Frank Lampard wants his Coventry City side to take inspiration from Sunderland and Leeds United as they prepare for a first Premier League campaign in 25 years.
Sunderland and Leeds both avoided the drop comfortably last season, becoming the first newly-promoted teams to survive in the top flight since the 2022-23 campaign.
Coventry, who start by travelling to champions Arsenal on Friday, are odds-on with many bookmakers to be relegated straight back to the Championship, along with fellow promoted teams Hull and Ipswich.
But Lampard is taking encouragement from how Regis Le Bris and Daniel Farke led their teams to safety last season.
“They’ve changed that rhetoric a little bit. Those stories are important for us to analyse and we’ve looked a lot at those two specific teams,” Lampard said.
“To see how they played gives us inspiration, but it will be us that manages to make that story for ourselves — but, of course we’ve looked at those stories. We want to be confident in what we do, it’s our job to set out the strategy for the boys game by game — and they deserve to be here.”
Coventry have brought in seven new signings so far, with their summer spending surpassing £120 million ($163m).
Sidiki Cherif became their most recent addition when he arrived from Fenerbahce on Wednesday and Lampard knew his side needed to be strengthened.
“For teams who get promoted we know what the gap is, history tells you that,” Lampard said. “We knew we had work to do. We tried to strike the balance working smartly and strategically in the window.
“We are stepping up a big level now and need competition both in training and game time. The rigours of the Premier League mean we’ve had to add players in different areas.”
Coventry’s return to the Premier League caps off the club’s remarkable rise from the depths of the Football League back to the top level of the English game.
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City went into administration in 2013 and were made to play at Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium from July 2013 until September 2014, before being forced away from Coventry again in 2019 when they shared St Andrew’s with Birmingham for two years.
Lampard believes the club’s return to the Premier League meant more than football.
He added: “It was a great year for us and the celebrations were great. It went beyond football in this city. It went to a place where the city and football club went through tough times so it heightened the feeling of what was achieved.
“I’m very excited to be here and get a club that’s been out of the Premier League for 25 years and get them back in. It is exciting at this moment but we want to challenge and do well.”
