Why Frank Lampard's Coventry Are DESTINED For The Premier League

Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel and today we have a members video for you about none other than Coventry City. And that means this was an idea that has come from and been voted for our channel members but I'll tell you more about that in a little bit. Right, just take a look at this. If I said to you the team in pink here are the league leaders, probably the division's most comfortable team in possession, full of technical intelligent players and this is the start of a move that leads to a goal. How many passes, how many touches do you think there are between here and ending up in the back of the net? 10 maybe if they're good, 20 if they're fanny on somewhere. It's actually only two, right, the full-back gets so aggressively on his bike they find him over the top, he knocks it clean across the face of goal for a tap-in. Coventry City are not f***ing about. So yes, hello, welcome to another members video. We asked every single one of you what videos you would like to see, we picked out the four that looked like the most fun, then we put it to our members to decide which one we actually made. And to my genuine shock, Man United, Nick Voltimarda and Long Throws lost out to Frank Lampard's Coventry City. So you know something's actually happening here. So today we are going to look at this team who they are, what they do and how they are currently dominating the championship in a way we haven't actually seen for quite a while. They are genuinely breaking long-standing points and goals records, so it's a lot more than them just being the best team in the division. So yes, this by and large has been Coventry City this season. Frank Lampard has favoured a 4-2-3-1, although he has briefly flirted this season and last with a back three, but pretty much this is the side you expect to see. And we're going to show you the system and the players in detail in a second, but first I just want you to understand the scale of how good they've been. We're recording this right before they play Stokes, so it may change a bit, but regardless, they are currently top for goals by a mile, top for shots by a mile, their conversion rate is the best in the division, their average shot distance is the lowest in the division and they have both the best and most overperformed xG by some distance. Now those last three stats, yeah three, are the most important because the shot distance being low and the xG being high says that yes, they are creating a lot of chances, but that those chances specifically have a better chance of being a goal than the ones other teams are creating. And I know I probably don't have to explain those two stats, but xG, if you're asked about xG, measures the supposed statistical quality of the chances you're making, which can say that you're making good ones, but the average shot distance is just common sense. Like if I gave you 100 chances to score a goal from like 19 yards or 100 chances to score a goal from like 16 yards, where do you think you would score the most goals from? So obviously doing well with both of those numbers tends to be a good underlying indicator that you're actually bloody terrifying. Defensively as well, they've been really good. Like even after what happened at Wrexham, which may or may not be the reason this video is slightly late because might have gone and recorded something in which I used the word undefeated several times. Oh well, they've still been really good. They're giving other teams the lowest quality chances in the league. They've let in five in the last three, which is a big drop off from their early season numbers. So yes, teams do make chances against them, but these chances, if you use those same metrics, have a worse chance of being scored than pretty much everybody else. So it looks more like a statistical blip rather than a worrying trend. Now, normally in these videos, this is where we would go to the Subito table and I would show you some easily definable tactical masterstroke that nobody's ever thought of before and nobody in the division can currently live with. Like when I've done teams in the championship before, we had things like Southampton having these massive gaps between players so they can pass up the pitch in as few moves as possible. Or Kieran McKenna's Ipswich using like a reverse inverted fullback where the six actually goes and stands out wide to ping passes without getting pressured. But having been through Frank Lampard's Coventry City this season and last, that is not who they are. They do not have some really definable tactical identity that's going to impress a load of people. They are instead really adaptable and pragmatic. And the reason I opened the video with this goal is because it's basically the most direct football you can imagine. Long ball from the back, over the top, in behind, crossed in, scored very easily. Sean Dyche will have that Nottingham Forest team training on Christmas day trying to get them to do things like this. But Coventry also have it in them to play through you really methodically. A lot of which is down to Matt Grimes. And I think he is maybe the most important player. Like he sets the tempo of the entire team, he shows for the ball everywhere on the pitch. And if you look at his passing numbers this season, they are insanely consistent. Like the number of them, the accuracy of them and what you really want, the progressive and forward passes as well as those into the final third. Like these are the numbers of a beating heart of a football team. He's averaging 89 touches of the ball every single game. He's got a really decent defensive contribution in him as well. And most importantly, he's an excellent ball carrier. He is, to quote absolutely anybody on TikTok, a cheat code at this level. He's a really technical, patient, physical midfield playmaker. But he also posts running numbers comparable with most wingers in the same division. Think of it this way, right? If you want to have an everything system, you need to have an everything player. And I'm going to show you what a nightmare that is to play against. Here he is on the ball and you can see the opposition are set up to close the passing lanes in front of him to stop him playing that ball forward, which should by extension force him sideways or backwards. But what he does in those situations is he looks at it and he goes, Oh, all right, then it's fine. And just runs into the space they have left by trying to stop the pass. Having a player who does this in central midfield basically tells you we go forward all the time. It does not matter how we go forward as a team, we just go forward. And you can see that in this optograph over team styles, like Coventry are miles ahead in terms of how quickly they move the ball of field, but also right in the average for the total number of passes. Now, just to give you an important bit of context here, right? What it usually means when these graphs say a team moves the ball forward that quickly is that they are in actual fact, a long ball team. They're able to move it forward that quickly because it's spending most of its time traveling unmolested through the air. But again, Coventry are a total mix of styles on the deck, in the air, it does not matter. The mindset is purely to get it up the field. Like simultaneously, they have the highest percentage of long goal kicks in the league, which means they've got no interest in messing about with it at