Frank Lampard enjoying Championship challenge after 'tough' Chelsea experience
Frank Lampard is once again enjoying the challenge of navigating through the relentless Championship schedule with Coventry City after a tough second period back at his beloved Chelsea.
The Blues’ record goalscorer, who led them into the Champions League places in his first season, returned as interim boss following the sacking of Graham Potter in April 2023.
During the brief nine-game spell, Chelsea won just once and finished in the bottom half of the table for the first time since 1996.
The two-time Champions League winners had a record low points tally for a single campaign and Lampard proceeded to take a break of more than a year.
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He jumped back in for a second stint in the Championship with Coventry, taking over a struggling side in November and leading them to fifth in the league - losing to play-off winners Sunderland in the semi-finals.
Fast forward to now and Coventry are second in the league, two points behind leaders Middlesbrough ahead of a top-of-the-table clash on Monday night under the lights.
“I don't think I needed reinvigorating but I've really enjoyed being here off the back of experiences - going back to Chelsea wasn't an amazing experience,” he told SPORTbible, reflecting on having a new lease of life in the Midlands.
“As much as I love Chelsea because the club was in such a tough position, it wasn't a joyful moment of being there.
“But having had a bit of time out I was very keen to get back working, keen to come to a group of players that I felt like me and staff could affect and yeah I've loved it.
“We've got a very good group of players who really want to learn, really want to train and really want to give everything for the club.
“It's a good thing when you come into work every day and feel like you're enjoying your job and always trying to progress and get better and it’s felt like that here.
“Even the tough spell we’ve been in the last couple of weeks, still I know that we're all working in a good direction. The club's been great so I'm very very pleased Coventry wanted me and I've come here.”
The highest-scoring midfielder to play in the Premier League, Lampard has managed 139 times in the top flight across spells with Chelsea and Everton - with 41 wins, 33 draws, and 65 losses.
His record at Coventry is 34 wins, 14 draws and 19 losses in 67 games. After a dream start, there has been a recent blip.
But it is nothing compared to previous scenarios at Everton and Chelsea. Lampard could be forgiven for calling time on his coaching career and enjoying retirement from playing by simply being a pundit as he did for a period.
Lampard never considered walking away from coaching
Yet even in the most testing of times, under extreme pressure, he has never come close to walking away and moving on from management.
“I think you have to be that way inclined and confident,” Lampard explained.
“I always was. Of course if you lose your job - I've been there - I think if you sign up for this job that happens - we all know that today even with the recent news [Thomas Frank’s sacking].
“That's becoming more part of the role, the demands of it, the attention to it - all these things.
“But I set out wanting to do this job because I kind of wanted to make a difference and I like coaching.
“I wanted to see how good I can be and help teams and be successful. With my competitive nature, that was important for me. But also, I've been a football person in my life and the drive to stay really invested in something is there.
“I've never had a moment where I felt like, ‘I don’t want to do that’. This job's going to test you and if you come into it, you better know that and you better know that you have to be quite resilient in the job as well and forever trying to get better and evolve. It's a challenging job no doubt but I like that side of it and even in my more difficult moments in the role, sometimes they're given to you for a reason as well - to try and get yourself even better and come back again. It’s the path that I've chosen to this point.”
Transitioning from playing to managing is a natural step for many and one that he and a number of England colleagues like Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney have made.
The demands are different, with Lampard admitting that he does miss elements of his playing career - including training at a high level in preparation for a big game at the weekend.
But he has great pleasure in being able to improve players during his role as coach, which he believes can bring more enjoyment than when things are going well because of the extra responsibility required.
“That’s a great buzz and different,” the 47-year-old stated.
“There's nothing better than than being a player. I miss playing a little bit but when you get older I realised that my legs didn't want to do it anymore.
“So I'm fine with not playing but I do miss training I have to say. I miss being really fit. I miss doing something I love every day as my job so I try to tell the players that some days.
