Coventry City boss Frank Lampard has praise for Kim Hellberg and Middlesbrough, but revealed how he set his side up to win
Coventry City head coach Frank Lampard encourages his players(Image: MI News/NurPhoto)
Frank Lampard hailed the ‘incredible job’ that Kim Hellberg has done at Middlesbrough, as he offered insight into his Coventry City game plan to beat them.
Lampard led his side to a seventh straight victory over Boro on Monday night, which sent Coventry back to the top of the Championship table. Haji Wright’s hat-trick sealed three huge points for the Sky Blues.
Despite that, Lampard had huge praise for Boro’s boss, who took the reins at Boro, just after Coventry went ten points clear at the top of the league with their November win at the Riverside. It said everything about the Swede that Boro went into Monday’s game, 14 matches, two points clear at the top.
Lampard said: “He’s done an incredible job. I’ve got a lot of respect for what he’s doing because I knew they were a good team. Even when we played them in the 4-2 they played well against us, to be fair.
“The way they move the ball, the technical players they’ve got, really good midfield players, really big threats at the top. But to see the tweaks and the changes and how they’re playing now, I think full credit to the manager, full credit to them.
“They’re a really good team in this league and, coming into a different country, different team, different challenge, he’s taken to it brilliantly, obviously.”
It was a big victory for Coventry, whose form since their Riverside win had been poor, and had led to a lot of question marks over their promotion credentials. For Boro, they’d won six consecutive league games going into it.
But Coventry appeared to get their gameplan spot on, nullifying Boro’s threat in the middle of the pitch and cutting off the channels they usually operate through.
On his game plan, Lampard said: “In terms of the players, the output from the players, the energy of the team, the game plan, the idea of what we wanted to do in the game… We worked on that a lot this week, a lot of the off-the-ball work.
“I think that is so important against a team that plays the way they do, and the lads delivered it. So, very happy. We prepared to be man-for-man at the back and, not to take risks, but to work at the top end of the pitch to put people under pressure.
“We felt that we might get some high turnovers from it and regains, as much as they’re a danger to play through you. We felt we could do that, and the lads did that in the first half.
“Then, in the second half, we showed another side to our game where we were deeper and we had the counter-attack threat, but the big thing was the energy and organisation of the team.
“If we can play like that, if we can deliver that – and we’ve got 14 more to go now – we have to take that as a bit of a template of what has to go into a game.”
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On the game overall, and being a good advert for the Championship, Lampard added: “It was a really good game of football. Probably showed why we’re one and two in the league.
“It’s got a lot of competition [for performance of the season]. But for the high-level game… You could feel the intensity of the game in the first opening minutes of the game from both teams.
“So in that way, we contested really well. This league just brings up different games, but that was a high-level game and I thought the lads dealt with it great.
“It’s always like that, especially with a high-level game where both teams are going at each other. You have to score in critical moments, and we did today. In a game of this level, those moments are so important.
“Even at 2-1, to go 3-1 so quickly, and Haji to deliver the pressure penalty… But maybe we’ve been due a bit of that. Everyone’s talking about our performance and points and things like that – sometimes we’ve not been clinical lately, and maybe some things have just not gone for us.
“Today it showed that if you work, sometimes you make things happen, and you make your own luck.”
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