I Owe Frank Lampard An Apology

5th, Frank Lampard. Yep, Stan might be managing an amateur team in the 7th tier of Dutch football, whilst Frank Lampard has a job in the 2nd tier of the English game, but I still think that Lampard is an even worse manager than Stan. Basically, I think that Frank Lampard is very bad at managing football teams. He got the top job at Derby County in 2018 owing to Mel Morris' relationship with his uncle Harry Redknapp, where he was able to bring in Mason Mount, Harry Wilson and, as a result, he took the Rams from the deep darkest depths of finishing 6th under Gary Rowett the previous season, to the dizzying heights of finishing 6th again and losing a playoff final against Aston Villa. That tremendous achievement, rather than his history as a player, saw Lampard land the Chelsea job after just a single season in management. Lampard worked his magic once again at Stamford Bridge, taking the Blues from a deeply disappointing 3rd place finish and a Europa League title under Maurizio Sarri the previous season, to an awe-inspiring 4th place finish and no trophies in his debut campaign. The following season, Lampard only made it to the halfway point, at which stage Chelsea had won one of their last 8 matches and had fallen to 9th in the Premier League table. He was replaced by Thomas Tuchel, who not only turned Chelsea's league form around, climbing up to 4th and qualifying for the Champions League, but also actually won the Champions League. Next up for Lamps, it was Everton, where he is often credited with keeping the trophies in the Premier League, having arrived when they were 16th with a couple of games in hand and guiding them all the way to, um, 16th by the end of the season. He was sacked after just under 12 months, with Everton down in 19th and facing the likely prospect of relegation in his second season, before Sean Dyche secured enough points in the second half of the campaign to just about keep them up. A spell in caretaker charge of Chelsea followed, where Lampard lost 8 out of his 11 games in charge and had a tremendous, brace yourselves, 9.09% win percentage. Coventry City took one look at that outstanding record and said hey, sign us up, he's clearly the man for the job. Forget Mark Robbins, what did he ever do except take us from League 2 to a Championship playoff final, where we only lost on penalties, and then an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United, where we also only lost on penalties. Lampard has so far won 3 out of his 8 games in charge at Coventry, one of which was against Hull City, and therefore doesn't count. We lose against everyone. Since leaving Chelsea for the first ago, Lampard's record reads, played 63, won 16, drawn 13, lost 34. If his name wasn't Frank Lampard, he'd be lucky to get a job as a number 2 at Southend United. It's a king who ends their exile. Your king has taken them back to the Premier League palace. Coventry City's exile is over. They are coming home. They are a Premier League club again. Coventry, a League City again. We can see tears away to our left in the away end. This is why football touches the soul. It enriches lives, it changes lives. Yeah, alright, don't milk it Wordsworth. It's not the moon landing. Okay, okay, we get it. Is he crying now? Understand the pressure around management, and I think sometimes people do forget the first couple of jobs. Brilliant job at Derby. First time around at Chelsea, fantastic. Did you feel you had a little bit of a point to prove coming back into management? Because we all sit here, and like Tim said earlier, you don't need to do it. There's a passion, there's a drive there to want to prove people wrong, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, everything I've ever done probably in my career has been a bit of a point to prove, to be honest. It's been a big driving force in my career. Alright, I'm just catching strays from Joby McEnough at this point. He's still bitter about Hull City battering his Watford team in the 2008 playoff semifinals. Get over it, Joby. You had your moment with Reading. I think that we can probably leave it there. I don't often make prediction videos on this channel. As I have stated repeatedly, I consider them to be beneath both me and all of you as viewers, which means that I don't often find myself having to issue apologies. Or at least, not outside of my personal life. I have prefaced several videos with the words, sorry we need to talk about X over the years, but I regret to inform you all that they were not sincere apologies, they were just highly effective and engaging titles. They are also beneath both me and all of you as viewers. I'm not perfect, alright? As this video illustrates. Throughout the course of this season, as Coventry have romped, cruised or walked their way to Premier League promotion, you can take whichever verb you like, and indeed to the Championship title, I have received quite a lot of messages, and quite a lot of comments on old videos of mine, reminding me of some of the unflattering