Frank Lampard is no stranger to the gruelling 46-game Championship season but there’s a long way to fall when there’s nothing above but the Premier League.
Lampard was appointed as the successor to Mark Robins in the autumn of 2024 with a Championship play-off final already listed among his EFL achievements. He took Coventry to within a whisker of Wembley in his first season in charge of the Sky Blues but 2025-26 is a whole different challenge.
It’s a pressure of Coventry’s own making. Arriving on a bright and bracing Sunday morning at St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park, their own temporary home in relatively recent and bleaker times, Coventry were eight points clear of Ipswich Town at the top of the table.
Coventry are six points clear at the top of the Championship after Birmingham defeat
Lampard wouldn’t swap positions with Kieran McKenna, Middlesbrough boss Kim Hellberg or anyone else. Ipswich started the day closer to Wrexham in tenth than Coventry in first. The Sky Blues are red-hot favourites for promotion and gave themselves a buffer with a formidable first half of the season.
They’ve made use of it, too. It’s what December in the Championship is all about but a disappointing first result of January just put the squeeze on Coventry slightly before Sunday morning’s short trip up the A45.
St Andrew’s isn’t new territory for Coventry but being in control of the Championship title race is not a familiar situation.
Coventry have been promoted from the second tier to the first just once in their history. Jimmy Hill was the manager when they won the Second Division title in 1967 and they stayed put in the top flight until 2001.
Lampard knows that the club, its supporters and his predecessors have lived through a lot so that he can be where he is. He’s chasing rarefied air and achieving something only Hill has managed before is a lofty goal.
Birmingham City are weighed down by their away form but if they get their 'Ducksch' in a row, they can give anyone in the Championship a game on their own turf.
Sunday’s match kicked off with the smell of sulphur still in the air and the pyrotechnics continued on the pitch without missing a beat.
‘The game was there for us’
Birmingham were 2-1 up with 16 minutes played after Marvin Ducksch and Lewis Koumas scoring either side of a Josh Eccles equaliser for the Sky Blues.
Blues boss Chris Davies will be trying to squeeze more from a team he knows can raise its game, playing with guts and energy but quality too. Lampard and Coventry are learning to deal with being the hunted.
Ellis Simms scored to make it 2-2 but Ducksch’s second won the game. It was the second time in a month the league leaders have conceded three goals in defeat but Lampard was at pains to defend their recent form when he spoke to the media after the game.
He made a convincing case. Coventry’s apparent wobble amounts to three league games without a win, and a few draws where wins were more common before.
It’s two wins in eight but Lampard is justifiably looking at it from a more positive angle. His team’s position is enviable and they’re ahead of schedule.
“This wasn’t a disastrous performance by any means,” Lampard told FourFourTwo after the match, frustrated that Coventry had let a winnable game get away from them but philosophical about the bigger picture.
“This was a performance that I know we are better than, because the game was there for us.
“Respectfully to Birmingham, they’re in a tough moment. They’ll be delighted with that result. But in my opinion we allowed that by playing at 70% of ourselves.”
It’s in the other 30% that Coventry will or won’t win the Championship. Lampard is surely cognisant of his team’s current defensive fragility but he’s reassuringly calm. He could cite mitigations in this eight-game stretch but he shrugs off any excuses put to him.
As the Sky Blues step back and take stock from a position of strength their manager is keen to remind reporters of at St. Andrew’s, they will know that the very same guts, energy and quality that served Birmingham so well against them will be their best tools to tackle a kind of pressure they’re having to get the hang of as they go.
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