Frank Lampard has Coventry City firing. How far can they go?
Sky Blues have won four Championship games in a row under the former Chelsea manager
The new manager of Coventry City looked at his squad and liked what he saw. He thought he could get a tune out of them, that there was an ability level, a depth and a balance that he could steer up the Championship table.
Frank Lampard was appointed by Doug King, the owner of the Sky Blues, with a pair of significant question marks coursing through conversations between supporters.
First, was Lampard – the former manager of Derby County, Chelsea and Everton – the right man to replace Mark Robins? Second, should Robins have been replaced at all after everything he achieved at the helm of a club that was usually in disarray?
These questions will never get answers. Not for nothing do we call football a game of opinions. But Lampard has settled in very nicely, thank you, and the Sky Blues are riding high after winning three league games in a row for the first time this season, then adding a fourth.
Saturday’s win at Swansea City was the perfect encapsulation of Lampard’s steady progress. Coventry won 2-0 thanks to goals from Ellis Simms and Brandon Thomas-Asante, players playing with a new energy under Lampard. They kept a clean sheet with an unchanged team.
Perhaps best of all, they did all this the day after signing Swansea’s captain. Matt Grimes is a midfielder admired by Lampard and represents something of a coup for the Sky Blues, who’ve acquired the skipper of a Championship rival and a very fine footballer into the bargain.
Coventry’s big January signing will take up a position in the centre of midfield. As such, he poses a new challenge for the manager.
Lampard has overseen four consecutive wins; Jamie Allen and Victor Torp have played mostly as a two between the wing backs in three of them. Torp’s touches were more advanced against Watford but the City boss will need a plan to introduce Grimes without upsetting a rhythm he’s set in motion in the middle.
Grimes is a two-way central midfielder with the tactical discipline to sit and anchor the side. Lampard’s options include Grimes competing with Allen for one spot and reshuffling the pack to give Torp more licence to get forward by pairing Allen and Grimes in midfield. Neither weakens the team. Neither is free of human collateral damage.
Consistency is a virtue for Coventry
The Sky Blues have played thirteen Championship fixtures since Lampard’s appointment, winning seven and losing three. Narrow the parameters and it’s one defeat in their last eight, and four wins from their last four.
In the entirety of the Premier League and EFL, only Swindon Town, Doncaster Rovers, Arsenal and Birmingham City have collected more points in 2025. Coventry have climbed from seventeenth to eleventh since Christmas Day.
Being able to name a steady team has been key. Lampard has made just two changes to his starting line-up between the four wins. Jake Bidwell came in for Jay Dasilva and stayed in the team. Bobby Thomas replaced Luis Binks against Watford and was in an unchanged eleven at Swansea.
22-year-old goalkeeper Oliver Dovin has been ever-present in Coventry’s four wins on the spin. His return as the team’s number one coincides exactly with the upturn in the last eight league games. The Sky Blues kept a clean sheet in five of them.
Lampard is exploiting the Sky Blues’ potential
The new City manager wasn’t able to include strikers Ellis Simms and Haji Wright with any kind of regularity in his first handful of matches.
The burden fell on the admittedly broad shoulders of 20-year-old Norman Bassette, an obvious talent who might yet develop into a hardy centre forward but wasn’t the right profile to stand in for the more physical Simms.
Simms has started every one of City’s four consecutive victories alongside former West Bromwich Albion forward Brandon Thomas-Asante, and Lampard is squeezing some terrific performances out of both of them.
If Ephron Mason-Clark was the most immediate beneficiary of Lampard’s man-management and influence in the late autumn, Simms and Thomas-Asante might be the most emphatic examples on the doorstep of spring.
Strikers don’t hit an improved seam of form without the help of the players behind them and Coventry are reaping the rewards of stability throughout the team. With settled wing backs and the likes of Torp and Jack Rudoni creating opportunities, Lampard’s front two can make hay.
What’s ahead for Lampard and Coventry?
Wright’s return has been delayed but will give Lampard another conundrum to solve if Simms and Thomas-Asante can lock down their places in his team. The Sky Blues boss has made no secret of his regard for Wright despite the USA striker’s lack of availability since his appointment. He wants him back in the mix.
Mason-Clark is nearing the go-ahead after an injury. Ben Sheaf and Ben Wilson are also working their way back to fitness. Coventry are, they hope, approaching a crucial period of the season with squad depth and options restored.
Coventry now have three home games in a row but there isn’t a tap-in among them. Championship leaders Leeds United visit the CBS Arena on Wednesday before Ipswich Town come to town on Saturday for a Fourth Round tie in the FA Cup, a competition in which Robins made a whole host of special memories.
Resurgent Queens Park Rangers, who meet the Sky Blues next Tuesday, started the calendar year with a four-game winning run of their own before defeats against Sheffield Wednesday and Millwall knocked them back into the bottom half.
After that it’s a trip to Hillsborough followed by Preston North End at home and either Oxford United away or the Fifth Round of the FA Cup on the first weekend of March.
City supporters have the second Saturday of March marked down in their diaries. It’s the start of Lampard’s fourth month in charge and his first meeting with Robins, who comes back to the CBS Arena as the manager of Stoke City after replacing Narcís Pèlach on New Year’s Day.
It’ll still be early days for Lampard, who signed a two-and-a-half year contract, but the return of Robins comes at a time when more will be known. Players will be back from injury, Grimes will be in the side, and the personnel questions that inevitably linger at the end of the transfer window will have been answered.
Relegation never felt like a real threat, at least not to those of us on the outside. Now City are well placed for a play-off push. Their upcoming fixtures present a team in form with a free hit at Leeds followed by the possibility of upward mobility.
The play-offs are their limit. There are six rungs to climb and no more – Coventry are seventeen points behind Sunderland in fourth after the Black Cats’ dramatic win at Middlesbrough on Monday night.
That notwithstanding, why not? Championship history is littered with teams who’ve clicked into gear and hauled themselves into the play-offs against the odds from farther back than Coventry and some of them ended up getting promoted. Fifth-placed Blackburn Rovers are only four points away with sixteen games to go.
Qualification for the play-offs isn’t in Coventry’s hands at the moment. By the time they play Stoke in a few weeks’ time, it very well could be.
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