things that I have said about Frank Lampard's managerial abilities in the past, which included beginning the first 20 seconds of my video on the 7 worst ever Premier League managers, which I'm relieved to say that I at least didn't include him in, like this. Managing in the Premier League is tough, I mean, just ask Frank Lampard, who took Chelsea from 3rd to 9th in Everton from 16th to 19th, and was promptly sacked from both jobs. Still, it's nice of people to keep offering him new ones, and he's doing what he knows best at Chelsea once again now, losing games of football. What am I like? No, but in all seriousness, that was a really disrespectful way to talk about Chelsea's all-time leading goalscorer, who was still trying to forge a career in management. Earlier this season, in a review of the Championship campaign at the halfway stage, I also said this. The Championship's pacemakers at the halfway stage this season are Coventry City, whose head coach I have previously described as, and I quote, a very bad football manager. I probably owe Frank Lampard a full and frank apology video if Coventry City can maintain anything like their current form, though, uh, in my defense, I stand by the fact that prior to joining the Sky Blues, Lampard's managerial record was uninspiring at best, and fairly wretched at worst. I'll just save my justifications for the apology video, though. Well then, here we are. There can be no more prevaricating. It's time for me to hold up my hands and admit that I was wrong about Frank Lampard, a man who somehow became known as Fat Frank among his critics, despite never knowingly actually being remotely overweight. None of these photographs or memes, I regret to inform you, are authentic. I'm told that they have all been digitally altered. I know, it's hard to believe. It's difficult to know what's real anymore on the internet. Have Coventry City even been promoted? They said that they were on Sky Sports, but, uh, then again, that is the mainstream media, who my good friend Matt LaTissiere tells me I should always assume that the opposite of whatever they say is true, which means that the Sky Blues must actually have been relegated, and therefore, I was right about Frank, whether he is fat, thin, or of average build all along. No, uh, in all seriousness, he's not fat, and Coventry have been promoted. The scale of Coventry's achievement this season, of which Lampard, as we will come on to, has of course been an integral part, ought not be underplayed. We have a habit in football, when a team leads the table for a long time, like Coventry this season, or Liverpool last, to downplay their achievement, and to act as though it was always a foregone conclusion. In actual fact, just as many people were casting doubts about whether Liverpool would even finish inside of the Champions League places, before the start of last season, let alone win the title, following Jurgen Klopp's departure and Arne Slott's appointment, coming into this campaign, Coventry were the 4th, 5th, or 6th favourites in the Championship, praised at between 9-1 to 11-1, depending on the bookies, on the same or similar odds as Middlesbrough, Birmingham, and, brace yourselves, Leicester City. Whilst Leicester have suffered, or are about to suffer, we'll see by the time that this video comes out, the humiliating fate of back-to-back relegations, having won fewer than half as many games and points as Coventry this season, Birmingham find themselves down in the bottom half, and even Borough, who are about where the bookies expected, are a massive 13 points behind the Sky Blues, Coventry have far exceeded their pre-season expectations. Sheffield United, meanwhile, who were shorter odds than Coventry to win promotion and the title, with all of the bookies in pre-season, are almost 30 points behind them. Coventry were expected to be competitive this season, but they have been a lot more than that. The Sky Blues were also fighting the tide against their own historic precedent. Although they've made the playoffs in two out of the last three seasons, falling at the final hurdle on penalties in the final against Luton in 2023, and being bitterly unfortunate to lose against eventual winners Sunderland over two legs last season, the fact remained that Coventry hadn't played top-flight football in 25 years. Blackpool, Huddersfield, Reading, and Wigan have all played Premier League football more recently, by a magnitude of at least 10 years, than Coventry City. Prior to the club's relegation from the Premier League in the 2000 to 2001 season, Coventry were the fourth longest serving team in English football's top flight, trailing only Arsenal, Everton, and Liverpool, having been members of the Premier League and previously the First Division uninterrupted since 1967. Tottenham, Chelsea, and Manchester United had all been relegated from the top flight more recently than the Sky Blues, who also beat Spurs 3-2 after extra time, in front of almost 100,000 supporters to win the FA Cup final at the Old Wembley in 