Coventry City manager Frank Lampard celebrates during the Sky Bet Championship match between Coventry City FC and Sunderland at The Coventry Building Society Arena. Photo by Mark Leech/Offside/Offside via Getty Images
Coventry City manager Frank Lampard celebrates during the Sky Bet Championship match between Coventry City FC and Sunderland at The Coventry Building Society Arena. Photo by Mark Leech/Offside/Offside via Getty Images
Frank Lampard's managerial reign blew hot and cold at Everton. A rollercoaster ride, he helped to unite the stands and the dressing room as the club dug deep to survive a chastening relegation battle in the spring of 2022.
While the scenes of celebration on the pitch that followed the dramatic comeback win over Crystal Palace will live long in the memory, they came with the stark understanding that Everton had been warned not to take their Premier League status for granted.
Yet 12 months later, the Blues took the battle for survival even deeper - this time to the final whistle of the last game of the season when safety was secured after Everton clung on to the lead over Bournemouth earned through Abdoulaye Doucoure - a player frozen out under Lampard.
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By that point, the former Chelsea star had departed Goodison, a casualty of the club's descent into crisis the previous January. While trouble unfolded on and off the pitch it was impossible to escape the conclusion another relegation fight was on the cards after Everton were thrashed at home by Brighton and Hove Albion that January.
With Lampard now enjoying success for the first time since his opening months on Merseyside, the ECHO's Laura Hartley - a supporter of his current club, Coventry City - and Everton correspondent Joe Thomas take a look at how he is faring and what he may have learned with the Blues.
LAURA HARTLEY - SCEPTICISM HAS DISAPPEARED AMID SURGE UP THE TABLE
Eyebrows were raised from some Coventry fans when Lampard was announced as the new head coach in November of last year, but truth be told, I was among the few who felt positive about his appointment.
While the first few months were positive at Everton, when Lampard and his staff saved the Blues from relegation, the final few months could prove cause for concern for Sky Blues fans for his lack of sustaining form. Pair that with the one win in 11 as he returned as caretaker Chelsea manager in 2023 and it could almost be understood why people were sceptical.
He came to Coventry with huge boots to fill. Mark Robins had taken us to levels we hadn’t experienced in years, certainly not in my lifetime as a 30-year-old. In the last two years alone, we were just one penalty away from the Premier League, and a debatable VAR decision took away our hopes of a first FA Cup final since 1987 - the year we actually won it. It had been an incredible seven and a half years for us Sky Blues fans, and all of a sudden we had the rug pulled out from under us and, just weeks after Robins was sacked, Lampard was announced.
Lampard’s accolades as a player are certainly nothing to be sniffed at, he’s one of the best midfielders of his time - for club and country. But as for his managerial career, he was yet to really prove himself. However, I thought he was jumping back into management at the right time with the right club, and at the right level.
He seems to be learning from the mistakes he’s made along the way at Derby County, Chelsea and Everton and hasn’t even shied away from talking about them. He’s spoken openly to the press and EFL media about how he was a younger manager who made mistakes, but can only learn from them now. And I truly believe he is.
After 18 months away from management, he seems to be taking to it like a duck to water. He has fit in with both the players and the staff at Coventry, and the fans seem to love him. It feels like he’s been here for years, but not just that, he seems to have transformed our squad both with the performances and confidence with his man management and status as a legendary midfielder.
He’s taking things game-by-game with a very realistic - but positive - outlook on even the performances he isn’t so proud of. Already after just 23 games in charge, he’s breaking records after winning ten in 11 games - something that has never been done before in Coventry’s history. Three years ago this week Lampard went viral at Everton for scolding the players during their 4-0 loss to Palace in the FA Cup quarter finals. But fast forward to 2025 and he’s going viral for all the right reasons.
We’ve seen a complete transformation in our midfield, which won’t be a surprise to many considering his legacy as a player, however with only two additions in the January transfer window, we’ve seen shots being made from outside the box, a player who can now play the number six, eight or ten position, and bravery. Our players now have more bravery and camaraderie than I’ve seen in years. You don’t get away with taking out one of our boys without the other ten players (and as most recently seen), our entire bench and even coaching staff will be backing them. We’ve also now got a defender who is scoring as many goals as our strikers.
Lampard’s goal for Coventry seems to quite literally be that - scoring goals and battling for playoffs as one solid team.
While he’s managed 20 less games so far for Coventry than his total Blues managerial career, he’s already won more as Sky Blues head coach. It’s screaming a new Lampard managerial era and I am delighted he’s having this new era at the wheel of Coventry City Football Club. I hope he still has the support of loyal Evertonians from afar as he takes us to another shot at making it into the Premier League.
JOE THOMAS - THE CHALLENGE WILL COME WHEN THE MOMENTUM TURNS
I'm really pleased to see Lampard do well at Coventry. He has divided opinion as a manager but one area that is indisputable is his character - I found him a pleasure to deal with and, no matter what he was facing on Merseyside, he acted with humility, honesty and class.
There is no doubt Lampard knows how to get a dressing room and fanbase behind him. We saw that at Everton - those first coach welcomes came under him and he actively fomented them, even sitting in the front passenger seat of the team bus on its way to Leicester City so that he could chat with supporters who had gathered outside Finch Farm to cheer them on. The win that followed was seismic and the scenes in the away end that afternoon were sensational.
That summer I sat down with Paul Clement, one of his assistants, in the USA and, with other reporters, listened to him - no novice in the dugout - speak at length at how he believed Lampard had everything it took to succeed as a manager. I have often thought back to that chat in a hotel garden in Washington DC and wondered whether Clement would be proved correct. My hope has been that he would get the chance to have a proper go and that, when he did, he would get the goodwill and patience to make a case for his ability on the sidelines.
He seems to be doing that at Coventry, but these are still early days. Lampard is an inspirational figure who comes across well and knows how to galvanise supporters and players. The questions for him will come when he faces setbacks and whether he can overcome them. When the headrush of confidence breeding good performances wore off he struggled to find tactical answers at Everton. The popular conclusion from his first spell is that the beginning of the end was the double defeat at Bournemouth just before the World Cup break in 2022.
While that was an horrendous couple of days, I felt more concerned about the loss to Leicester at home at the start of that week, when Amadou Onana was pushed up the pitch and appeared to be tasked with a Marouane Fellaini-style role. It was the type of move that felt like a Hail Mary and concerned me enough to ask him about it out in Sydney the following month.
While I wasn't entirely convinced by his answer I returned thinking he was capable of hauling Everton from the rut they had fallen into. I still think he could have done had he been given the backing he thought he would have in the January transfer window. That did not materialise and we now know that any spending would have placed the club in an even more precarious position off the pitch - the £40m sale of Anthony Gordon weeks later still failed to lift the club out of the nightmare that would later see the club deducted points.
For me, Lampard was an unlucky manager at Everton and had several sliding doors moments when things could have gone better for him. Once they didn't, the one thing he was excellent at harnessing - momentum - became something he could not stop when it grew against him. His departure was inescapable when it came, even if he was, by then, fighting off the pitch issues that were not of his making but which almost led the club to ruin.
At Coventry it is clear he has been able to again capture the hearts and minds of players and supporters. The question now is whether he has the tactical nous and pragmatism to deal with the challenges that materialise. I hope he does - I am pleased he is getting another chance and genuinely wish him the best.