FRANK Lampard insists Coventry City will only improve their league position with hard work ahead of a trip to Norwich City this weekend.
The Sky Blues head into the fixture on the back of a three-game unbeaten run over the festive period.
However, following a frustrating 1-1 draw at Cardiff City on New Year’s Day, Lampard admits the tight turnaround of games since his appointment as head coach has made it difficult to make improvements in training.
Lampard said: “It’s a squad that has changed in the last couple of seasons. We’ve seen that from the outside, reaching the play-off final and there are minimal players left who played in that game who are in the squad now.
“In that slightly transitional phase, it’s probably normal that you look and go ‘we want to be better than where we are’. The reality is that and we have to work and us as coaching staff we have to work, and the players themselves have to and they’re quite a young squad.
“We’re eight games in and it’s good for me to start to see more from them as we’ve played, because training time has been very minimal because we’ve had a tight turnaround since we’ve been in.
“That’s been challenging in the sense that you see players in game, because a game like Cardiff is like a training session in the first half where you don’t like it so much and you want to correct it, but that’s the game, so those are the things happening at the minute.
“Our league position is a reality, and we want to improve it that’s for sure, but that will only come with work.”
The game comes too soon for forward Haji Wright who sustained an ankle injury in early November.
However, Lampard confirmed the USA international is back on the grass and hopes he will be available for selection in the next couple of weeks.
Lampard added: “He came out on the grass for his first sort of steps outside with some mobility work to get moving.
“We’re hoping he’s back in the next two weeks or so, but it’s been a fair amount of time now, so I want to be conservative about how I say he will be on the grass and then with us.
“He has to get his fitness up and the staff have been doing a good job of doing what they can to keep him as fit as he can be without being out there doing the stuff he really needs to do.”
Coventry travel to Norwich on Saturday, January 4 with kick-off at 3pm at Carrow Road.
