EFL Championship league leaders Coventry City seek to gain promotion to the Premier League. Manager Frank Lampard faces his former team Derby County, who he took to the final of the playoffs where they beat Leeds United but lost to Aston Villa. They finished sixth in the Championship that season. After this, Lamps managed Chelsea and Everton. Coventry City haven’t been in the top tier of English football for twenty-five years.
Carl Rushworth starts in goal while Frank Onyeka starts, who is on loan from London club Brentford. Ben Brereton-Diaz is the standout player for Derby County. Sakamoto, the Coventry winger had three goals in his last four games. It is highly likely that with an eight point lead, Coventry aren’t going to fold in the final seven games of the season, and are certain to get an automatic promotion place. John Eustace also has aspirations of his own, as he seeks to get Derby County into the playoff spaces for the third spot to get into the Premier League as an automatic promotion place seems out of reach for them at this point.
Starting next season, teams as low as the eighth position could find themselves playing in the PL in this enhanced format.
The Rams haven’t been in the Premier League since 2007/08, in which they amassed a lowly 11 points which hasn’t been eclipsed by any other team sice, although Wolverhampton Wanderers may have feared that they would get this ignominious honour this season.
The EFL Championship is known for being more direct than the Premier League, but that is slowly changing as teams are incorporating some of the ideals of possession football.
When the goalkeeper has the ball for Derby County, the center-backs go wide forming a sort of back 3. It also seems that a tactic of Coventry is to go direct to Ellis Simms as he has the height and physical presence to hold up the ball as a target man.
In the twelfth minute, Coventry had a free kick, and resulting in this was Frank Onyeka’s cross-turned shot which gave the lead to his namesake, Lampard.
Lampard seems to like the use of fullbacks in a traditional manner instead of the inversion that we see in the Premier League in teams like Chelsea under Enzo Maresca and Manchester City under Pep. Coventry are doing well in keeping possession of the ball after the goal.
As Derby pile men forward, Coventry City start to find space to hit them on the counter. Derby build up mainly with short passes to the centre-backs. In addition to that, they slow down the tempo of the game, only increasing it when they have a chance to go long. The Rams also deliver early crosses into the box at times and balance this with their patient possession game to switch things up.
When in a low block, Coventry defend in a 4-4-2 and try to set pressing traps outside instead of in the middle of the pitch. Even though Derby are dominant in terms of possession, they were not causing trouble to Rushworth. This was until the thirty-eighth minute as Carl Rushworth made a huge error as the ball found Ben Brereton Diaz who headed into an empty net to equalize the game.
A few minutes before the goal, Derby County moved the bal from side to side, hoping to get crosses into the box, but still being patient while doing so which tries to increase the quality of chances. Sometimes, one of the holding midfielders drop deeper to form the back three when Derby build up to progress the ball. Derby almost took the lead on the stroke of half time as an error from Onyeka left Jaydon Banel one on one with the goalkeeper. Rushworth’s brilliant save prevented the score from swinging in Derby’s favour.
At half-time, Derby had 58% of the ball compared to Coventry’s 42. They have had the same number of shots while Derby has one less shot on target while also they loaded the box with fourteen crosses and only two crosses were successful, one of which was for the equalizer.
Coventry City started the second half the better of the two teams. Lampard clearly told his players to keep more of the ball and hit crosses into the box with solid wing play. Joe Ward made a terrible attempt at a pass in the fifty-sixth minute which led to a chance for Coventry which wasn’t taken.
The Sky Blues have been the dominant team in the second half as they produce chance after chance without any end product. Lampard made three changes as Rudoni, Wright and Mason-Clark being introduced.
Kudos to Frank Lampard as he took a team which was in seventeenth position if the EFL Championship to the playoffs and now they are in first place. And they got a deserved goal in the sixty-eighth minute as Jack Rudoni tucked the ball into the right of the goal, beating a helpless O’Donnell in the process. Since the second half began, Derby County have been lacklustre in the sense that they are almost like passive bystanders, just allowing Coventry to wrestle back control of the game without much fuss. They need to keep possession like they did in the first half.
However, in the seventy-sixth minute, a Derby counter left Brereton-Diaz one on one with the goalkeeper Rushworth and the goalie fouled him (at least according to the referee’s interpretation), and he awarded a penalty to the Rams. The player who won the penalty, Brereton-Diaz, converted the penalty as he went down the middle. It’s now 2 goals apiece.
After the Derby goal, Coventry pile up numbers looking for a winning goal. And it was Rudoni again who found the net in the eightieth minute from a cross into the box.
After Rudoni’s goal, Derby look to tie the game. It’s like each team wakes up after conceding and pushes on for another goal. Mason Clarke had a chance in the eighty-ninth minute to kill the game for Coventry, but was unable to take it and tumbled in the eighteen yard box.
In summary, Coventry have been the slightly better team, especially in the second half. Although Derby had the upper hand in the first half, Lampard has definitely galvanized his men, and that has caused his team to dominate the second half and seize control of the game. If Derby want a playoff place, they need to play with more intensity and not drop off as they did in this game. It’s also looking very likely for Coventry to get promoted, so they need to buy a few players to keep them up, as they can make a good account of themselves in England’s top tier.
Ore M. 
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