Away from the Premier League, the biggest talking point in the Football League is Frank Lampard’s Coventry City’s complete victory in the Championship.
The super-franked Sky Blues are unbeaten, have scored the most goals of any team in the league pyramid and have more than a 50% chance of automatic promotion, according to the Opta supercomputer’s predictions. Make it what you want.
Why is Coventry city good?
Few, other than optimists painted blue and looking at the skies through blue-tinted glasses, expected Coventry to challenge for anything more than the Championship play-offs this season.
And that was a valid assumption. You have to go all the way back to 2001 to find the last time the club finished fifth or better in the second division. Around them, other teams were spending far more money and putting together far more convincing arguments to become automatic promotion candidates.
So it’s safe to say that their stellar start to the year has surprised everyone. As for how they managed to accumulate 28 points in 12 games, the answer is simple. Because Coventry are really good at both ends of the pitch.
So far this season, they have scored the most goals per game, created the most xG per game, taken the most shots on target per game and created the most big chances.
Importantly, they are also missing out on that opportunity. Of the 41 made, Coventry converted 34. Ipswich created the second-highest number of chances with 35, but only converted 17 of them.
Coventry score an average of 2.83 goals per game. To find a better record in the second division, you have to go back to 1903 and Manchester City’s 95 goals in a 34-game season.
Another important aspect is that not all goals come from one player. Brandon Thomas-Asante is the Championship’s top scorer but has only accounted for 26.5% of Coventry’s goals this year. Ten different players have been on the scoresheet so far this season.
Coventry go into every game knowing they can outscore their opponents, but the reality is that one goal will often be enough.
The Sky Blues have found plenty of ways to break through their opponents’ defenses, but the same can’t be said the other way around.
In a relatively quiet summer transfer window, one of the key signings was the arrival of goalkeeper Karl Rushworth on loan from Brighton. He has already made history with a club record 613 minutes without conceding a goal.
So far this year, the 24-year-old has kept a league-best six clean sheets, with only Middlesbrough and Stoke having conceded fewer goals. James Trafford’s 29 clean sheets is still a long way off, but it’s not completely unrealistic.
A combination of solid defense and strong attack has given Coventry a +25 goal difference this season and a three-point lead in the league, but can they go all the way?
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Is the Coventry hype real?
There’s nothing like context to bring fans back to reality.
Coventry have undoubtedly had a great start to the campaign, but they have benefited from a strong fixture list.
Of the 12 opponents Coventry have played so far this year, only two were in the top half last year. Coventry have also already played two of the three newly promoted teams, although their previous match against a relegated Premier League team was a 0-0 draw with Leicester.
As for the points total, it’s nothing special either. Sunderland had the same tally of 28 games last season. At this stage of the 2023/24 season, Leicester and Ipswich both had more results.
Around that, Coventry are also helped by the surprisingly poor performance of the three relegated teams.
In the 2024/25 season, relegated Burnley were in second place at this stage, with Sheffield United in fourth place. In the 2023/24 season, all three teams that were relegated after 12 games finished in the top five. Luton were the outliers, finishing 22nd at this stage last year but eventually dropping into League One.
However, this year, Leicester are in 10th place, the highest in the relegation table. Ipswich are 12th despite playing one less game, but Sheffield United’s decision to sack Chris Wilder and adopt an “AI-led strategy” has seen the sandwich-hating manager return to the dugout, leaving the club in 22nd place.
Their mixed start has allowed the likes of Coventry, Middlesbrough and Millwall to take advantage of and fill their absences at the top of the table.
But the season is still young. Conventional wisdom holds that a team like Ipswich, who spent a lot of money in the summer and has a manager who has won promotion in the past, will come through at some point.
The question is whether Coventry and other teams will be too far ahead when that click finally comes.
Coventry will next face another promoted side in Wrexham. So Lampard’s winning streak should continue and his success at the Coventry Building Society Arena with an unabashed title has once again raised the question of where he fits in the managerial hierarchy.
Is Frank Lampard a good Championship manager?
When Lampard leaves Chelsea in the summer of 2023, it would be logical to think that his time as manager is over.
Returning as caretaker manager for the second time in the Stamford Bridge dugout, Lampard ‘earned’ a PPM of 0.45 in the 11 games he managed, helping Chelsea to 12th place in the table. This came after a poor stint at Everton saw him almost relegated, he was sacked and the big red ‘push Sean Dyche emergency’ button was pressed.
In his first spell at Chelsea, he made the most of the transfer ban and gave opportunities to young players, earning him much praise, but struggled to make a real impact once the club had him at his disposal again.
Lampard is part of England’s “golden generation” of managers from the early 2000s, almost all of whom were poor.
His success with Rangers is an outlier in Steven Gerrard’s otherwise impressive CV. Wayne Rooney, to his credit, never said no to a job offer, but apart from putting out fires at Derby, he hasn’t achieved much either. Even Paul Scholes tried to take over at local Oldham, but it lasted just seven games.
Of this generation, Lampard is the most successful after Gerrard. His first job was at Derby, where he led a young team featuring Mason Mount to the play-off final. Along the way, he beat Marcelo Bielsa, hailed as one of the greatest minds in football.
There’s no doubt he was burnt out in the Premier League, but his success so far at Coventry has once again raised his stock. But the question is, is Lampard just a good manager in the Championship and not a good manager in the Premier League?
Players like Neil Warnock and Ian Holloway have been playing games for decades doing similar jobs, but as a player who sits fourth on the Premier League’s all-time top scorers list, he may think he is destined for greater heights.
If Coventry are promoted, they will need a Sunderland-like splurge to survive, but Lampard must first get his team there in what will be the most important achievement of his managerial career to date. Then it will be time for him to prove that he is good enough for the Premier League.
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