Frank Lampard has gone from Soccer Aid joke to Coventry City record-breaker: Chelsea legend is reviving his battered reputation in Championship play-off push

Having officially retired from football in February 2017, Lampard immediately turned to TV punditry to extend his stint in the game. Nevertheless, it was clear he longed for more.

"I have had a great year in the media. It's been great because I have had one foot in and one foot out and I needed that after playing. But the pull of management has always been great for me and it was only a matter of time with the right opportunity. This feels right and the rest is up to me," he said after being appointed as the manager of Derby County in May 2018.

The Rams had just missed out on promotion to the Premier League having lost to Fulham in the play-off semi-finals. They could smell the top flight, but trouble was brewing behind the scenes. Soaring costs and a quite literally unbelievable wage bill fit threatened to derail their aspirations (and this would indeed ultimately lead to their downfall by the time Wayne Rooney took the reins a few years later). Much of the squad, including Golden Boot-winner Matej Vydra, had to be turned over, and Lampard turned to the loan market to fix the mess.

His connections with Chelsea allowed Derby to bring in Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori, while Harry Wilson arrived from Liverpool. Two new strikers in Martyn Waghorn and Jack Marriott were acquired on permanent deals to make up for the shortfall of Vydra.

Derby finished sixth and qualified for the play-offs once again, where they were pitted against Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United in a modern day reimagining of The Damned United following the 'Spygate' scandal midway through the season - a scout from Leeds was caught trying to get an unauthorised glimpse of a Derby training session. The Rams lost the first leg 1-0 at Pride Park, before prevailing in a play-off classic at Elland Road, winning 4-2 on the night. Leeds' chant of 'stop crying, Frank Lampard' was turned on its head, and he himself was filmed singing it in the dressing room celebrations.

Alas, Derby were beaten 2-1 by a similarly budding Aston Villa side in the final, with Jack Grealish and Tammy Abraham the headline names for Dean Smith's men. But Lampard had done enough across the season to show he could steady a ship all the while integrating youth and implementing an entertaining brand of football.

Lampard's chance at his dream job came only 12 months into his managerial career, as Chelsea came calling when Maurizio Sarri decided to leave for Juventus, and he gladly accepted their offer.

Just as was the case at Derby, things were far from rosy back at Stamford Bridge. The club had been placed under a transfer embargo for two windows, and star player Eden Hazard had agreed to join Real Madrid. The squad was a mix of eras, with the old guard featuring N'Golo Kante, Cesar Azpilicueta, Jorginho and Mateo Kovacic being gelled with the new generation of Reece James, Christian Pulisic and blasts-from-the-contextual-past Mount, Tomori and Abraham.

Pre-season expectations varied, with some tipping the Blues to finish as low as 10th, that Lampard's first year should have been considered a free-hit. That they came fourth, reached the FA Cup final and were only knocked out of the Champions League by eventual winners Bayern Munich in the last 16 was a small triumph. Once more, Lampard had united a club with his willingness to play attacking football and promote youth. This achievement has been lost to history because of what happened next.

Chelsea returned to type when their transfer ban was lifted, spending around £200 million on the marquee signings of Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Ben Chilwell and Edouard Mendy. By the winter, they were top of the Premier League and into the knockout stages of the Champions League. Everything was rosy until they hit a bump in the road.

A run of two wins in eight was the final nail in the coffin for Lampard, whose strained relations across the club made his position untenable. He was said to be distant with a fair few players, while his decisions to freeze out Antonio Rudiger and send Tomori to AC Milan have aged worse than a pint of milk sitting in the Sahara sunshine.

Thomas Tuchel was drafted in as Lampard's replacement in January 2021, and within six months, he had made a naive and incompetent Chelsea the champions of Europe, boasting one of the best defences - built around the previously maligned Rudiger, no less - seen in years, reminiscent of Jose Mourinho's first stint in west London.

Lampard can take some credit for his work developing the likes of Mount and James, who were adored by Tuchel to no end, but that's where the matter starts and finishes.

By January 2022, Lampard had almost been pigeonholed as a firefighter. This time around, it was Everton dialling 999, looking to quickly reverse the damage left by arsonist Rafa Benitez, with the Toffees alarmingly sliding towards relegation.

Things got worse before they got better at Goodison Park, with many of Lampard's early positive results coming by the skin of his team's collective backside. There was, however, an appreciation of his honesty and charisma, particularly when contrasted to the doom-and-gloom of Liverpool legend Benitez.

Everton managed to secure safety on the penultimate day of the season, coming from behind to beat Crystal Palace to spark a pitch invasion. Though the start to the following season was so abominable it led to Lampard's dismissal in January, they were nonetheless grateful for his efforts during a troubled period in the club's history.

What's that? Another team in trouble called on Lampard to try and clean up their mess? Well I never.

At the fourth time of asking, the task had an extra level of spice to it. Lampard was returning to Chelsea as caretaker until the end of the 2022-23 season, which had gone up in smoke in the first failed year of BlueCo's ownership.

In a way, Lampard was brought back to help bridge the gap between the new board and other areas of the club - 'babysitting' was the term he himself used. The first team, meanwhile, was bloated to the most extreme end ever seen in the Premier League, with players reportedly unable to all fit in the same dressing room and gym.

