Frank Lampard has told Coventry City supporters to “just worry about us” as the Championship leaders prepare to face relegated Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday at 12:30 BST. Coventry know a win could leave them on the brink of automatic promotion, depending on what happens elsewhere before and during the weekend.
The picture is straightforward but not simple. If Millwall fail to win at West Bromwich Albion on Friday at 20:00 BST, Coventry will go into Saturday knowing victory would force Middlesbrough to beat Portsmouth at the Riverside at 15:00 BST to prevent promotion celebrations this weekend. Lampard said the message for everyone at the club was to stay focused on their own match and not get dragged into the permutations around them.
“I know they won’t, but we know what we need to do, and thankfully we’re in that position [rather than,] if it was nip and tuck and the last day of the season. We’re not, so just worry about us,” he said. Lampard added that Coventry’s fans, players and staff should understand the game will not be theirs by right simply because of Wednesday’s position, but that if Coventry play their own way they can make the afternoon feel the way they want it to.
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Sheffield Wednesday arrive in the middle of a season shaped by financial and ownership problems, and they became the first team in EFL history to be relegated as early as February. They have won only one league game this season. Coventry already saw the atmosphere Wednesday can generate earlier in the campaign, when Lampard said he felt the crowd at the earlier meeting while the club was still in the middle of its troubles.
Lampard said he had grown up with Wednesday as a top team in Division One and the Premier League, and he described their situation as painful to watch. He said the fans, players and staff had come through it with credit and predicted the club would return because of its size. For Coventry, though, sentiment will matter only after the final whistle: the immediate task is to beat the team in front of them and let the rest of the table fall where it may.