1987. Coventry were a team of significant stature then, so much so that, in the late 1990s, the club received permission to build a new 45,000-seater stadium, which would have made it the largest in the Midlands and, at that time, the fifth largest in the Premier League. The planned stadium was also one of 12 put forward by the FA, as part of England's bid to host the 2006 World Cup. Coventry was even one of three cities, along with London and Birmingham, which bid to become the host city of England's new 90,000-capacity National Stadium after the Old Wembley closed at the turn of the millennium. Coventry's bid claimed to be the fairest, as it would be the most centrally located in England, and both the cheapest and the quickest to build, claiming that they could deliver the project within three years, and for just £250 million. The London bid, unsurprisingly, emerged victorious, with England's national stadium remaining in Wembley, that would cost almost £800 million, and took close to five years to build. If Coventry City Council's bid had won, presumably, Coventry City would either have become the tenants of a 90,000-capacity National Stadium, and therefore have had the biggest stadium of any club in England, or the city of Coventry, which is about the 13th largest in England, would have become home to two brand new stadiums, with 45,000 and 90,000 capacities respectively, built and opened within a couple of years of one another. I digress. The new stadium, named the Rico Arena, proved to be a curse rather than a blessing. Both the size and the ambition of the project were significantly scaled back, after England failed in their bid to host the 2006 World Cup in 2000, receiving fewer votes than Germany and South Africa, and Coventry were relegated from the Premier League in 2001, bringing their 34-year stay in the top flight to an end. The capacity was reduced from an initial proposal of 45,000 to a little over 32,000. Meanwhile, the plans for a retractable roof and a state-of-the-art hydraulic pitch, which could slide out and make way for a hard floor for the hosting of concerts and other major events, were never realized. The build still cost an enormous £113 million, which was between 2.3 to 4.7 times as much as the Cardiff City Stadium, Pride Park, and the Stadium of Light, all of which are larger and were built within 10 years of it, and almost as much as Man City's Etihad Stadium, even after it was first converted into a football ground. That is primarily because the Rico Arena, as it was originally named, wasn't just a stadium but an entire complex, housing an exhibition hall, a casino, and a hotel. The arena was originally owned and operated by Arena Coventry Limited, which was a joint partnership between the stadium's joint landlords, Coventry City Council, and the Alan Edwards Higgs charity, which Coventry City Football Club then paid a reported £1.2 to £1.3 million a season to rent. It was originally supposed to be a 50-50 partnership between Coventry City Council and the Football Club, but the Sky Blues sold their 50% share to the Alan Edwards Higgs charity in an effort to raise funds. This was in contrast with Coventry's former home, Highfield Road, which they previously owned themselves. The high cost led to rising debts, even several years before the move, as a result of Coventry selling Highfield Road to property developers, and having to then rent it back until the new stadium opened, forcing the club to sell several of their star players, including Dion Dublin, George Boateng, and Robbie Keane, in successive campaigns. Coventry's financial woes not only saw them relegated in 2001, it led to chairman and majority shareholder Brian Richardson receiving a unanimous vote of no confidence in 2002, three years before the club's delayed move to the Reek Arena, which he had spearheaded, was even realised. The next 15 years would be pretty brutal for the Sky Blues. They only narrowly survived in the championship in two out of the three seasons before the Reek Arena opened, and the new stadium would do little to improve their fate. By 2007, drowning under the weight of around £38 million of debt, Coventry City were on the brink. The club made plans at the start of December to enter into administration, facing the very real prospect of going out of business. I haven't talked about Frank Lampard for a while, have I? Look, I'm just setting the scene. I'm sure this is what my boss must have meant when he told me to make shorter videos. Incidentally, if you are one of the sick and twisted freaks who enjoys my longer videos, I just uploaded a more than 40-minute banger about the comical Saudi pro-league corruption scandal, as alleged by Ibn Tawni, who has suggested that the league is being rigged in favour of Cristiano Ronaldo's Al Nasser over on the Alfie Potsdamer YouTube channel, where you can find all of my longer, more research-intensive, and more controversial videos now. Controversial according to some people, not me. And for the foreseeable future. Three of my last four videos