The Coventry Building Society Arena has never seen top-flight football in its 20-year history, but it is getting used to the sight of a Premier League legend fist-pumping in front of Singers’ Corner.
Tuesday night was no different, with thousands of Coventry City fans cheering Frank Lampard’s celebratory punches of the air after his side’s 3-1 win over Sheffield United. The stadium music was cut to allow their voices to ring out.
That tradition is not new or original in modern football. Lampard’s fist-pumps started with his first win as Coventry head coach, against Millwall in December 2024, which took them to 14th in the Championship with 21 points. The context, though, has transformed over 11 months. Tuesday’s win took City four points clear of second-placed Stoke City, in a stadium now owned by the club, and on course to return to the Premier League for the first time since 2001.
The mood around Lampard, too, has changed.
“I spoke to The Independent at the time and I said he was in my bottom three choices of any manager we could have,” laughs Joey Crone, season ticket holder and co-host of The Nii Lamptey Show. “I didn’t want him.”
Brilliant atmosphere last night in Coventry, where Frank Lampard’s team came from behind to beat Sheffield United and go four points clear at the top of the Championship pic.twitter.com/xKczkF7pF8
— Cerys Jones (@reallycerys) November 5, 2025
When Lampard arrived at Chelsea as manager, he did so as a club hero, boasting 211 goals in 648 appearances. At Coventry, arriving with longtime colleagues Chris Jones and Joe Edwards, he was replacing a firm favourite. “When I came in, I know there was a lot of talk,” Lampard, 47, told The Athletic last Friday, after his side’s first league defeat of the season to Wrexham. “You follow a legend of a manager and that’s a challenge I knew was there.”
Incoming head coaches’ praise for their predecessors does not always ring true, but in Mark Robins’ case, few would argue with Lampard. The 55-year-old, now building Stoke’s promotion push, was the EFL’s longest-serving manager when he was dismissed, and had led the club from League Two to the Championship play-off final.
“The club that Lampard came into last November simply wouldn’t have been where it was without Robins,” says Samantha Riman, who is part of BBC Coventry and Warwickshire’s Sky Blues fancast. “It was going to be really big shoes for anybody to fill. I wasn’t over the moon when Lampard was first mentioned.”
Lampard’s managerial CV would best be described as mixed. It boasted a play-off final run with Derby County in 2019, a top-four finish and FA Cup final the following season with Chelsea, and the achievement of helping save Everton from relegation in 2022. But Lampard was sacked by Chelsea and Everton, and his most recent job had been a brief interim spell back at Stamford Bridge at the end of the 2022-23 campaign, in which he won only one of his 11 matches.
“I’ve worked in different challenges of clubs,” Lampard said at Wrexham. “Going into Derby, it’s your first gig — when you’ve been an ex-player, they look at you and some people might question the opportunity you’ve got.
“There was that at Derby and Chelsea. So you go to Everton and it’s tough trying to stave off relegation and then they’re questioning your ability. There’s probably not a job that you come into necessarily where you’re going to go and put your feet up.”
Frank Lampard is winning hearts and minds at Coventry (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
His recipe for winning fans’ faith was not complex.
“Hopefully (the fans) see that I’ve got that strong work ethic and when I work at a club I throw everything into it, because I don’t think you can do this job any other way,” Lampard said.
“But they react first and foremost to what they see on the pitch. Results, energy of the team, does it have the passion that they deserve as a fan to see? Do we play to entertain them with a good speed in our game and show all the basics of our game?
“And that’s where I think we’ve got it right. We started to get it right for a long time in the second half of last season and we’ve continued and maybe improved even on that this season.”
He appears to have got a lot right. After Tuesday’s win, Coventry have accrued more points after 14 matches than four of the six automatically promoted teams had at the same stage in the past three seasons.
Automatically promoted teams’ starts
Championship SeasonTeamWDLGFGAGDPts
2022-23
Burnley
6
7
1
24
12
12
25
2022-23
Sheffield United
7
4
3
24
13
11
25
2023-24
Leicester City
13
0
1
29
8
21
39
2023-24
Ipswich Town
11
2
1
31
17
14
35
2024-25
Leeds United
7
5
2
22
9
13
26
2024-25
Burnley
6
6
2
17
6
11
24
2025-26
Coventry City
9
4
1
39
13
26
31
The performance of the last three seasons’ automatically promoted Championship sides after 14 games, compared to Coventry City’s 2025-26 performance (Opta)
According to Opta, the last Championship side to win 31+ points after matchday 14 and fail to be promoted was Cardiff City in 2010-11, who were on 32 points.
Statistically, Coventry look a different team to the one Lampard took charge of. In reality, though, no overhaul was needed. Other than a handful of additions — the standouts being 30-year-old midfielder and captain Matt Grimes, who joined from Swansea City in January, and goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, 24, who is on loan from Brighton & Hove Albion — the personnel are similar. Success has come from getting the basics right and coaching the best out of the squad Robins built.
“This is largely the same squad we had, but, season by season, the performances that we’re getting out of these players is ludicrous,” Crone says. “Everyone looks like they know exactly what they’re doing, they’re really uncomplicated and they are really thriving — that’s Lampard.”
