lampard, much like Coventry, was in need of revitalisation.
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But 12 months on, both he and Coventry are in a very different place and they now have their dream destination in sight: the Premier League.
Coventry look a cut above everyone else in the Championship right now and have blitzed their way past teams to open up a 10-point lead at the summit. With each passing game, it’s looking more and more like their unsuccessful play-off campaign back in May was merely a prelude to bigger and better things this term.
In Lampard’s case, his reputation has been restored. There’s no doubt he inherited a team who were far better than the 17th spot they occupied in the table upon his arrival, but that doesn’t mean that re-establishing them as promotion contenders was a foregone conclusion.
After lifting the dressing room, Lampard sought to implement a deeper reset. Ephron Mason-Clark, speaking to The Telegraph last month, shed light on the seismic culture change that Lampard and his right-hand man, Joe Edwards, have overseen behind the scenes over the past year. Small but powerful tweaks, like implementing warm-downs on a Sunday, have reaped dividends.
“People don’t always want to go in on Sunday, but everybody knows how important those small percentages are throughout the whole season,” Mason-Clark explained. “We saw this at the last stages last season, coming in on certain days to just make sure we’ve done the right stuff, to make sure that we were prepared for our next test.”
Given Lampard’s man-management skills have also been lauded since his arrival, it comes as no surprise that he swiftly rebuilt confidence and oversaw a club-record winning run to finish in the top-six, albeit there was to be no fairytale ending for him or the club in the play-offs.
After digesting the disappointment of that crushing defeat against Sunderland, Lampard and Coventry have regrouped in some style, amassing the largest lead that any first-placed team has ever had at this point of a Championship season.
While the nucleus of Coventry’s squad largely consists of the same group that Lampard inherited 12 months ago, the fingerprints of Chelsea’s all-time leading goalscorer are now discernible on a team that have plundered goals at a remarkable rate over the past four months.
Lampard’s men have quite literally blown teams away in the Championship, chalking up an outrageous tally of 47 goals across just 17 games. For context, Ipswich Town and Hull, the division’s most prolific teams behind Coventry, have 19 goals fewer to their name. 18 of Coventry’s goals have come from set-pieces as the resurgence of corners and throw-ins continues at pace, a total which is DOUBLE the tally of all other teams in the league bar Derby County.
Brandon Thomas-Asante, Haji Wright and the midfielder, Victor Torp, have been in irresistible form with Thomas-Asante the division’s leading scorer. It was Mason-Clark and Jack Rudoni – who idolised Lampard growing up – who led the charge last season, though the latter, an influential attacking midfielder with an air of the Lampards, has only just returned from injury after a nine-match absence.
Lampard’s relationship with Rudoni encapsulates everything the former Chelsea chief loves about management and why he was never likely to ride off into the sunset with a cushty punditry job like some of his former England colleagues.
“We have a really good relationship, we talk a lot about midfield play, goal threat and I know what that mindset is and it’s easy for me to talk about and he’s easy to get on with,” Lampard told BBC CWR this week.
“Nothing in management is quite as rewarding as playing – but in terms of individual relationships, when you see a player grow through the work and perform how he’s performed, then you get a really good sense and feeling from it.”
Crucially, there is substance to match Coventry’s swashbuckling style. They didn’t wilt after blowing a two-goal lead against Middlesbrough in what was a top vs second clash in midweek. They instead dug deep to score twice in sixty seconds inside the final five minutes of the game to nudge even further ahead of Boro in the table.
It was a similar story three days earlier; the Sky Blues fought back from 2-0 down to beat West Brom 3-2 in thrilling fashion. While their guile grabs headlines, it’s Coventry’s grit and resilience which should stand them in good stead when they negotiate the ferocious festive schedule in the coming weeks.
Should they emerge in early 2026 unscathed then few would back against Coventry ending their 25-year exile from the Premier League.
Promotion would be the ultimate reward for Lampard, who will have been under no illusions about his career prospects 12 months ago. This was effectively boom or bust after that chastening caretaker stint at Chelsea, even if Lampard’s biggest crime in that disaster-piece was ignoring the multiple red flags and agreeing to make the all-judged call to return to his beloved Blues.
But it’s hard to let the head rule the heart. After all, he never got the chance at a second crack at promotion with Derby County after their play-off final heartbreak in 2019 because the lure of adding another chapter to his Chelsea legacy, this time as a manager, presented itself earlier than anybody expected.
Harshly sacked 18 months later, in some ways, it feels like Lampard’s trajectory as a coach was severely impacted. The dream job came too early, while his year in the Everton hotseat won’t go down in the history books. We’ve already recounted that second Chelsea stint.
I wrote shortly after his appointment at Coventry that Lampard had been somewhat harshly discarded by the vocal majority despite a hugely promising start to his managerial career. Who knows where he’d be now if different decisions had been made at certain points.
There are very few certainties in life and the tipsy turvy helter-skelter that is football – particularly the Championship. The division that is notoriously difficult – at times even impossible – to predict.
But Coventry and Lampard are on the rise. And surely one of the Premier League’s finest ever goalscorers will be back in familiar surroundings, albeit in a different capacity, soon.
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