over there have hit 100,000 views, which is outrageous, and rumor has it, if I hit 100,000 subscribers before this summer's World Cup, something big happens. That was your hint to go and subscribe. We all like it when big things happen, don't we? Like the moon landing, or Coventry City winning promotion. In all seriousness, long story short, Coventry were rescued from administration by Sisu Capital, a 10-year-old London-based hedge fund which specialised in distressed debt securities, and who had previously tried and failed to buy Southampton. Based upon Sisu's area of supposed expertise, the suspicion was that their aim was to stabilise the Sky Blues, secure promotion back into the Premier League, and then sell the club, having bought it for nothing other than taking on the club's existing debt, for a healthy profit. It's a lovely idea in theory. If that was Sisu's plan, it would prove to be a bit more difficult to execute. By 2011, it was reported that despite Sisu having spent £30 million, Coventry's debt had risen to over £40 million, and was rising by approximately £500,000 a week. Ray Ranson, the experienced executive and face of Sisu, resigned as Coventry's chairman, and Sisu began slashing costs. If Premier League promotion and a quick sale had previously been the aim, it certainly wasn't anymore. In 2011-12, Coventry were relegated again, dropping into the third tier for the first time since England won the World Cup. And yes, that is an official measure of a very long period of time, and over the next five years, from the 2012-13 to the 2017-18 season, the Sky Blues had the 114th highest transfer expenditure within the English game. For context, there are only 92 teams throughout the Premier League and EFL. Coventry spent less during this period than Woking, Villa Ricci Town, and Charlton Athletic's under-23s. They spent the 2013-14 season over 30 miles away, following a rent dispute between the club and Arena Coventry Ltd. Coventry averaged just 2,348 fans at their home games that season, in inverted commas, their lowest of all time, and only falling below the 10,000 barrier for the first time since the 1920s. To all intents and purposes, Coventry City fans didn't have a club in the 2013-14 season. Their team was in temporary exile. To make matters worse, the atmosphere had become so toxic at the Rico Arena, and the animosity towards Sisu so great, that some players actively preferred playing away from home and being exiled to Northampton. The 2016-17 season was a seminal moment for Coventry, for both good and bad. In the league, the Sky Blues fell into the fourth tier for the first time since the 1950s, just 16 years after their 34-year stay in the top flight came to an end. That is the bad bit, in case you were wondering. But Coventry supporters, following a decade and a half of little but pain, exile and despair, were treated to a rare Wembley win in the final of the newly expanded EFL Trophy. It might not seem like much for a club that has won an FA Cup, but it provided Coventry fans with a reminder that football could actually be fun, and the city with a sense of their untapped potential. Among a crowd of 74,434, around 42,500 were Coventry supporters. Coventry's average attendance that season was below 10,000, as some supporters actively boycotted the club under Sisu, whilst others have become so demoralized that it served the same purpose. But Wembley illustrated why the club had planned to build a 45,000 capacity stadium less than 20 years ago, and the types of crowds that they could get again if the good days ever returned. Coventry's EFL Trophy final win was masterminded by Mark Robbins, only recently having returned for his second stint back at the Reek Arena, and the former Manchester United striker, who is sometimes credited with saving Alex Ferguson's job, would go on to become the single most important figure in Coventry City's revival, and consequently, among the most important in the history of the club. Over the next seven years, five and a half of them still under Sisu, during a period in which the club were kicked out of the Reek Arena yet again, spending a further two seasons, this time at Birmingham City St. Andrews, Robbins guided Coventry to two promotions, from League Two up into the Championship, a Championship playoff final, in which the Sky Blues only fell against Luton Town on penalties, and an FA Cup semi-final, where Coventry were once again only defeated via a penalty shootout at Wembley, this time by Manchester United. That probably provides you with some idea as to why, when Mark Robbins was sacked in early November 2024, there was such a sense of unease among some Coventry City supporters, and the football community as a whole. Sure, Coventry had made a poor start to the season, falling to 17th following just four wins from their opening 14 matches, but they have made slow starts under Robbins before. They'd only won three of their opening 16 games the previous season, 2023-24, which left them 20th with over a third of the season gone, just