Sideways Sammy

As much as Coventry City returning to the Premier League should be a significant story, that Frank Lampard has overseen promotion has become an inevitable central focus from the wider media. A charismatic England international who was one of the best players of his generation, most Sky Blues fans are already aware that people outside the club already have an opinion of him.

Frank Lampard has had to fight accusations of benefiting from opportunities others wouldn’t have had from the very first day he kicked a football. The son of a former England international and managed by his uncle, Harry Redknapp, during the first portion of his career, outside observers have been keen to suggest that his talent hasn’t befitted the chances that have come his way.

Lampard proved comprehensively during his playing career that he was deserving of those chances, becoming a genuinely world-class footballer who drained every last drop of the talent he possessed to win titles at the top of the game. However, that only placed those nepotism allegations against him on pause until his managerial career began.

Starting off with Derby County, any sense that Lampard was trying to earn his spurs away from the top-flight were distorted by the benefit of securing some of Chelsea’s top talent on loan and having a top-class coaching team beside him to seemingly do the hard work. One season was enough for Chelsea to hand him the manager’s job, the kind of opportunity that someone who wasn’t already a club legend would not have got after one season managing a second-tier team.

After a qualified success of a first year at Chelsea, where Lampard finished in the top four despite the team being under a transfer embargo, his managerial career seemed to fall apart in the space of two years. A difficult second season at Chelsea once spending was turned back on, an Everton stint that started off promisingly but didn’t kick on, and then an ill-fated return to Chelsea with a squad already in mutiny.

For those who had always questioned Frank Lampard’s credentials as not just a manager but a person too – with his charisma often either perceived as false or as arrogance – it was vindication. Close to a busted flush, the thought of Lampard replacing Mark Robins as manager at Coventry City almost two years ago seemed to speak of an owner blinded by celebrity than Lampard’s own talents as a coach.

There was plenty for him to prove at Coventry, after a tentative start, Lampard and his coaching team made a quick impact with the Sky Blues. From outsiders for relegation to a top six finish where the team were unlucky not to make the Play-Off Final, Lampard went on to prove last season that there was genuine substance to his qualities as a manager, easing to the Championship title with a team that were not fancied to do so.

Of course, Frank Lampard has leaned on the quality of his coaching staff to help him along the way – with Joe Edwards overseeing tactics, Chris Jones fitness, and John Dempster on set-pieces – but deferring to the experts is the job of a manager in this era. Frank Lampard’s job is to be the team’s figurehead, to set the emotional tone, and take the pressure off the players. The team’s ability to win key games and largely avoid panicking when results went against them over the winter was at least as much if not almost all down to the mood around the team that Lampard himself had instilled.

The Premier League is going to be a much sterner test of Frank Lampard’s qualities as a manager. Coventry City are going from a team that was favourites to win most weeks to favourites to lose in all but a few games. It presents a very different challenge to the past 18 months, with the task probably less about simply staying in the division and more about ensuring the long-term foundations of a top-flight side at Coventry remain in place.

As Vincent Kompany has shown, getting relegated with a team expected to get relegated shouldn’t be considered an indication that a manager lacks quality. However, given the contrasting overly positive and negative narratives around Frank Lampard, the sense is that success will see his reputation strongly burnished and failure will see it strongly tarnished.

As a man who has been both overly praised and overly criticised during his career, no man may be better placed than Frank Lampard to shoulder the intense rollercoaster that a Premier League survival battle may encompass.