Coventry City legend Dion Dublin has spoken about Frank Lampard, his time as a Sky Blues player and how he's backing his former club to get back to the Premier League
16:44, 11 Feb 2026
Coventry City boss Frank Lampard and former Sky Blues skipper Dion Dublin are backing the British Heart Foundation's Every Minute Matters campaign
Coventry City boss Frank Lampard and former Sky Blues skipper Dion Dublin are backing the British Heart Foundation's Every Minute Matters campaign
Dion Dublin believes Coventry City’s mid-term blip is the “perfect” thing that could happen to a team that appeared to be coasting through the first half of the season.
The former Sky Blues skipper has been back at Ryton this week to join Frank Lampard in backing Sky Bet and the British Heart Foundation’s Every Minute Matters campaign, encouraging people to learn CPR and create an army of half a million lifesavers.
As well as taking a refresher course himself, having learned the life-saving procedure as a player, the 56-year-old pundit and TV personality took time out to speak to CoventryLive, reflecting on his career at the club and hopes for the long-suffering supporters who are hoping to return to the Premier League this season.
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Dublin wore sky blue between 1994-98, scoring 61 top flight goals in 145 matches – his best return at any club – helping keep City up during two relegation battles and numerous special one-off displays like beating Manchester United 3-2 at Highfield Road and knocking Liverpool out of the FA Cup at Anfield.
And Dublin would dearly love to see the club back amongst the elite, saying: “It’s the fans that I want to get back to the top flight. It’s the fans that deserve to get Premier League football again because of the journey they’ve been on over the past ten years or so, having to go to Northampton and then having to go to another stadium, spending all their money on travelling to follow the Sky Blues all over the place and then go back to the Ricoh and share a stadium.
“But they never left. They were always there and that’s just what I remember; the noise of Highfield Road, the communication and relationship we had with the fans. It’s a Premier League football club. “It’s a Premier League football set-up. They’ve got a Premier League standard coach.”
He added: “Frank (Lampard) will say to me, ‘I’ve got a bit more to do, Dion, before I get there,’ but he’s there. He knows the game.”
And he’s backing Lampard to lift the players out of the current slump in form and get back on track for automatic promotion.
“I think this little blip that Coventry have been on will help them move forward, because I think it was... I’m not going to say it was too easy, but they were just getting results quite simply and they were playing their good football and they were getting off the pitch and it was a case of another win, another win.
“I think sometimes a kick up the backside, that a bit of a reality check tells you, ‘oh, we’ve got to get back to those standards’. So I think this is the perfect thing that’s happened to Coventry.
“Frank won’t let it continue and they’ll go on a roll again. And I am backing him to get Coventry back in the big time. I really am.”
“I’ve been back a few times, actually, came back earlier this season to interview Frank and what he’s done here is incredible. You can see the standards; the standards of the place, the standards of the pitches, everything about the place has just gone up because of the way that Frank was on the pitch, off the pitch, his standards as a captain as well. So he’s just pulled it all here and now Coventry City has become this team and this football club that people are going, ‘oh yeah, Coventry, yeah, gosh,’ and it’s down to Frank’s leadership.”
Dublin, who presents Homes Under the Hammer as well as being a Match of the Day pundit, returned to Ryton for the first time earlier this season to interview Lampard.
Given the major refurbishment of the old training ground that barely changed for 20 odd years since he was a player apart from the odd lick of paint and bit of internal reconfiguration of the building, did he recognise it?
“I think it was the 25th year that I turned up when it all had changed,” he said, breaking into a chuckle. “The building itself and the way it was built with the big long corridors to the dressing rooms and the offices, it’s all still the same but it’s just more plush. It’s more Championship, the pitches are of a high standard, the gym is absolutely massive. The driveway now you’ve got two gates to get in with security and everything is spot on and everything’s done in a professional way.”
Asked what are his fondest memories of his time at City, he said: “All the staff and all the players back then were pretty incredible.
“But the players... I was with Darren Huckerby, my strike partner, Peter Ndlovu, Gary Mac (McAllister), (Brian) Borrows and (David) Burrows, Willo (Paul Williams), Shawsy (Richard Shaw), Marcus Hall, just everybody. It was a great, great squad of players.
