Doug King has paid tribute to Frank Lampard for proving a point by guiding Coventry City to the Championship play-offs.
Lampard, who had a tough introduction to management with spells at Derby County, Chelsea – twice – and Everton, returned to football when he succeeded Mark Robins at the CBS Arena in November.
That ended an 18-month period out of the game after a bruising second stint at Stamford Bridge, which came after a diffcult spell trying to keep Everton in the Premier League.
Since then he has guided the Sky Blues from fearing relegation to dreaming of promotion and the club’s owner suggested the 46-year-old has answered his critics.
“I think he went very quickly after finishing a long career into management,” King told talkSPORT. “To get Derby where he got them was a pretty epic achievement, that game to win the semi-final of the playoffs away at Leeds, and then he was thrust into the big time at a big club, lots going on, that's quite wild for your first goes into management and then obviously off to Everton back to Chelsea.
“For me it was a very whirlwind, and I think probably that makes you learn many things and how you might do things differently and a bit of a break to reassess it all.
“I like successful people, but I like successful people to have some knocks and some failures because they learn and they do things differently and they mature and I just felt when I met him, he was putting himself back out again, into the arena, and I think he doesn't need to financially. But he wanted it and he has a point to prove, and I think he's proving it.”
That said King does not subscribe to the theory the Sky Blues’ top six finish could not have been envisaged when Mark Robins left with the club 17th in the table.
“Obviously you do because you're trying to get where you want to get to,” he continued. “But you've got to go through a huge process, huge games, you've got to start again slightly, which is always difficult in this football league when you put yourself behind the curve – but we ground it out.
“It was a slowish, we got to a few games to start it off and then we got on a great run and for me, I think we deserved to be there in the end.”
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