five points above their allegation zone, yet they still went on to finish ninth, and the season before that, when they went on to reach the playoff final, they failed to win any of their opening seven matches, and only took one win from their opening 10, which left them rock bottom of the league. There was a sense in which, not only was this what Coventry often did under Robbins, before enjoying a meteoric mid-season revival, but that he had earned the right to see his project through to completion, and that if anyone should guide the club back into the Premier League, it should probably be him. Doug King, who bought Coventry from Sisu in January 2023, justified the decision by pointing to an internal conflict, which had led to Robbins dismantling the club's coaching staff, in his words, which, most notably, It was a big risk, but King had put £65 million of his own money into Coventry in his first three-year zone in the club, including £35 million in the 2024-25 season alone. Though overall debt at Coventry has risen under King to a record £49.8 million, he cleared all of the club's external debt, including that owed to Coventry's former owners, meaning that all £49.8 million that the club currently owes is owed to him. What's more, at the start of this season, King completed the purchase of the Reek Arena, now named the Coventry Building Society or CBS Arena, for a reported £50 million from Mike Ashley's Fraser's Group. It was a fantastic deal for Ashley, the former Newcastle United owner, whose company paid just £17 million for the stadium in 2022, reporting a £33.8 million, or almost 200% gain in less than three years. But the freedom and security that it has brought Coventry in terms of owning their own home, no longer having to pay rent, and being able to renovate the stadium as their own asset is almost invaluable. Following the success of Lampard's appointment and promotion this season, King can do no wrong in the eyes of most Coventry supporters. Their trust in his judgment, understandably, is practically unwavering. And so we come, at long last, to Frank Lampard. It's amusing in some ways that I began this video by saying there can be no more prevaricating in my apology to Frank Lampard, only to then spend, what, I mean, it's got to have been at least 15 minutes, recounting the last 25 years of history at Coventry City, just to try and prove that the Sky Blues winning promotion this season was a significant achievement, and that it wasn't a foregone conclusion. I mean, most of you probably believed me when I recounted the preseason odds, and I could well have left things there, but in order for you to be properly convinced, I felt it necessary to explain the history of the CBS Arena and Coventry City's net spend between the 2012-13 and 2017-18 seasons. It has been said that dropping back down to the championship benefited Lampard, because he was able to do his job away from the bright lights of the Premier League, and with less pressure than at Chelsea or Everton. That may well be partially true, there is obviously less attention on English football's second tier than the Premier League, but the pressure on Lampard himself, even if less widely amplified, was still immense. In a BBC Sports article documenting the response of supporters on the day of his appointment, the first comment that they quoted read, Coventry fans absolutely do not want this appointment, and never have. Slap in the face from the new owner, who knows nothing about football. End quote. Another one read, This has got the Birmingham Rooney situation all over it. When will these owners ever learn? End quote. Written all over it, they probably meant, but I'm quoting directly, alright? Rooney comparisons were aplenty. It's no secret that England's so-called golden generation have done about as well in management as they did in penalty shootouts at major tournaments, with a sense, not unreasonably I don't think, that they have been handed immense opportunities in management almost exclusively because of their names and reputations based upon their talent and achievements as players. Much as this video is an apology to Frank Lampard, ostensibly at least, because he has done an excellent job at Coventry, it would be disingenuous to act as though his first job in management coming at a Napoli Mobile Championship club who had themselves just finished 6th, or his second job in management coming at one of the biggest clubs in England, who had just finished 3rd after a single season at Derby, in which he merely replicated their 6th place finish from the previous season, would ever have happened if he wasn't called Frank Lampard. There is a reason why Gary Rowett's next job after finishing 6th at Derby was at Stoke and not at Chelsea, and why he was forced to start his managerial journey in League 2 with Burton Albion rather than in the Championship, and it's because he's called Gary Rowett. Doug King was even forced to state publicly that he had hired Lampard on the strength of his CV and conversations with him, and not