Multiple Coventry players have praised the former Chelsea midfielder’s management.
“There are differences between a manager who has experienced the game and one who hasn’t,” Kaine Kesler-Hayden told The Athletic after moving to Coventry from Aston Villa this summer. “When I walked back to the car after meeting Frank, I said to my agent, ‘I really like him’. How he was as a person and how he spoke to me — he was a massive reason I came.”
Jack Rudoni, 24, has benefited more than most. The goalscoring midfielder won City’s player of the year award last season. He told BBC Sport in October that Lampard has “brought the best out of me and a lot of players.
“There’s no one better for me to learn from. He works with me one-to-one and I love training and playing under him.”
Lampard’s Coventry are a tight-knit, focused, energetic winning machine. Tuesday’s win neatly summarised their best traits.
Fresh from their first league defeat of the season at Wrexham, they trailed at half-time to 22nd-placed Sheffield United. The crowd was nervous and there were groans at backwards or sideways passes.
Lampard’s message at half-time was as simple as it was effective: more speed, more energy, more Coventry.
First was Tatsuhiro Sakamoto’s equaliser in the 49th minute. Lampard allowed himself one hard fist-pump and a few claps before continuing to pace his technical area. Then came Bobby Thomas’ towering header on the hour mark, followed by chants of ‘We are top of the league’ and ‘Super Frank Lampard’ booming around the ground.
It was after the third and final goal, when Brandon Thomas-Asante tapped home from USMNT forward Haji Wright’s pass in stoppage time, that Lampard allowed himself to celebrate with the energy and exuberance he had coaxed out of his team.
Wright has thrived under Lampard (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
“The second half was what we want to be, what we’ve been for big parts of the season,” Lampard said after the match. “More energy in the team, the way we play — little tactical tweaks, but the main thing was our approach to the game and how fast we were, how much pressure we put on them, and that changed the course of the match.
“If you look at our big performances this year, either when we’ve blown teams away, which fortunately we have at times, it’s been more power, pace, play forward, run forwards, support each other and move forward, and we do that a lot. I know you can’t always do it for 90 minutes, but we have to believe that’s what we can be as a team. And that was there in the second half.”
Thomas-Asante’s goal was laden with narrative. Wright has not scored for Coventry in a month and when he steamed onto the ball at the edge of the box, where he was closed down by goalkeeper Adam Davies, he could have tried something audacious to end his lean patch.
Instead, he flicked it right to Thomas-Asante to tap in.
“There’s a good bond between the players, and that’s a little moment that shows that,” Lampard said. “It was so important, because there might have been one minute left, but who knows what could happen. If they can stay together and show that bond, that’s a little action that shows we’re in a good place — we can’t lose that attitude.”
Coventry reached the playoffs in two of the past three campaigns, but as the table of their first 14 league results in the past few seasons shows, they have been hindered by slow starts.
Coventry buck trend of slow starts
SeasonWinsDrawsLossesGDPoints
22/23
4
4
6
-3
16
23/24
3
6
5
-1
15
24/25
4
3
7
-1
15
25/26
9
4
1
26
31
Coventry’s key metrics after 14 games of each Championship season, 2022-23 to 2025-26.
Coventry fans are naturally inclined to manage their expectations. This is a fanbase who, since relegation from the top flight in 2001, have seen more than their fair share of turmoil.
Under previous owners Sisu, the hedge fund that bought the club in 2007, City were relegated to League Two, England’s fourth tier. The club did not own the CBS Arena, formerly the Ricoh Arena, and have faced years of instability and uncertainty over their stadium. The team were forced to groundshare with Northampton Town, around a 30-mile drive away, and later with Birmingham City, around 20 miles away. There were fan protests against Sisu’s ownership and businessman Doug King took 100 per cent control of the club in January 2023.
“The negative Coventry fan in me is always a bit like: ‘When is this going to go wrong?’,” Riman says. “But I’m trying desperately hard to just enjoy it because, alongside the incredible start we’ve had to the season, there was the news that our owner Doug King had bought the stadium. So the CBS finally belongs to the club.
“It’s almost like the stars have aligned a little bit for us in these first couple of months of the season.”
What stands out from Lampard’s Coventry is that he has not ripped up Robins’ work, but built on the foundations. The same straightforwardness comes across when he reflects on his managerial career.
“I’m probably a bit calmer than in my first years of management because you get used to the ups and downs and keeping a cool head,” Lampard told The Athletic on Friday.
“I don’t find it hard to reflect on myself because, from a young boy up until my playing career to management, I’ve always been good at critiquing myself. It’s what made me the player that I was and I’m like that as a manager.
“Try and keep a balanced head because it’s a stressful job, there’s a lot to it, but I enjoy those challenges. I’m the first one to look at myself and go, ‘How can I be a bit better?’ pretty much most days.”
If Coventry and their manager can continue being that ‘bit better’ until May, their decades-long wait for a Premier League return could be over.
Additional contributor: Greg O’Keeffe
