How Coventry City and Frank Lampard ended 25 years of hurt and returned to the promised land

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This incredible fanbase and what it means to the city, and what these players have achieved. “We came in 15 months ago, 17th in the league, Mark Robins had done an incredible job to get them back up where they were, but to go and get automatic promotion as a non-parachute team, with three games to go, those boys there, how they’ve listened and trained and everything they’ve done, every day, it makes me feel emotional.” After a long, torturous 25-year wait, Coventry are back in the Premier League. Coventry’s 34-year stay in England’s top flight was ended on May 5, 2001 — and it’s been quite the journey back for the club from the West Midlands. They were relegated to League One — England’s third tier — in 2012 before hitting rock bottom when they dropped to League Two five years later. Under Mark Robins’ steady leadership, Coventry started to work their way back. A month after he joined as manager, they won the 2017 EFL Trophy (a competition for teams from the third and fourth tiers) against Oxford United. Attended by around 43,000 Coventry supporters at Wembley, the final was seen as a pivotal moment in galvanising the fanbase, even as the club circled the drain in League One. Their faith was repaid a year later, with Coventry winning promotion back to the third tier at the first attempt via the play-offs. “It was like everyone realised at the same time, there are a lot of people who love this club, and if it wasn’t so crap all the time, maybe it could be quite nice,” Joey Crone from the Coventry podcast Nii Lamptey tells The Athletic when reminiscing about the EFL Trophy final. “And it’s gradually grown since then.” After gaining promotion back to the Championship in the Covid-19-disrupted 2019-20 season, they twice reached the play-offs, only to fall in heartbreaking fashion. The first attempt saw Luton Town defeat them in the final after a penalty shootout in 2023, before a dramatic 122nd-minute goal from Sunderland shattered their dreams last year. A year earlier, they almost completed an extraordinary comeback victory over Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final, a competition they won in 1987, when the VAR disallowed a 120th-minute ‘goal’ that was offside by the tiniest margin. It would have put them 4-3 up in a match they had been trailing 3-0. They went on to lose the penalty shootout. Yet after those tough times and near misses, Coventry have at last returned to England’s top tier. After being held 0-0 at home to a stubborn Sheffield Wednesday last Saturday, promotion was finally sealed with a 1-1 draw at Blackburn Rovers on Friday night, in front of 7,500 ecstatic Coventry fans in the Darwen End. “These boys have managed to achieve something pretty unique, absolutely special and incredible,” Lampard told Sky Sports afterwards. “We’ve fallen in love with the players, how they’ve reacted, the fanbase, how they’ve reacted, so it’s right up for me, for what I’ve achieved.” For all the drama on the pitch for Coventry in the last quarter of a century, there has been plenty of turmoil off it as well. Having left Highfield Road, their city-centre home of 106 years, in 2005, the club moved to the Ricoh Arena, a stadium on the city’s outskirts, just off the M6. Instead of ushering in a new dawn, it proved a false one. In the 2013-14 season, Coventry played their home matches at Northampton Town, 34 miles away, because of a rent dispute, while there were regular protests against former owner Sisu, a London-based hedge fund. They then spent two seasons groundsharing with Birmingham City from 2019 to 2021, following a dispute between Sisu and Wasps, the rugby union club that owned the Ricoh Arena. Coventry agreed a deal to return to the Ricoh, now known as the Coventry Building Society Arena, in March 2021, on a 10-year deal with Wasps, only for the six-time Premiership Rugby champions to go into administration. Mike Ashley then took over the stadium and agreed a new five-year deal with the club. Finally, in August last year, Coventry chairman Doug King — who became the club’s sole owner in January 2023 — bought the stadium from Ashley’s Fraser Group. King declared that a “defining day” for Coventry, and they celebrated in style, with an emphatic 7-1 victory over Queens Park Rangers at the stadium just hours after the purchase was confirmed. King’s other big call was replacing long-serving and popular manager Robins with Lampard in November 2024. Lampard had been out of work for 18 months and arrived with a point to prove, especially after his last job, a bruising spell as Chelsea’s caretaker. Before joining Coventry, Lampard’s coaching career had been varied, with some notable high points, but also tough moments. In his first season as a manager at Derby County, he reached the Championship play-off final, only to lose to Aston Villa. He had only 12 months of experience, but his dream job came up that summer — head coach at Chelsea, the club he served with such distinction as a player. He accepted the role and it started positively, despite a transfer ban, steering the club to Champions League qualification and the FA Cup final, where they lost to Arsenal. However, he found it hard going in his second season and he was sacked in January 2021 after 19 months in charge, with Chelsea ninth in the table. A year later, he was hired by Everton, winning over the fanbase with a push for Premier League survival that culminated in a joyous pitch invasion. Yet he struggled to build on his strong start and was dismissed halfway through the next season, with Everton 19th, before that painful two-month caretaker period back at Chelsea. Coventry gave Lampard the stability he craved after operating under challenging circumstances at Chelsea and Everton. It also afforded him the chance to work away from the intense media glare of the Premier League. He arrived at Coventry — with a talented but underperforming squad who had reached the play-off final the season before — 17th in the table and two points above the relegation zone. Lampard brought in trusted assistants Joe Edwards and Chris Jones, with whom he had worked at his former clubs. Edwards also joined with something to prove after a difficult spell in charge of Millwall that lasted just over three months. Following his first game in charge, a 2-2 draw at home against Cardiff City, Lampard told reporters: “I’m here as head coach, I’m not here as a celebrity.” Lampard quickly set about instilling belief in the players again. “When you looked at the team, I don’t think there was a clear identity and that can happen without confidence,” he told The Guardian. “I’ve lost my job as well, so I understand what can happen. My job was to go: ‘Where can we get better?’