because of his relationship with Lampard's uncle Harry Redknapp, as some supporters and media outlets had suggested. King claimed that he hadn't spoken to Redknapp since playing golf with him over 8 years ago in Spain. He didn't say what happened on the fairway to bring it down to their relationship. No, but in all seriousness, there was a lot of pressure on Lampard and a lot of people who were questioning his appointments. In terms of the Rooney comparison, disregarding their actual managerial abilities for a moment, where I think there may be a gulf between the two, I think that Lampard benefited from Coventry's lowly and, I would argue, somewhat false league position when he was appointed. Whereas when John Eustace was sacked at Birmingham, the Blues were sat 6th in the league, having only lost 3 of their opening 11 games, and having just climbed into the playoffs with back-to-back victories, meaning that anything short of competing 4, if not finishing inside of the playoffs, despite the fact that Birmingham were probably punching above their weight, would have been considered a failure by Rooney, Lampard joined a Coventry team that had only won 4 of their first 16 games, and none of their last 3, leaving them 17th, despite having finished 5th and 9th in each of the preceding 2 seasons. It meant that, whereas when Rooney only won 1 of his first 6 games, it was considered a crisis, and he would be gone withinside 3 months, Lampard's 2 wins from his first 6 games didn't seem anywhere near as catastrophic, and whilst they meant that the jury was still firmly out, no one was seriously calling for his head. Much as I stand by a lot of my previous critiques of Lampard, I don't think that taking Derby from 6 to 6, despite being given Mason Mount, Harry Wilson, and Fukai Otomori on loan, Chelsea from 3rd to 4th, even with a transfer ban, or Everton from 16th when he arrived to 19th when he was sacked, were particularly laudable jobs, they mean that, for a 47-year-old manager, he does have fantastic experience. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Lampard's previous appointments, and I think that it's pretty clear that he was handed too much too young, and that overpromotion was exposed at times, there aren't many championship managers with a top-4 finish in the Premier League on their CV, and I think that Lampard is a much better manager for those failures, just as, to name two relatively similar examples, Liam Rasinho or Michael Carrick most likely would be, even if things don't or didn't work out for them, at Chelsea and Man Utd. What I think I got wrong, and significantly so, was underestimating Lampard's abilities to learn from his mistakes, and reflect upon his failures. In public, like a lot of managers in fairness, Lampard appears to take very little accountability for why Derby didn't win promotion, why Chelsea performed poorly in his second season, or why Everton also regressed in his second season following survival, before both of the latter two were significantly improved, at least within the short term, by Thomas Tuchel and Sean Dyche. Maybe that is all PR and image management, because in private, one suspects, Lampard has had deep thoughts about what he got wrong, and both how and where he can improve. One of the things that he deserves immense credit for, in my view, is showing the wisdom and modesty not to change too much at Coventry. A less self-confident manager, maybe even a younger Lampard himself, might have wanted to rip up the more than seven-year Mark Robbins project, in light of him being such a huge figure at the club, and put their own stamp on the club, both for their own ego, and to try and distance themselves from him. Lampard, by contrast, appreciated how much Robbins had got right over the years, the positive direction in which the club was heading already under him, and how close he had come to securing promotion. Not dissimilar to Arnaslot's first season at Liverpool in some ways, in which he inherited a team, and indeed a club, built over the preceding nine years by Jurgen Klopp, Lampard recognised that Coventry didn't need a revolution, there were just tweaks here and there, whether they be tactical, instructions to certain players, or simply lifting their spirits through a personal bond, and a good bit of man-management, which could elevate the club to where they wanted to be. In all honesty, I think a lot of this stems from Doug King. King is incredibly level-headed, always moderating expectations, and I think that calmness filters down throughout the whole club, firstly to Frank Lampard and his coaching staff, who are familiar at this stage, already as a player but now as a coach, with high-pressure moments and environments, and then on down to the players. When Coventry published their financial accounts for the 2024-25 season, there was a comment from King in which he stated, Moving forward with the newly acquired arena now as an asset, the goal of our club is to significantly reduce the annual operating loss from the 26-27 season