Coventry City are back on track with Premier League safety blueprint

Frank Lampard after the win over Newcastle United(Image: Getty Images)

‘Wherever we find the points and we can pick them up we will take this because in the end we know we need, more or less, a point average of one per game’.

So said not Frank Lampard, nor Doug King, nor indeed anyone inside the Coventry City camp.

In fact those words were uttered 14 months ago and belonged to Leeds United manager Daniel Farke.

When, in August 2025, he revealed the Whites’ calculations Farke was a coach who had never succeeded in keeping a club in the Premier League. Twice he’d tried with Norwich City, twice he’d failed.

Which is probably why even after taking Leeds into the top flight and having amassed 100 points in the Championship, there was doubt he’d be able to keep them there and very real conjecture about his future at Elland Road.

That debate made the summer tittle-tattle around Frank Lampard’s future look like garden-party gossip at the vicarage.

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The Sky Blues boss has never set the club a points target, never mind a points-per-game ratio, but it is a very useful guide.

West Ham went down with 39 last term but in the two years before that the safety mark was in the 20s and prior to last season you have to go back to Birmingham City and 2011 to find the next instance where a point-a-game, 38 from 38, wouldn’t be enough to stay up.

Consecutive victories over Nottingham Forest and Newcastle United mean City are now six from six and having struggled to get off the mark, they are now back on track.

Arguably they might even be ahead of schedule. Not all fixtures are equal, Arsenal away is not the same as a trip to the City Ground but similarly Newcastle at home is not Liverpool, nor even Brighton, at the CBS Arena.

What City have now though, that they didn’t have when they went to the Emirates on opening day, is more than six points. They have an idea of what’s going to work – and not work – at Premier League level.

Sidiki Cherif of Coventry City celebrates scoring (Image: Getty Images)

Lampard has way more information from 540 minutes of top flight football than he did from 540 summer hours spent grinding film.

His players have confidence and supporters have belief. Add that together and it’s called momentum.

Belief can be sapped, confidence is more quickly lost than it is gained and momentum is harder to start that it is to maintain but for now the Sky Blue bandwagon is rolling and the narrative has changed.

Pundits are talking about all three promoted sides staying up and an upset apple-cart, betting companies are sending their usual ‘Super Computer’ emails which are starting to predict City safety.

As for Lampard and King, all they have to do is ignore the noise and stick to the metronomic beat of a point per game and they’ll almost certainly emulate the previous year’s Championship winners.

Football Correspondent for Reach, journalist covering the Premier League and EFL for more than 20 years, a lover of most non-animal based or traffic-related sports and extreme cold water. Brian joined the Birmingham Post team as Rugby Union Correspondent and spent 12 years also covering football, tennis and athletics before becoming Birmingham City reporter for a further nine. He spent two years as Content Editor on the Midlands Football desk. Brian is also a host on the Keep Right On podcast.

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