On the pitch, Lampard failed to get a tune out of his sorry squad, winning only one of his 11 matches at the helm - his nine percent win ratio the lowest of any Chelsea manager to take charge of at least three games. Had the season gone on for two or three more weeks, the Blues would have been dragged into a relegation battle.

Having left Chelsea in ruin, Lampard's stock could hardly have been lower, even if there were mitigating circumstances. His next gig came the following summer when he was named as co-manager of the England team at Soccer Aid 2024. A few months later, he was back in the professional game, but to much bemusement.

Coventry had decided to part company with club legend Mark Robins in November after a 2-1 loss at home to Derby left them 17th in the Championship table. Across seven years in the East Midlands, Robins took the Sky Blues from League Two back to the Championship. They were Wembley penalty shootouts away from both the Premier League and FA Cup final, falling to Luton Town in 2023 and Manchester United in 2024, respectively.

When news broke of Coventry's decision, it was met with significant backlash. Petitions were started to reinstate Robins, and fans' heartache made national news. The call to bring in Lampard only added to the noise.

Lampard hadn't managed in the second tier in over five years, and all of his previous jobs had ended on sour terms. For Coventry to make such a leap of faith was viewed as reckless and irresponsible. The odds were stacked against Lampard before he had the chance to oversee a game of football.

It took Lampard a little while to get going - three wins from 12 kicked off his return to life in the Championship - but he is now firmly in the good books of Sky Blues fans, his approval rating universally and unanimously through the roof.

As mentioned at the top, Coventry's return of nine victories from 10 matches is the best league record in their 141-year history. Lampard has not only brought the feel-good factor back to the CBS Arena, but restored belief in both team and club. The decision to part ways with the popular Robins has been vindicated, the gamble on a distressed asset of a manager paying out.

Coventry sit fifth in the Championship table, a long way off the automatic promotion spots but in the driving seat for a play-off place. The underlying numbers back up their newfound supremacy under Lampard - according to FBRef, they have the second-best expected goal difference record (+14.5) in the entire division, with only table-topping Leeds United ahead of them.

Tactically, Lampard has made the Sky Blues far more stable in midfield, bringing fresh vigour to existing duo Jack Rudoni, 23, and Viktor Torp, 24, while using the January transfer window to bring in the metronomic Matt Grimes from Swansea City. In true Lampard-ian fashion, he's tasked the midfielders to crash the box a little more and provide more of a goal threat to make up for shortfalls in attack - USMNT star Haji Wright remains their top scorer this season on seven goals, but he's just returned from a lengthy injury layoff.

Robins' dismissal was doomsday for Coventry fans. There was a time they couldn't imagine life without him, but here he was facing the sack. It was rather fitting that Lampard's side smashed the club record with a 97th-minute smash-and-grab victory at home to Robins' new side, Stoke City. As the former boss made his way down the CBS Arena tunnel, he was serenaded by home supporters, thankful for all he had done to arise the phoenix from the ashes. They had closure.

Lampard, for his part, has acted with grace, class and decorum all throughout his short time at Coventry, insisting fans ought to have given Robins a special ovation prior to Saturday's 3-2 win. He even admitted to wanting to get in on that act himself.

"They shouldn't worry about offending me. They have been supporting the team great since I have come in and given me great support as well," Lampard said pre-match. "I have no ego in the game and I think Mark deserves a great reception, and I don't mind how the fans show that. I am more concerned about how our team play.

"Mark will clearly get an amazing reception from our fans and I completely understand that and I’ll be involved in that. You have to respect all the work he did at the club. I think he's a great football person who has always carried himself well; I've crossed his path a few times and everyone will be appreciative of his time here."

On Tuesday, Lampard makes his first return to Derby since he left the club in 2019. The Rams are in a far different state to when he was in charge, now under stable new owners and a new manager in John Eustace, tasked with keeping them in the second tier with the team currently 22nd in the Championship table.

Lampard's ability as an orator was on display again in his pre-match press conference: "I had a great time at Derby. I loved the club, the history, the fanbase that were really, really good with me. And when I left, I obviously left to go to Chelsea, which was my club as a player for so many years, so I hope that they respect that point, even though it's history now.

"And I am looking forward to going back. I've got a lot of friends that I still get in touch with behind the scenes at Derby and yeah, I've got nothing but good feelings from that year. So I'm not asking for anything on the day, but I'd like to think it... It won't be what Mark got here at Coventry, but I certainly have a good relationship with the club and would feel nothing different about Derby whatever happens on Tuesday. I had a great year there and it's a fantastic football club. It was my first year of management and so I was learning a lot and working hard. And again, it was a good group."

Lampard has admitted to having conversations with the likes of Manchester City's Pep Guardiola and Brentford's Thomas Frank during his year or so out of work, with these interactions giving him the fuel within to go again.

Since departing Derby, Lampard has had to eat a lot of humble pie. He's had to go away and do a lot of reflecting. The gift of the gab was there, but not necessarily the tactical nous. Now, at the age of 46, he's piecing together all of the little tidbits needed to be a good manager and is on the way back up. Maybe this is his level, maybe he's ready to use all this information to achieve something greater. At least he's had the humility to go back to square one and try again.