onwards, whilst remaining competitive at the top end of the championship, and reaching our goal of a playoff berth three times in every five years. Whilst the championship remains grossly distorted by the Premier League parachute payment scheme, this is the only realistic target." End quote. There wasn't even a mention of the possibility of automatic promotion. It is rare within the modern game to see a chairman outline such a realistic set of expectations in a world full of wide-eyed five-year plans that include European football, but it is emblematic of how King has set the tone and lowered the pressure on Lampard as a result. Following Lampard's appointment last season, only the top three, Burnley, Leeds and Sheffield United, won more points than Coventry. It was enough to take the Sky Blues from 17th to 5th by the end of the season, and they were only defeated, cruelly, by a Dan Ballard header for Sunderland in the 123rd minute, the second leg of their playoff semi-final. Sunderland went on to win promotion at Wembley, beating Sheffield United, and they are now 11th in the Premier League. This probably helped Lampard and King, in fairness, conclude that a radical summer overhaul wasn't required. Unlike the last time that Coventry finished inside of the playoffs under Mark Robbins, which was followed by the sale of their star men, Viktor Jokeres and Gustavo Heymer, there would be no such significant departures coming into this season. Club captain Ben Sheaf was sold to Wrexham for a reported £6.5 million, but there was a feeling internally that the club had got an excellent fee for a great servant, but one who had struggled with injuries and didn't really fit neatly into Frank Lampard's midfield, especially since the January arrival of Matt Grimes. Following an unsuccessful summer pursuit of Hull City centre-back Charlie Hughes, Coventry signed Ipswich's Luke Wolfenden for a reported £4 million instead. Wolfenden is featured largely as a deputy behind existing centre-backs Bobby Thomas and Liam Kitching, both of whom have been excellent this season. Matt Grimes has been pivotal as one of the two sitters in Lampard's preferred 4-2-3-1 formation, but the biggest factor in Coventry's success has been the sheer number of goals that they've scored and the varied sources of those goals. Few players have improved as much during Lampard's tenure as Brandon Thomas-Assante, who has had his best goalscoring season in the Championship, and Jack Rodoni, whose four goals in three games against Sheffield United, Stoke City and Derby County won Coventry nine points and proved to be pivotal in them finally getting over the line. Lampard's career commands immediate respect within a dressing room, especially one outside of the elite level, where egos sometimes aren't quite as inflated, but for someone like Rodoni, a box-to-box player who wants to make late runs into the box and try and score goals, there are few better mentors in all of world football. Victor Thorpe, likewise, has contributed with eight goals from midfield, one of them from the penalty spot, Efron Mason-Clark, picked up from Peterbury United two years ago, has scored seven, and Hatchie Wright, Coventry's talisman, who is unplayable at Championship level at his best, leads the club's scoring charts with 16 goals. Wright joined Coventry for a club record fee worth a reported £7.7 million in 2023, and there is a somewhat false perception that Coventry are among the Championship's biggest spenders. It is certainly true that Doug King has put the club on a competitive footing, but Coventry's wage bill was the sixth lowest in the Championship last season, at just £26.5 million, and the funds to sign Wright were only available due to the reported £20 million sale of Victor Llochres during the same summer. Coventry's wage bill was just two-thirds of the size of Cardiff and Luton's last season, both of whom were relegated, and significantly less than the likes of Norwich, West Brom and Hull, who finished 13th, 9th and 21st. We will most likely never have a true reflection of what Coventry's wage bill would have been this season, without enormous promotion bonuses that will appear in their next set of accounts, but given the lack of substantive transfer activity, it seems at least probable that it would still have been mid-table, certainly far behind all of the parachute payment clubs that they have finished above, and very, very, very far above, in the case of Leicester City. Over the last three seasons, Coventry's net spend meanwhile, at approximately £16 million, is the eighth highest in the Championship, above Charlton and QPR, but nowhere near Birmingham or Wrexham. The key to Coventry's success, not dissimilar to Sunderland's last season in my view, has been their stability, signing and developing players with significant upside, consistently competing at the right end of the division, and choosing just the right moments of pounds. Coventry's achievement ought not be diminished in the slightest, and I want to make that absolutely clear, but