“But if you can affect a player individually, if you can affect a team and get a performance on a weekend out of it or see an individual get better over a period of time, that's a real pleasure.
“I have to say I think the pleasures of being a manager when you win are higher than being a player and your individual moments.
“I really feel that because you feel more responsibility for the win. The flip of that is it's worse when you lose because you feel responsibility.
“Those are the differences of the job. As a player you train, you go home probably at lunchtime or there or thereabouts.
“You have your individual responsibility as a manager, it's a big collective thing so it's different.
“If you can improve a player on a training pitch, you can get the team to win at a weekend and set them up and feel like they're following you in a direction, that's a great feeling.”
The master of late runs into the box, Lampard does still try and get involved in Coventry’s training sessions led by himself, assistant Joe Edwards and coaches Chris Dempsey and Chris James.
“I've got a couple of little chronic injuries that hold me back a bit,” he revealed.
“That's not an excuse - I twisted my ankle at the park with my kids a while ago and I've never rehabbed it properly.
“I struggle to do what I used to do. I don't miss playing that much, I just feel like I had a good long career and that was that and now I'm doing this.
“But if I can get involved in rondo boxes, little bits and bobs, I do enjoy doing that and it's good with the players because you can engage with them a little bit and have a bit of fun with them and I do that occasionally.”
The players have clearly responded to Lampard’s approach. Coventry were 17th when he took the reins and found themselves top of the table by Christmas 2025.
Slowly but surely he saw personalities and leaders emerge and it is these characters who remain integral to getting the team back on track after a sticky patch which saw them lose three out of their last six in the league.
Speaking about the group he works with, Lampard said: “The second half of last season we saw players grow. Matt Grimes came in and has been a really effective captain for us but players like Liam Kitching, Bobby Thomas, Jack Rodoni and Victor Torp - you could see their sort of personality grow within the group. That was great to see.
“I think we have got good characters and I say it most weeks here in press conferences that they're a really good group of players who want to do well, that train really well and that are really pleasurable to work with.
“I think that the players have shown themselves in the last year. We're in a difficult little moment in these last few weeks but over the course of the year, from where they've come from to where they've got to - they've shown some real qualities individually and collectively.
“Maybe this little period now has sent us the next test for us to try and show that football's never as easy as ‘win,win, win’ - sometimes you have to fight a little bit and get out of a little situation.”
Lampard lifts lid on strict fine list he brought in
A few years back, Lampard’s fine list from his time at Chelsea was leaked online. As per the document, framed on the wall at Cobham, being late for the start of training brought a £20,000 fine and there were other notable punishments for failing to turn up to community events, not travelling back on the team bus and being late for medical appointments.
In 2026, at Coventry, just how strict is Lampard when it comes to discipline and timekeeping?
He admitted: “I think I've evolved. That was when I was at Chelsea and we came in and we felt that it needed some firmer discipline in terms of time keeping etcetera.
“It's probably one of the things I'd spoken to people about how the club was running before.
“I've evolved a bit more now because I think with experience you realise that every group's different, every situation is a little bit different.
“Some groups you feel have the discipline within the dressing room to police it themselves and they have those standards.
“We're quite good like that here - we've got some experienced players like Jake Bidwell, Jamie Allen, Matt Grimes, the captain and others that have got good standards and understand what we want from them and the simple things of timekeeping and stuff that they look after.
“If there's anything that I feel is awry or not as it should be then I'll come in and get involved in that but I'm less of a, ‘fine list on the wall and big numbers now.
“I think that the players should hold themselves to a standard and I would say that to them and hopefully you don't have to be enforcing fines all the time.
“In a roundabout way I'm probably saying I'm somewhere in the middle but not too stringent on that side.”
Lampard was speaking to SPORTbible through his endorsement of the ‘Every Minute Matters’ campaign from Sky Bet and British Heart Foundation - with support from the EFL.