Dion Dublin celebrates scoring against Arsenal with Gary McAllister in 1997
Dion Dublin celebrates scoring against Arsenal with Gary McAllister in 1997
“I believe we under-achieved with the quality that we had. And I don’t think Coventry City got the respect that it deserved back then.
“Maybe we didn’t achieve anything to get that respect but as players and the way we played under Gordon Strachan, and Big Ron as well, and the coaches we had, it was great. Absolutely loved it.”
He added: “Some of the games, away at Tottenham (1997), last game of the season when I think I scored and Willo scored the winner. The Great Escapes that we had, I think we had two allegation fights and we did all right, man, we did alright. Great times. Highfield Road, bouncing!”
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Other games that stand out include the 3-2 victory over his former club Manchester United in December 1997 when, trailing 2-1 at home, Dublin equalised with an 86th minute penalty before Huckerby went on a memorable mazy run, beating several players before lashing into the top corner.
The team followed that up with a 3-1 win at Anfield the following week in the FA Cup when Dublin and Huckerby were on the scoresheet again.
“They were great days and we had many of those,” he said. “I’m very good friends with Gary Pallister and I always remind him of the Darren Huckerby goal when he was the last man and he couldn’t get anywhere near Hucks who was in full stride and he left big Pally for dead.”
Darren Huckerby and Dion Dublin were often unstoppable
Dion Dublin and Darren Huckerby were often unstoppable during the Coventry City days
As for his special partnership with Huckerby, both on and off the field, he said: “We still speak every 10 days to two weeks, have a chat, so we’re really close, our families, friends. On the pitch we just seemed to know each other’s game so well.
“It was obviously big man, little man/slow man, fast man – that’s how it worked and the balance was very good. He will always say to me, ‘Dion, I made you,’ and I will always say to him, ‘you would have been nothing without me,’ so we still have that banter.”
Having started his career at Cambridge United in the old fourth division he earned a move to Old Trafford before switching to Coventry to reboot his goal scoring reputation, becoming joint top scorer in the Premier League with 18 goals (23 in all comps) in the 1997/98 season when City finished a creditable 11th in the table.
That spell also earned him a call up to the England squad and a later move to Aston Villa.
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“I got better here and I put that down to Gordon Strachan and his standards and the way that he coached us,” he said.
“If he wanted something done on the training ground he would demonstrate first and then the players would have to do exactly what he said. And if the manager can do it, why can’t the players, and that was running, that was passing the ball, that was first touch. So we were kind of under pressure because if the gaffer can do it, why can’t we?”
He added: “I am still really very good friends with the boss. He rings me, I ring him, we catch up and a lot of respect goes to Gordon Strachan. And I think if you spoke to all of those players that played under Strach, they would tell you the same thing. His standards were so high and he’s probably one of the best coaches I’ve ever had in a 22 year career.”
Switching attention to the British Heart Foundation’s Every Minute Matters campaign to encourage fans to take a 15 minute online course to learn CPR, Dion was only too happy to get on board with the initiative.
“I was asked to do it, I’ve not experienced it or lost anybody through it but we’ve all seen the amount of players that we know that have been through it on the pitch,” he said.
“And when I think about that, I think to myself there was a full stadium when it happened to Fabrice Muamba, a full stadium when it happened to Christian Eriksen and Tom Lockyer and if all those people in the stadium could learn CPR we’re going in the right direction.
“So when they were asking me and they told me about the campaign, for me, it was a bit of a no brainer. Every football club that I’ve been at we’ve done CPR. I’ve been retired a long time and I haven’t done anything about it but today at Coventry I’ve done a refresher. And now it’s given me the confidence again to apply it, if needed.”
He added: “We don’t want people to hesitate. We want people to go, yes I can do it. Yes, I am nervous and yes this situation is scary, but I do know how to do it because I’ve done the course on the British Heart Foundation site. It’s called the RevivR tool. Get on there, it takes you 15 minutes. Let’s get it done. What I didn’t know is that 40,000 cardiac arrests, every year, are away from the hospital.
“If we all know how to do it we are going to save more lives. It’s as simple as that. Please go on the British Heart Foundation website.”
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