Doug King insists it will be a “huge achievement” in Frank Lampard’s managerial career if he gets non-parachute club Coventry City to the Premier League in the coming weeks.
The club owner has explained how he believes the 47-year-old has turned an under-achieving Championship side into potential league champions and, crucially, what he believes the future holds for the ambitious head coach.
Lampard is often linked with top flight jobs, most notably as a possible successor to Oliver Glasner who is set to leave Crystal Palace at the end of the season. And even this week his name was mentioned regarding a potential third return to his beloved Chelsea amid speculation about Liam Rosenior’s future. The crux of the issue is arguably whether moving to a more established top flight club would be preferable to trying to keep a newly promoted side up.
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It’s all noise, of course, and the key thing for King is that Lampard “loves” managing the Sky Blues and is confident that he’ll still be at the helm next season.
Lampard’s stock has risen again over the last 16 months since taking charge at the CBS Arena following spells of mixed fortunes cutting his managerial teeth at Derby and two spells at Stamford Bridge sandwiching a year at Everton.
Asked what’s impressed him most about the job Lampard and his staff have done at Coventry, the club’s executive chairman leaned back in his chair, paused for thought and said: “Umm, I would say... I’m just looking back at it and picturing Frank rocking up with his team on the first day, back in the November (2024) when they came in and were talking to the players in the gym and introducing himself.
“And I don’t think he really totally knew what he was coming into. He obviously knew the quality of the squad, and I think that excited him because he’d seen what we’d done the previous year in the FA Cup and we’d had a very strong league performance until we fell off right at the end of the season.
“He obviously had to meet everyone and adapt but the thing that I was excited about was that he came in with Joe Edwards, who’d previously been given the chance to be head coach at Millwall but had huge pedigree working with the youth players at Chelsea. And obviously Chris Jones had been around that group and the international set-up with England, so there was a unit coming in that knew each other and knew football and had worked together successfully. So, for me, that was a strong backbone in terms of they didn’t have to introduce themselves to each other or different people.”
New Coventry City manager Frank Lampard meets the players at Ryton Training Ground
Coventry City head coach Frank Lampard meeting the players on his first day at Ryton back in 2024
Lampard came in when the club was stuttering at 17th in the league, having taken just 15 points in the opening 14 games of the 2024/25 season under Mark Robins in his the first campaign without Adi Viveash at his side.
Speaking exclusively to CoventryLive, King continued: “Obviously we had to then make a few changes with other coaches to make sure that we had the right set-up with them, and obviously John (Demptser) and Aled (Williams) stayed and George (Boateng) and Rhys (Carr) left. I then got involved because you have got to start the story, and for me it became clear straight away that the structure and how it was put forward and how the work was going was very clear in messaging.
“And I think that was part of the problem before Frank came in, that the messaging got very complicated and mixed because obviously Mark (Robins) was with a lot of different people and that structure, for me, didn’t look like it was working very clearly.
“I think players need to be really clear what they’ve got to do. You know, ‘what’s my job, where am I going, how’s the positioning, what’s my shape in defence/attack etc...’
“He got that much more clearly done, and I think that was obvious from the start. Now obviously you’ve got to start and they came in and I think he drew his first game against Cardiff, 2-2, whatever it was but I already felt that we were a structure and how we were running it, the messaging was much clearer and cleaner. And that, to me, was critically important if we were going to do anything.”
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Asked about the fact that Lampard’s success in such a short space of time has, inevitably, resulted in him often being linked with other jobs, and how confident he is of keeping hold of him, King said: “Well look, Frank’s put himself back in the arena and we’ve had a great ride. If we can top it off with going where we want to top it off to then he will achieved a great thing.
“Obviously he’s been at top levels and won great championships and great cups but I think even he will look at this as a huge achievement, you know, a non-parachute team that’s not been in the Premier League for 25 years.
“Umm, playing how we’re playing, the goals we’re scoring, how we’re doing it in terms of not just scraping it in with one nils and playing attritional football but rather doing it in a really attractive manner. I think he’ll be very proud of that and I think he’s very comfortable and very happy in his environment at Coventry.
“And I think he really enjoys it. Now obviously, as in anything, decisions have to be made in people’s lives and I can’t speak for Frank.
“Obviously he’s under contract with us and I’m sure he wants to lead us to the Premier League and manage us in the Premier League, and maybe for the next hundreds of years at Coventry because he loves it forever.
Frank Lampard sang along to 'We'll Live and Die in These Towns' after Coventry City's stoppage time victory over Stoke
Frank Lampard is clearly enjoying his time with Coventry City and is pictured here singing along to 'We'll Live and Die in These Towns' after the stoppage time victory over Stoke
“But look, I don’t even look forward on it. I think everybody’s lives change, we all get older, we all have different things in our lives and what are our ambitions, and they’re the things that you keep private.
“But for me, he came in, he put himself into the picture. We obviously gave him that opportunity and it’s worked incredibly well for us both. So, you know, that’s great.”
Lampard signed two-and-a half year deal when he arrived, meaning he’ll have a year left come the summer.
Asked if there have been any talks about extending his contract, the 59-year-old owner said: “You know we did a contract with Frank at the beginning. I always find it amusing, you give somebody a contract for like a lot of years and then some years into it they want another chat about a contract. You know, why do we do it when we could have just done it a couple of years and then have another chat?
“The reality is, you know, we don’t go into that at this point. And I think this is a moment to have no distractions on absolutely anything. There are periods for contract discussions, and everyone saw we did a few extensions with some of the boys recently (Milan van Ewijk, Liam Kitching and Jay Dasilva). That was a moment then, now is a moment for totally different things.”
That moment is Frank Lampard delivering on what he was tasked to do just over a year and half ago, arguably well ahead of schedule in terms of automatic promotion to the Premier League.
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