FRANK Lampard has confirmed Haji Wright will miss Coventry City’s trip to Swansea City this weekend and criticised the upcoming fixture schedule.
Coventry’s top scorer Wright went straight down the tunnel against Southampton and will not feature for the United States of America during the upcoming international break.
Wright came off on 63 minutes against Saints as Coventry’s six-game winning run in the league came to an end.
However, despite the defeat, Lampard hopes his players will take confidence from Coventry’s position at the top of the Championship table.
Lampard said: “Every result and every performance is crucial now.
“I don’t hang on the words of responses and reactions.
“Every season is full of good, bad and somewhere in-between [moments].
“It’s important the players stay very level-headed. I know they’re resilient because they’ve shown it through the season.
“You’re going to take a few hits in this league. We’ve been the team at the top of that so far.
“We need to take confidence from that and take it forward.”
A number of Coventry’s players will represent their respective countries during the international break including Jay Dasilva, Brandon Thomas-Asante and Frank Onyeka.
Coventry will play on Good Friday and Easter Monday upon the return of domestic football following the international break.
However, Lampard criticised the decision to play games so soon after the international window and believes the close proximity of matches will put players at the risk of injury.
Lampard added: “It shows the progression of the squad [to have so many international call-ups].
“It shows individually, of those players called up, what they’ve worked towards.
“We don’t love it as clubs because we’re getting to a critical point now and some of our players are travelling a long way.
“The biggest challenge of it is they’ve decided to put a game on Good Friday.
“Some of my players are arriving back on Thursday. It’s not compatible, it doesn’t work.
“Other teams will have this issue as well. It’s an injury risk and a performance risk for players to fly home on Thursday and play on Friday,
“I cannot understand why the game is on a Friday and then we play on the Monday after that.
“That’s my gripe. We’ll do our best to manage it by being across every detail.”
And while Lampard confirmed Wright will play no part in this weekend’s fixture, the Sky Blues boss appeared to alay fears of any long-term concerns.
Lampard said: “He’s doing okay. He won’t be fit for this weekend.
“And he won’t travel to America to play in the international games.”
Coventry travel to Swansea City on Saturday, March 21 with kick-off at 5.15pm at the Swansea.com Stadium.
