Team talks, fist pumps and psychometrics: Inside Frank Lampard’s Coventry City dressing room | OneFootball

It is easy to forget now, looking back through the lens of promotion, that Frank Lampard was not universally popular when he first arrived at Coventry City. It was less to do with his mixed managerial record and more because Coventry fans, and many players, felt it was their destiny to reach the top flight under the guidance of Mark Robins. Supporters were “devastated” and “sickened” when he was sacked in November 2024.

Robins had almost single-handedly revived the club from their darkest days in League Two, earning two promotions and reaching the Championship play-off final in 2023, where Coventry lost to Luton at Wembley. He had come so close, giving blood, sweat and tears over seven years, and surely it was his right to take the final step.

But Coventry’s new owner, the businessman Doug King, felt the dressing room needed a new voice and he made a bold, risky decision. Perhaps he also sensed a commercial opportunity in appointing one of the world’s most famous footballers as manager.

On his first day at the club, Lampard gathered everyone in the gym – players, staff, chefs, cleaners – and told them to start believing the sky is the limit for Coventry. The club has not looked back, and 18 months later they are heading back to the Premier League.

One staff member told The Independent Lampard’s “relentless drive” has been at the heart of Coventry’s promotion season. His determination was a trait of his playing career and the stories of him staying behind as a young player to work on his speed and finishing are well worn. So perhaps it is no surprise that the word “standards” is used repeatedly by people at the club to describe his impact.

open image in gallery

Lampard salutes the Coventry fans after confirming promotion at Ewood Park (Getty)

Few have had a better view of Lampard’s impact than Harry Colledge, a fifth-generation Coventry fan who swapped his season ticket for a payslip when he started working in the club’s kit department three years ago, which he now runs.

“We are in the dressing room at half-time and full-time,” Colledge says. “He motivates me! He makes me want to do a few laps. He’s brought a winning mentality to the club.

“He does talk a lot about his experience and how it relates to situations in-game for us, and where things can change. And just the way he views a game of football is incredible, especially to someone who’s obviously not played the game. Working in this environment, it makes someone who’s not played the game feel like you don’t know much about football.”

Does Lampard ever need to scream and shout to get his point across? “I don’t think there’s been many occasions when he has,” says Colledge. “He is quite a calm character, but he’s very direct and to the point.”

Colledge lays out kit each morning for Lampard, who commutes up the M1 from his home in London and often stays the night in the city. Lampard is hands-on in training and will often be directing and marshalling his players on the grass, alongside assistant Joe Edwards.

One of Lampard’s most significant achievements has been to unlock the potential of key players, such as left-back Jay Da Silva and midfielder Jack Rudoni, who shows shades of Lampard in the way he arrives by stealth in the final third. The manager has got the best out of striker Haji Wright, too, who has stood up in certain moments, like his hat-trick against promotion rivals Middlesbrough last month.

open image in gallery

Jack Rudoni and Haji Wright have been important figures in the club's promotion season (Getty)

Lampard has been supported by the owner, King, who brought the club’s training ground into the 21st century with a much-needed redevelopment in 2024. Recruitment has been more hit than miss, particularly in goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, signed on loan from Brighton last summer, and midfielder Frank Onyeka, who signed on loan from Brentford in January to inject quality at a crucial moment in the season when Coventry went off the boil.

But the most important signing has been Matt Grimes, the captain, who arrived from Swansea for £3.5m in January 2025. Lampard has trusted Grimes as his de facto manager on the pitch and off it, giving him freedom to lead with the help of senior players. There are parallels with Lampard’s own career when he and John Terry ran the Chelsea dressing room.

“Grimsey had been a great captain,” says Colledge. “He’s a perfect figure for the dressing room, a true leader who can have the crack with the lads too.”

A lesser known signing is Claire-Marie Roberts, a former swimmer and footballer who joined Coventry as performance director several months before Lampard arrived. Roberts is a chartered psychologist and she is credited inside the club for developing a high-class approach to a raft of areas including injury prevention, recovery and recruitment.

Roberts works closely with the sports science department and Lampard’s experienced first-team coach Chris Jones, who has served Chelsea managers Jose Mourinho, Anotonio Conte and Thomas Tuchel in the past. “She’s overseen a lot of change,” Colledge says. “Recovery and performance has been a key thing we’ve tried to improve.”

She has also been working with the recruitment team to make sure new signings have the right psychological profile for the squad, using what she described to the Coventry Telegraph as a “gold standard psychometric instrument” to measure a player’s character and predict their personality. Lampard has repeatedly credited the unity and attitude in his dressing room for Coventry’s overperformance above their mid-table wage budget.

open image in gallery

Lampard has built a rapport with Coventry fans (PA)

It has not all gone swimmingly this season. A downturn in results during the winter saw Coventry blow their lead at the top, and Middlesbrough briefly usurped them as Championship leaders. But the club stuck together through the slump – “there was never any panic” in the dressing room, says Colledge – and the 3-1 win over Boro at the CBS Arena sparked fresh belief that they could go and seal promotion.

Throughout his spell, Lampard has sought to build a rapport with fans. This was one of the factors that attracted him to the club: a large, dedicated fan base made him feel he was a sleeping giant, or perhaps a stirring one after Robins’ tenure.

Lampard wasn’t entirely comfortable dishing out his now customary fist pumps after wins, but he knew it was an important way of connecting with supporters. “The fans love him, and I think he shows he loves the fans too,” says Colledge. Lampard was supportive of the idea of having The Enemy play live at the stadium before the game against Sheffield United earlier this season, and their song “We’ll Live and Die in These Towns” has become the anthem to Coventry’s rise.

Coventry fans have been through more than their fair share of torment in the past 25 years since they last played in the Premier League. A journey of groundshares, relegations, points deductions and administration brought the club to its knees and turned the fanbase on the club’s former owners, Sisu. Now Coventry are going back to the top flight after King’s managerial gamble paid off.

“It’ll be fantastic,” says Colledge. “It’s been a 25-year wait, I’m very excited.” And it might make his job a little easier. “I’m hoping some of the away dressing rooms might be a bit bigger than the Championship. That’ll help us out quite a lot.”