I think that it is true, speaking as a Hull City fan, his club has spent most of this season inside of the playoff places, and often within touching distance of the top two, that there have been less standout teams at the top end of the league this season, by virtue of Ipswich underachieving, given their talents and resources, Southampton only turning up in about February, and Leicester City being an absolute omni-shambles all season. Whereas the top three of all won 90 plus points in the Championship, in each of the last two seasons, and the top two each won 100 points last season, less than 90 points will be enough to win the league this season, and the early 80s could still be enough, to secure automatic promotion. The gap between 1st and 7th, and 2nd and 7th, is currently 19 and 9 points this season, compared with 34 points, for both last season, and 27 and 26 points, during the season before that. That opening still had to be capitalised upon, by a non-parachute payment club though, and Coventry have been by far the best team in the league, over the course of the campaign. Whereas Robins routinely made slow starts at the CBS Arena, Lampard continued Coventry's outstanding form, from the end of the previous season, not losing any of the club's opening 12 matches, and since the start of October, they have led the Championship table, for all but one weekend. And as Arsenal are currently doing their best to illustrate, just because you've led the table all season, doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy to stay there. Looking ahead to next season, the big question is how aggressive Coventry will be, in the summer transfer window, and whether they will follow the model, set by Villa, Forrest and Sunderland, in terms of viewing Premier League survival, as a generational opportunity, to transform the club's long-term prospects, and spending a fortune to realise their ambition, or whether they will use the enormous windfall, to pay down the £65m cash injection, provided by Doug King, £50m of which, at the last count, remained as debt owed to him, complete the likely £10m-plus upgrades required, to bring the CBS arena up to Premier League requirements, or even to realise Doug King's ambition, of increasing the capacity to 40,000, and look to once again only tweak their squad, with targeted recruitment, rather than overhauling it. One place where they will certainly have to strengthen, is in goal. Karl Rushworth, who is talked about as a potential future England number one, was perhaps Frank Lampard's most important summer arrival, joining on loan from Brighton, and whilst Coventry would love to sign him, on a permanent basis this summer, that may well not be possible. Aside from rumoured interest, from the likes of Leeds and Man Utd, Brighton may well want to keep hold of Rushworth themselves, if Bart Verbregen's reported £50m departure materialises, unless they decide to entrust 21-year-old, James Beadle at this early stage. Replacing Rushworth, as Burnley found with James Trafford this season, won't be easy. Everyone will look at the success of Sunderland and Leeds this season, but they are the exception in recent years, rather than the rule. There is very little top flight experience in the Coventry squad, almost none in fact, something which Sunderland found invaluable adding to their team, and while there will be an incredible buzz and atmosphere around a sold out CBS arena every week next season, quality will be required in order to transfer that into points. The reality however, is that just 9 years ago, Coventry became the first team that competed in the inaugural Premier League campaign to drop all the way down into League 2, and just 5 years ago, they weren't even playing in Coventry at all. The transformation that has taken place during that time, aided by Doug King's financial support, but far from being bankrolled by championship standards, is nothing short of remarkable, and Frank Lampard is now a major part of that success. So Frank, I'm sorry. Just don't bugger it up next season, eh fatty? No, in all seriousness, he has done a brilliant job, and he's not fat at all. I don't forgive you for backing the Tories in the build-up to the 2010 general election, Frank. Cameron and Osborne's austerity policies destroyed this country and led to over 300,000 excess deaths, so screw you for that, but I do apologize for calling you a very bad manager, even though I don't think that you did a great job anywhere pre-Coventry because I doubted your ability to learn and grow, both of which you have clearly done, with tremendous results this term. I am starting to see why my girlfriend says that I'm rubbish at apologies. I also always end up talking about the 2017 EFL trophy and the CBS Arena's complicated ownership history before cutting to the chase when I forget to take the bins out. No, in all seriousness, I don't actually do that. Right, that is it for today's video, but thank you all very much, as ever, for watching. 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