Frank Lampard: “I’ve loved it” in Coventry resurgence

February 19, 2026 Oliver Obel

Frank Lampard’s message this week was not about formations or fine margins at the top of the table. It was about first aid.

In an interview with SPORTbible, the Coventry City manager backed Sky Bet and the British Heart Foundation’s ‘Every Minute Matters’ campaign, which aims to encourage 500,000 people to complete CPR training through the free RevivR tool by May 2025. The BHF says that for every minute without CPR and defibrillation following cardiac arrest, survival chances can fall by up to 10 percent.

“A lot of us now have had our lives touched by this in terms of cardiac arrest and heart disease,” Lampard said, calling for greater awareness among supporters and within dressing rooms.

It is a subject that puts football into perspective. Promotion races can wait; emergencies cannot.

Lessons from a difficult return

Lampard’s second spell at Chelsea in 2023 was meant to steady a season that had already drifted. Instead, it became another tough assignment.

Across nine matches as interim manager following Graham Potter’s dismissal, Chelsea won once and eventually finished in the bottom half for the first time since 1996, posting their lowest Premier League points total. Lampard, who had guided the club into the Champions League places during his first full season in charge, stepped away from coaching for more than a year afterward.

He does not disguise how that period felt.

“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.

“As much as I love Chelsea because the club was in such a tough position, it wasn't a joyful moment of being there.”

Time away helped reset things. When Coventry approached in November 2024, they were 17th in the Championship and short on momentum.

Building something steadier

The shift since then has been gradual rather than dramatic. Coventry climbed to fifth place by the end of the 2024–25 season before losing to Sunderland in the play-off semi-finals. That near miss carried into the current 2025–26 campaign.

Heading into Monday night’s floodlit meeting with leaders Middlesbrough at the CBS Arena, Coventry sit second. The gap between the automatic promotion spots and mid-table is narrow — a couple of results either way can reshape the picture quickly.

Lampard has called the Championship “relentless,” and the description fits. Forty-six league matches, midweek fixtures through the winter and a range of playing styles leave little time to settle.

“It is very much about keeping a stable head through that, getting on with a grind and accepting it,” he said. “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.”

Coventry briefly led the table around Christmas 2025 before a recent dip tightened the race again. That swing is typical of the division. Teams rarely cruise for long.

No thought of stepping away

Lampard’s managerial path has included difficult stretches at Everton as well as Chelsea, but he says quitting has never appealed.

“I've never had a moment where I felt like, ‘I don’t want to do that’,” he said. “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.”

He believes management heightens both ends of the emotional scale.

“When you win,” he said, “you feel more responsibility for the win. The flip of that is it's worse when you lose because you feel responsibility.”

It is part of the trade.

Promotion, but not panic

Coventry have not played in the Premier League since 2001. The target is obvious, even if Lampard prefers to focus on weekly increments rather than bold declarations.

In the Championship, patience tends to matter as much as momentum. Fifteenth place can be only a few wins from the play-offs; a promotion hopeful can slide just as quickly. The margins are small and the schedule unforgiving.

For Lampard, the campaign work and the promotion push share a common thread: preparation and response. Whether it is a supporter learning CPR or a squad navigating three games in a week, readiness counts.

The tests are still there. For now, he appears more comfortable taking them on.

Sources: SPORTbible, Sky Bet, British Heart Foundation