FRANK Lampard anticipates a ‘very different’ game this weekend compared to the last meeting between the clubs when Coventry City travel to Ipswich Town.
The Sky Blues suffered a 4-1 home defeat against Ipswich in the FA Cup last season with the Tractor Boys then playing in the Premier League.
Ipswich have since suffered relegation from the top flight while Coventry sit 10 points clear at the top of the Championship table, six places above their opponents.
And Lampard anticipates facing the ‘best version’ of Ipswich who come into the fixture having won just one of their last four league matches.
Lampard said: “It’s going to be very different [to the FA Cup game].
“I’ve got a good understanding of their team. Some things have changed for us both since then.
“That game was a difficult one for us because we were trying to mount a challenge for the play-offs.
“An FA Cup game against a Premier League team was a challenge for us in lots of ways and a challenge for them and where they were in the Premier League last season.
“That game has been and gone. They’re going to be up for the game. They’re a really strong team and they’re going to want to show how strong they are.
“We’ll probably see the best version of Ipswich.”
Coventry come into the clash on the back of five straight wins in the league and reached the 50-goal mark for the season after just 18 matches in their last outing.
And despite City’s abundance of goals, Lampard also believes his side has improved defensively this campaign.
Lampard added: “I’m very pleased with it [scoring 50 goals].
“It’s credit to the work everyone has done. When we came in we were talking about how do we problem solve to get out of that position.
“You want to be able to produce attacking football, it’s not always a possibility, we’ve also been better defensively this season from what we were.
“The goals have been great. Will they keep flowing forever, we don’t know, but the reason we’ve done that is because we’ve been very diligent and focused on the training pitch.
“The players need to take a lot of credit because we’re scoring goals from different areas of the pitch and we have to try and continue that way.”
Coventry travel to Ipswich on Saturday, December 6 with kick-off at 3pm at Portman Road.
