Frank Lampard was delighted that his Coventry City players seized the opportunity to strengthen their grip at the top of the Championship on a day when their nearest promotion rivals dropped points.

The Sky Blues’ 3-0 victory at Swansea took them to 80 points, nine off second placed Middlesbrough who could only manage a point at Blackburn and, crucially, 11 away from third and fourth placed Ipswich and Millwall who cancelled each other out with a 1-1 draw at Portman Road in the day’s lunchtime kick-offs.

Asked if those results were spoken about and in his and his players’ minds going into the 5.15pm televised game at the Swansea.com Stadium, Lampard said: “Yeah, and we knew. We watched the games before and obviously they’re positive results in a sense and I spoke to them about it because I didn’t want them to relax and think that it was a bit of a free hit – if we do, we do, if we don’t, we don’t.

“It was more like we’ll just go and do it. Let’s grab it, just grab the opportunity because that doesn’t come every week. Sometimes you sit there and everyone else wins and it’s a different feeling. But I thought that the lads dealt with that very positively and then in the performance they showed it.”

As for hitting the 80 point milestone with 81 goals scored, he said: “Yeah, it’s not bad, right? It’s good. It’s really good for us because this group of players are pretty much the same since we came in. They fired themselves up the table last year, developed and worked and trained and now they’re playing with a consistency and a togetherness that’s a huge testament to them.

“This is not a parachute team that’s come down from the Premier League. It’s not been a parachute team in the last five or ten years. It’s come from League Two, you know, to go even further back. So for what the club is, which is a huge football club, but this group of players now, what they’ve done to this point, and we’re not there yet, has been outstanding.

“And so there’s a different feeling, a different confidence to the way they’re playing and I love it. I love seeing them play the way they played today because it is a proper team. So let’s not get carried away. We have to stay humble because this Championship is dangerous if you get carried away. But they’ve got themselves in a great position.”

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