Recently, games in the EFL kicked off a minute later to raise awareness about the need to learn CPR for cardiac arrests. Each minute that passes without CPR and defibrillation reduces the chance of survival by up to 10 per cent.
Lampard teamed up with former Coventry striker Dublin came together with lifelong City fan Rob O’Malley, who lost his older brother to cardiac arrest in 2002, to help try and get 500,000 people using the BHF’s free RevivR tool by May 2025.
“A lot of us now have had our lives touched by this in terms of cardiac arrest and heart disease and things like this - whether it be in football, whether it be our families potentially or now we're seeing in football stadiums in different ways.
“It feels like it's more common that we're speaking about this and it's, ‘Can we act upon it?’
“And I think the campaign is great in terms of the numbers. It managed to get 450,000 last year, learning CPR and 500,000 is the aim this year.
“The awareness that it's getting through this campaign I think is great but personally I've been touched by it slightly with people that I know. It seems so simple to be able to go and spend 15 minutes to get CPR but I'll admit I have learned CPR before but do I need to refresh my understanding of it? Yes. Can I go through it again? Yes.
“I did it in my coaching badges, my pro licence and I checked myself actually today because it's been quite a few years since I did that.
“I was at Chelsea managing at the time which is a few years ago, so I certainly could do with a refresher that's reminded me and I'd also speak to anybody around and encourage them to do it.
“I've got two young daughters - my elder daughter's at uni and stuff like that - how much are we doing it in school systems and university? There's a real focus on it here in this campaign and I’m very pleased to be part of it.”
Prior to kick off between the clash between the Championship’s top two on Monday, both captains will make the iconic heart-hands gesture to further raise awareness. It follows on from support from Micah Richards, Jermain Defoe, Glenn Hoddle, Graeme Souness, Sam Allardyce and Tom Lockyer on social media.
Lampard, however, is keen for his players to receive more education surrounding CPR.
“I know that some of them are taking part in and around this campaign and kicking off a minute later - but I know it's like to be a young man sometimes,” Lampard replied when asked about his players and their CPR knowledge.
“You just kind of move on to the next thing. I would like to think the PFA and as football clubs and in academies, I'm sure they do work around these things but it's something I will check upon off the back of this because I can't give you an exact answer to that but for sure it could be very helpful and we should do it.”
Lampard’s clear goal this season is to secure promotion from the Championship to the Premier League, a division Coventry have not played in since 2001.
England’s second tier, where teams play 46 games in a brutal schedule, may well be the most competitive league in the world and the most difficult to get out of.
Having come close to securing promotion with Derby before defeat in the 2019 play-off final, Lampard knows all about the “relentless” demands and how the situation can change in just a couple of weeks.
At present, 15th placed Swansea are just five points off Wrexham, who occupy the final play-off spot.
“It happens in the Premier League a little bit but not so much because games feel more structured there and you understand what you're getting,” Lampard said on the unique competitiveness of the Championship.
“I watched a couple last night [Tuesday] and the teams are moving up and down together and it's sort of stopping each other in different ways and that's fine.
“But in the Championship there are so many things that revolve around moments. It can be a transition, it can be a set piece, it can be a mistake - it can be all these things.
“I think it makes it really viewable for everybody. And then the grind of it, 46 games - the difference from the Premier League is eight games more whatever but you feel that because it’s midweek games, three-game weeks.
“If you're in good form you can nick nine points in a three-game week and the flip of that, the table can change.
“It is very much about keeping a stable head through that, getting on with a grind and accepting it.
“You’ve got to try and find this real resilience and consistency in your game to get to where you want to get to.
“It’s a great league for that, it’s challenging and as a manager as well you're always prepping for a game and another game. There's lots of different styles to come up against so it's enjoyable as much as it is a challenge.”
Topics: Chelsea, Frank Lampard, EFL Championship, Spotlight
Josh Lawless