the back, but also the second highest number of carries into the penalty area. And that might not sound mad on the face of it, but normally if you want to lump it forward from the back, you also want to lump it into the box every chance you get. But when Coventry have it in the final third, they're actually looking for a killer pass that will open you up or for one of the wide players to beat a man individually. And I really honestly cannot stress this enough, like Coventry City do not have one of these out of the box tactical identities. Frank Lampard just wants them to get the ball up the pitch in whichever way they see fit. And what he deserves a lot of credit for is creating a mentality at a club where players aren't afraid to just try stuff. Maddest example I could find, and please forgive the championship camera angles, right? Loose ball coming through here and Thomas is going to clean it up. Now he can, and arguably should, take a touch here. Common sense would say, get this ball under control, maybe go back to the goalkeeper, see if he can invite the opposition on, and then try and go through them. But actually, and they're just out of shot so you can't see them, but there's two players right in front of him here who, if he and they are quick, can get turned and get a pretty decent little counter attack going. But what does he actually do? Well, great question. Glad you asked. He just smashes it upfield because had you right, has the defender isolated? He gets in, he rounds the keeper, and it's only the angle that keeps this ball out. And again, you would think looking at a clip like that, oh, well, they're obviously just a long ball team, just hitting hope up the other end of the pitch. But no, actually, they are the 15th and 16th lowest team in the championship for long balls, both attempted and completed. They are the everything team and everything will sometimes mean going long over the top to a marauding fullback or going long blind into a forward you can potentially make something happen for you. Sometimes it means nice fluid passes. Sometimes it means killer balls into the box. Sometimes it means beating a man one-on-one. It does not matter. They just want it to go forward. And this sort of like level of pragmatism, which is ultimately like what it is, applies to their off the ball work as well. Then maybe the most surgically specific high presses I've seen in a fair old while, like passes per defensive action, is usually how you measure how aggressive a team is when they haven't got possession. How much will they let you do before they go and like into you? And you'll note Coventry are nothing special here. They're right around the league average while Millwall, for example, are top. They're charging all over. But if you just reorganise that graph, right, and instead of sorting it by just how generally aggressive a team are, you go and look at like specifically how many times have they actually won the ball back in the final third and Coventry jump right from the middle of the pack all the way into the top three. And that is because like absolutely everything else, a high press is not their identity. It is just something they are capable of doing when the situation calls for it. Two examples here from the Sheffield Wednesday game were despite their respective positions in the league, Coventry do not dominate the ball. Possession in this is literally 50-50. They were struggling to play through the congested centre that Wednesday had made with their back five. So they go, all right, okay, we can't play through you, we'll press you high instead. The second goal arrives from them pinching the ball here and then flooding the box with attacking numbers. And minutes later, there is another chance where they pinch it back and somehow manage to get a 5v5 in the box despite being 4v8 in the final third at the start of the move. Like honestly, just look at this as a still image. And then look at this, you would never ever think they came from the same move in the game. You'd think they were miles apart. Now, obviously, the championship is a very, very, very long season. So there is some distance still to go. But already, like 14 games in, they're five points clear in the automatic places. There's like nine points away from having to worry about the playoffs and the way they are playing, how adaptable they are, how they're not defined by one thing, but can find solutions to every single problem. You'd have to be a braver man than I to bet against them going up, which I'm not trying to jinx it, Coventry fans. That's just how it looks. But if you will allow me to get carried away for a second, when you look at that adaptability, that pragmatism, that not being wedded to a single idea and doing what it takes, well, you look at the three teams that have promoted this season, and that has been their exact approach to staying in the division. And all three of them are making a really, really good fist of it. So who knows? Now, just before we finish today, right, there is one more thing about Coventry City, which is not tactical at all, but it is impossible to explain the journey they have been on without going into. Frank Lampard has obviously done an exceptional job here, but I don't think any of this happens without the work Mark Robbins put in. Now, Coventry have obviously had, like, a really tumultuous, difficult couple of years, which would take me an entire video in of itself just to explain, but Robbins came in arguably when they were at their lowest ebb. He got them out of League 2, he got them out of League 1, he stabilised them in the Championship, he flirted with promotion back to the Premier League, and were it not for what I believe is the single greatest argument for the abolition of VAR, because even when it's right, it is still somehow wrong, they would be FA Cup finalists as well. Like, all of this, this is incredible, this team, its league position, how it is playing, what it is doing, what it can potentially do this season and next, all of it, absolutely brilliant, credit to Frank Lampard, but I don't think any of it happens without Mark Robbins. So yes, there you go, as suggested by ACFC viewers and voted for by ACFC channel members, which you should absolutely become, you can join at the link below. That is what is going on with Coventry City. They are really good, couldn't think what to say there. And just to have my own go at the old Lampardian transition, thank you so much for watching, guys, I hope you've had a great time, but in all seriousness, no, you probably should become a channel member. You get to decide what sorts of videos we do, and we also do some exclusive ones as well with a live chat where you can join in there as well. You can get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, and if you're still watching, you've made it this far into the video, I shall tell you quite openly that I do not believe the mysterious nebulous YouTube algorithm will give this video the love this team genuinely deserves. So if you are a Coventry City fan and you have enjoyed it, this is the kind of thing where shares are massively appreciated. That will sort of help it out. And hopefully, if you're a Coventry City fan and you're like, oh, nobody ever talks about my team, you might get to see it. That's who it's for. But yes, whatever, I'll stop begging it now. Thank you very much for watching. I've been Adam Cleary, ACFC, Coventry City. Goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye.