Frank Lampard reborn: The inside story of his second coming at Coventry – thanks to a chat with Pep Guardiola, killing off egos and the shocking revelation at Chelsea that changed his entire managerial style

Frank Lampard is sitting behind a small table in a small room and is poking a bit of fun at himself. Superstitions? Yeah, he’s had a few.

‘Yeah I used to,’ Lampard laughs. I used to eat the same meal in the same proportions and then walk the dog the same walk, the same laps of the park. I had a certain order of putting my boots on and putting my kit on.

‘But it became really consuming because then you lose or play badly and you reboot a few of them and then it becomes a continuing nonsense.

Having said that, I still retain a few of them in my own way here but I am trying to get them out of my head because it can make life challenging at home.

‘The dog still gets walked, don’t worry. I am just not so intense about what route and how many laps I should do and what relation that will have to how we may or may not perform on a Saturday afternoon!

‘There still is a little bit up there (taps his head). It’s a continued fight but it shows I care I guess.’

And it’s the last bit that’s the important bit. The bit about caring. Because if Lampard, former England captain and winner of every conceivable club trophy there ever was to win, didn’t still care then he simply wouldn’t be here behind this small table in this small room.

Derby, Chelsea, Everton and Chelsea again. Lampard is only 46 years old but has already experienced a lot in just seven on and off years as a manager.

Chelsea second time round – as caretaker after the sacking of Graham Potter two years ago – was particularly brutal. His team won only one of his 11 games in charge and, frankly, a great Chelsea servant looked sad and diminished.

Many felt sorry for him. Others laughed. He looked as though that may be it for him in management, another great player left broken by life on the other side of the fence.

But that wasn’t to be the way for Lampard. Last November he took over a Coventry side 17th in the Championship. Ahead of today’s home game with Stoke City, his team are fifth having just won eight of their last nine league games. It’s Coventry’s best run for 55 years, hence all the questions about superstitions.

I think a lot,’ Lampard tells Mail Sport. ‘And when I was out of the game I thought about Derby and my first time at Chelsea and Everton and Chelsea again and I tried to make sure it all makes me better.

‘I am very happy to be at home with my family. I like walking the dogs. It’s the most peaceful hour of my day and this job sometimes stops me from doing that.

‘But when it comes to my professional life, this is what I enjoy doing. This is what really gives me a drive. To get on the training pitch and improve. You take knocks, yeah. It’s much more challenging to do this job.

‘But I have bought in to it the minute I decided I wanted to be a manager. The things that happen along the way – a bit of success and then you have a failure – mean that you need to recharge and take stock and step back and evolve.

‘But I always wanted to get back in and I am at this moment happy working here. I have worked as a manager in the Premier League, Champions League and then the Championship. I can honestly say I enjoy them all the same. I enjoy managing this club with the same passion as I did at Everton or Chelsea. This is what I care about.’

Lampard’s managerial record is actually respectable. He took Derby to the Championship play-off final in one season and then left for Chelsea, who he steered to a fourth-placed Premier League finish.

He was replaced the next season by Thomas Tuchel with the club ninth. At basket-case Everton, he kept them in the top division in 2022 before being sacked with relegation a threat once again the following January.

Many managers fail and disappear. It’s the ones who learn along the way who tend to come again. For Lampard, it was his second spell at Stamford Bridge that he believes was actually the most constructive.

‘That was actually really interesting because it wasn’t that enjoyable, clearly,’ he explains. ‘A lot of people questioned it. “Should you do it?’ and “Why did you do it?” and all those kinds of things.

‘With reflection – and I have had a lot of time to think about this – it was one of my biggest learnings. Not on a football level at all. Not coaching or tactical. It wasn’t the place for all that.

No what I learned is that if you are in a group and there is a lack of motivation or a squad not all working in the same direction together then many, many other things don’t matter at all.

‘And that was the clearest view I have ever had of that, in that short period of time. We sit now in different clubs and I am not going to start talking about them individually. But you can see if you don’t have that standing and that environment and that thought of where you want to get to in your work then it’s really hard to get results.’

Lampard talks a lot about the value of relationships and cultures and he should know. He won three Premier Leagues as a Chelsea player along with four FA Cups and a Champions League. He also played 106 times for England.

At Derby, they still talk about him and the impact he had in a single season. He remains in touch with football and office staff at Pride Park.

Classy is the word they all use,’ said a well-placed source at Pride Park. Frank has fabulous emotional intelligence. He could read people incredibly quickly. He knew what they needed and changed the manner of his conversation depending on what that was. He would make people feel special and was adaptable too.

‘For example, he would change the training depending on the mood right at the last minute. If the team was struggling he would just make it fun and then ask the club’s PR staff to put the social media images out of players smiling and laughing. He was smart like that.’

At Coventry, just 50 miles away, they already say the same about him. His appointment was unpopular simply because the guy he was replacing – Mark Robins – had done so much for the club, taking them from League Two to a Championship play-off final and FA Cup semi-final in seven years.

Lampard’s early messaging mirrored what he did at Derby. He told staff that nobody was more important than anybody else, whatever job they did. Lampard has prioritised individual time with players and as he speaks – only four months on – the issue of ego is raised.

‘I think I should distinguish between professional and public ego,’ he says. ‘As a player I definitely maximised certain parts of my career through a strong professional ego.

‘I wanted to be as good as I could be. I wanted to be better than your man down the road. That wasn’t a bad attribute for me.

‘As a manager I still have those things. I want my team to be the best. I want to show when I go against another manager that I can do my job.

‘But this is work. So I don’t have this ego of what it means for my own public persona. It’s important to work with the players that way because they need to see humility in the person who is leading them.

‘I am with them. When we win or lose I am as happy and as disappointed as they are. That’s natural for me.

‘There will be people who view me from the outside who will go: “Shut up, you’ve got a massive ego.” It doesn’t matter to me. I like to get about my work and then get home to all the normal things.

‘I know there will always be a challenge round the corner. It’s not always going to be rosy here. We see it in many clubs and in many managers’ careers. It’s one of the reasons I sit here and try to temper things.’

Coventry is a grand old football club that has endured a difficult past. Twice they have been homeless and even now their stadium is owned by Mike Ashley’s Fraser’s Group.

But current owner Doug King has Coventry on a sound financial footing. The Coventry Building Society Arena will have 30,000 inside it today when Robins brings his current club Stoke City down the M6 and the training ground at which Lampard talks has benefited from proper investment. It’s not long ago that plans were mooted to build houses on it.

King has given Lampard a significant say on recruitment – something he never enjoyed during his time at Chelsea – and Coventry feels like the perfect place to come again, to grow and develop. It some ways, it feels how Derby may have done had Lampard resisted the lure of his old club back in 2019.

Lampard says he has already come a long way in terms of how he looks at the game. He spent time with Pep Guardiola – noting how he engages with his players during training – Thomas Frank and his old New York City FC team-mate Andoni Iraola before stepping back in. He is candid enough to admit he feels sure of himself now.

‘I probably portrayed confidence at the beginning but I have much more clarity now,’ he has said, hinting at a little bit of bluffing in the past.

Having decided that talk of managerial philosophy is overrated, Lampard is determined not to be chained to one formation or style of play. He made that mistake at Everton. Already at Coventry he has switched from four at the back to three and occasionally back again.

Slowly it is serving him well and though he pushes back against suggestions that big-name players are handed jobs other coaches have to work for, he knows that his success or otherwise will be viewed in that context.

‘I am very passionate about young English coaches getting opportunities because I understand the work that goes into it,’ he explains. It’s an easy argument to say that as an ex-player with profile you get given an opportunity. I know the truth.

‘I played for a long time and worked with a lot of good managers and took in a lot of information. And then I understood when I finished that if I was gonna start coaching I was gonna have to start again in many ways.

‘People management, delivering training sessions, tactically. And so I worked hard at all that.

‘I understand that an English manager who hasn’t had my route may have had to work with Under 10s, Under 11s, Under 12s. I also think there are a lot of good ones there.

‘I have the same view as I do when I look at someone like Eddie Howe and what he is doing. We need to keep working and show our work and our worth and hopefully get more opportunities because I know there are great English coaches out there.

That’s a broader conversation and a broader picture. For now the focus of one of English football’s modern great is much more narrow and that’s how he likes it. Maybe that’s how it needs to be.

I have always wanted to work at the top end,‘ Lampard explains. ‘And you have to understand that attention and scrutiny comes with the territory.

‘But I just think for the moment where I am working is right. I like to just quietly work if I can. To this point I have been able to do that here. My main love is working, coaching, trying to get results.

I am feeling more attention as we move up the league and that’s a good sign. This is as busy as this room gets.

And with that we stand to leave. All five of us.