FRANK Lampard admits achieving promotion with Coventry City would mean ‘a great deal’ to the Sky Blues head coach and the club.
Lampard is preparing his side to play Sunderland in the Championship play-off semi-finals.
The 46-year-old has previous play-offs experience with Derby County who he led to the play-off final in 2018/19.
And after guiding the Sky Blues up the Championship table since his appointment as head coach, Lampard admits promotion would mean a lot to his side.
Lampard said: “It would mean a great deal for me personally, clearly because you want success, relative success wherever you are.
“I think the reality for this club and for us as a group this year is what it would mean considering where we were in November/December and the early parts of the season.
“From the work done and for the players who have owned it and shown really consistent performances and have managed to move up the table, it would mean a great deal because of where we’ve come from and also for this club.
“The history of the club and it has a great history of FA Cup finals and playing top tier football and it’s been a long while.
“I understand the responsibility of that, and those are things that we can deal with if they come, but we have to absolutely focus on three games hopefully, but right now specifically one and then the away leg to see what we can do, because it’s what we do on the pitch that will get us there or not.”
Coventry finished one place and seven points below the Black Cats in the table and head into the first leg off the back of a euphoric 2-0 final day win against Middlesbrough.
City have lost just twice at the Coventry Building Society Arena since Lampard’s appointment with the defeats coming against promoted clubs Leeds United and Burnley.
And Lampard wants the Sky Blues to make home advantage count in the first leg.
Lampard added: “We have to try and maximise home advantage, it’s a thing and we’ve been really strong at home, so we have to try and do that.
“I watched the game last night with PSG and Arsenal, the first ten minutes looked like something I don’t think anybody imagined, so that’s play-off/knockout football.
“We want to maximise our home advantage but understand the game may not look exactly how we want it to or how we want it to feel, and we will have to be very diligent throughout every minute of the game.
“For the first game we want to continue with our home form and make that count to give ourselves a good position going into the second leg, but it’s football, so we will have to wait and see.
“It was a good experience for me in my first year in management, against Leeds who were a really strong team and were expected to go up that year, so it was a really tough match for us.
“I remember bits of it and how we prepared for both legs, especially the second one, which is the one that got us through, so I will understand that nothing will be done after the first leg, as a main memory.”
Coventry host Sunderland in the first leg of the Championship play-off semi-finals on Friday, May 9 with kick-off at 8pm at the CBS Arena.