.” In that first season, Lampard’s Coventry started to click at the turn of the year, winning nine matches from 10 league fixtures between the middle of January and March. Having overseen an impressive revival, Coventry finished the Championship season in fifth before that late sucker punch against Sunderland in the play-off semi-final. There was a determination to use last year’s play-off setback as fuel this campaign. Coventry’s season began with a pre-season camp in Portugal, described by new signing Kaine Kesler-Hayden in a previous interview with The Athletic as “one of the hardest I’ve had”, but there was also time for team bonding, with a Ryder Cup-style golf tournament between the staff and players. There was no major overhaul of the squad this summer, although captain Ben Sheaf departed for Wrexham in a £6.5million ($9m) deal. In came Kesler-Hayden and defender Luke Woolfenden, while goalkeeper Carl Rushworth arrived on loan from Brighton & Hove Albion. Yet the squad remained stable, with many players arriving in the summer of 2023 following the lucrative sales of Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer that same window. One of Lampard’s most notable achievements has been improving the tight-knit squad he inherited, with players such as winger Ephron Mason-Clark and forward Brandon Thomas-Asante, who have worked their way up the EFL pyramid, excelling under his watch. Mason-Clark, who started his career at Barnet, even had a spell on loan at Metropolitan Police FC as a teenager. Coventry’s players have spoken in glowing terms about Lampard’s impact. “He’s everything I need from a mentor,” gifted midfielder Jack Rudoni told The i newspaper in March. “We talk a lot, we work very closely in training sessions, and we talk off the pitch. You can see it in the way my game’s come on.” Former Premier League winger Stephen Hunt, who now acts as Rushworth’s agent, agreed. “All of the players have been very complimentary of Frank,” he tells The Athletic. “He is a calm leader, he leads by example by not panicking, and he has a winning mentality. “Right from an early start, a bit like my old team at Reading 20 years ago, they have been free-scoring. If an opposition team scores, they don’t panic but go and score a few more. And they have scored all types of goals, with goals shared around the team.” “A lot of people were in uproar about Robins being sacked, but he just wasn’t the man that was going to do this,” podcaster Crone tells The Athletic. “Lampard has been that man. It’s a machine that is powered by vibes. The players are exceptionally close to each other. Lampard has tied it all together in a way that’s worked as a meaningful whole.” There have been efforts to improve the matchday atmosphere, with one example being The Enemy, an indie rock band from Coventry, performing their song We’ll Live and Die in These Towns before the Sheffield United game in November. It was a stirring rendition of their pre-match song — which is all about sticking with your hometown, whatever its flaws — and Coventry went on to win the game 3-1. Lampard has built a strong rapport with the Coventry fans and was even invited to one supporter’s wedding before the Derby match on Good Friday. Meanwhile, around 5,000 fans who bought a five-year season ticket package in 2023 will be able to watch next season’s Premier League games free of charge, as part of an incentive that was included to encourage early sign-ups. To reach the top flight, Lampard has predominantly set up Coventry in a 4-2-3-1 formation. United States national team striker Haji Wright, a club-record signing for £7.7million in the summer of 2023, has been outstanding, with 16 league goals, as have Milan van Ewijk and Tatsuhiro Sakamoto down the right side. Holding midfielder Matt Grimes, a January 2025 signing from Swansea City, has been integral in central midfield, and goalkeeper Rushworth is on a four-man shortlist for the Championship player of the season award. Coventry will be eager to sign Rushworth outright, but the loanee will attract a lot of interest in the summer. Coventry started this season blowing teams away, beating Derby 5-3 away in their second match, followed by that 7-1 victory over QPR. There was a minor wobble over the winter, but a 3-1 win over promotion rivals Middlesbrough on February 16 got them back on track and kickstarted a run of six victories. Lampard has worked with a small squad this season, but it was bolstered in January with four signings to help Coventry over the line. Frank Onyeka, in particular, has played a vital role as a midfield disruptor. Onyeka’s loan from Brentford includes an obligation to buy now that promotion has been achieved. In the end, passage to the top flight was secured with three games to spare. Preparation for the Premier League will begin in earnest, as only a handful of the squad have played in England’s top tier before. For now, though, Coventry’s fans will enjoy this moment. “I know everyone’s had some s**t, but we have had it pretty rough,” Crone said. “Our fans deserve to have this feeling until August.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Tom Burrows is a football news writer for The Athletic UK. He was previously a staff editor for three years. Prior to that, he worked on news and investigations for national newspapers. Follow Tom on Twitter @TBurrows16