In 2018, Frank Lampard began his managerial career with a Championship club based in the Midlands with ambitious aims of reaching the promised land.
Six years and three Premier League jobs later and he is back where he started, this time with Coventry City 50 or so miles west of Derby where he cut his coaching teeth.
Lampard’s new club are currently closer to the bottom three than they are to the top six, but significant investment in the playing squad over the previous three transfer windows, albeit largely funded by the sales of Gustavo Hamer and Europe’s most coveted striker Viktor Gyokeres in 2023, is proof of their aspirations.
“I’ve put on record that we want to be in the play-off mix in three out of every five years, and hopefully in one of those we sneak through the door. I think that is a realistic ambition,” owner Doug King told i in September.
He was more bullish when addressing Coventry supporters in an open forum following the controversial dismissal of Mark Robins earlier this month. “I believe we have a top six squad. We have the ability to get out of this league,” he said.
With Coventry 10 points adrift of 6th place, King made the drastic call to fire the hugely popular Robins.
During seven years in charge, Robins took Coventry from League Two to League One to the Championship to a penalty kick away from the Premier League. There were four trips to Wembley along the way, ecstatic trophy-winning visits mixed with the agony of last season’s FA Cup semi-final defeat.
Robins was the third longest-serving manager in the EFL at the time of his dismissal and his departure leaves big boots to fill. Some supporters are unconvinced by Lampard’s ability to squeeze his toes into them after tricky spells at Everton and most recently at Chelsea in a caretaker capacity.
“Robins is as close to a God as Coventry are likely to have,” Joey Crone, from the Nii Lamptey podcast, tells i.
“The only thing you’ll be able to hear in the first five minutes of the game [against Cardiff on Saturday] is people singing Robins’ name. We’ve not had a home game since he left, Saturday is the first one. I thought to save Lampard’s face they might have just got that one out of the way before installing him.
“We recorded a podcast a couple of weeks ago after it had happened and one person was in tears for the full two hours of the podcast! I was a bit bemused by it but that’s not unrepresentative of people. Coventry University have just given him an honorary degree. He’s a huge, huge figure.”
Crone, like many, is unconvinced that Lampard is the right man to replace Robins. When Lampard takes his seat in the dugout this weekend it will be his first match in management in 552 days, since a calamitous caretaker spell at Chelsea ended with a 1-1 draw against Newcastle.
He lost eight of his 11 matches in charge after answering Todd Boehly’s SOS call. When Lampard returned to Stamford Bridge it initially looked like a win-win scenario; quickly it unravelled into an exercise in damage limitation.
“On Lampard, there are two things: Firstly, I would like to see him be given the benefit of the doubt. Secondly, if you’d asked me for my three bottom choices for the job I probably would have said Lampard, Gerrard and Rooney,” Crone adds.
“I think people see him as a status symbol because he’s managed in the Champions League… On that basis, we may as well have got Roberto Di Matteo in. He’s only managed in the Champions League because he was given a job by a club he played for. It’s not like he took Fulham into the top four.”
King’s appointment of Lampard has also led to a restructure. Robins’ success and longevity ensured he was regarded as a manager in a traditional sense, an overseer of all aspects of the club. A key factor in his downfall appears to be the severing of ties with his former assistant Adi Viveash in the summer, a decision that King insists was made by Robins following a breakdown in the pair’s relationship.
“This is a really difficult league and needs an elite coach and tactician,” King said. “I said the risk of parting company with Adi is he [Robins] would become exposed, and that’s what’s happened.”
Lampard’s job title is head coach rather than manager, indicating that he will have a hands-on role on the training ground. When he took charge of his first session on Thursday, Lampard was fitted almost head to toe in the club’s striking royal blue Hummel tracksuit. He has been joined at Coventry by two trusted lieutenants Joe Edwards and Chris Jones, with whom he will share the workload.
While Crone is unconvinced by Lampard’s coaching ability, Thomas Alcock of the CCFC Analysis substack is more positive about his credentials.
“If you look at the Derby days and the first stint at Chelsea they set up in a 4-3-3, were on the front foot, used a high press and played an attacking style which is not too dissimilar to what [Mark] Robins was trying to do. It wasn’t possession for the sake of it, he wanted to get the ball forward quickly but it was on the ground and looking to play,” Alcock tells i.
“I think it’s simplistic to compare Lampard with Rooney and Gerrard, group them all together and view them as all the same.”
Lampard’s spell at Derby, more so than either stint at Chelsea and the survival mission at Everton, is the most obvious reference point for his new role.
A criticism of Lampard is that he was unable to take the Rams into the Premier League despite using his contacts book to bring Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Harry Wilson to Pride Park. Derby finished 6th in the table before losing to Aston Villa in the play-off final with Lampard leaving for Chelsea soon after,
“There’s this argument that they had a high-profile squad and he should have achieved what he did. But if you go through the Derby squad that year and what those players are doing now – ok they had Mount and Tomori who were 19, 20 at the time and have gone on to things – but a lot of them haven’t particularly kicked on,” Alcock says.
“So it’s not as clear-cut for me that it was just a high-value squad that he did ok with. I think the squad was probably not quite as good as people think.”
“I always thought it was criminal that he didn’t get promoted with that Derby squad,” adds Crone. “But looking at it now you maybe think that 6th is what that team should have got.”
The play-offs may seem a remote concern for Coventry right now, but there is always one slow burner in the Championship that recovers from a poor start to gatecrash the top six in the final weeks of a season. Coventry did just that under Robins in 2022-23, falling to Luton Town at the final hurdle. The points deficit to those prized spots is not chasmic and if Lampard can instigate an instant improvement in results there may be another barnstorming run on the horizon.
“What you would say about Coventry is that he has a squad that is way above its current league position. This is a ready made good job for someone,” Crone says.
“We’re not a basket case, we’ve got money to spend in January, the first team is the same as it was last year and they finished 8th after a huge turnover. We’ve spent the third-most money in the Championship over the past two years. It looks like an easy fix for someone to come in and turn things around.”
“Managing a club like Robins did that was backs to the wall with no money or no budget and do an unbelievably job with no resources is a totally different one to what the job is now,” says Alcock.
“We have resources and good players now and are stable financially. It’s a very different world to manage in and maybe that wasn’t quite right for Robins now.” One that Alcock believes Lampard is better equipped for.
Coventry may be an attractive job given the quality of their squad, but taking it on now as the immediate successor to someone as beloved as Robins is undoubtedly a risk. How does one follow “God?”
Lampard evidently thinks it is a gamble worth taking and spots an opportunity to rebuild his reputation from a lower base by galvanising Coventry’s fortunes. Arne Slot has shown it can be possible possible to succeed a dynastic manager and flourish.
A fast start would do him the world of good, though, encouraging the Robins devotees that the future remains bright with him gone. Bruised by his last two jobs, Lampard needs to get the fans onside and needs this to work out. A brilliant player remains an enigma as a manager. Here is perhaps his final chance to show he can master his second career as he did his first.
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