I think the main thing that will help your club in the future will be the influence of Lampard and Edwards in attracting better talent to join you. As a player (if not a manager) Lampard was a superb midfielder for both England and the previous clubs he once played for.
Any emerging talent, from any league in the Prem or EFL, or players from those leagues who are good but can’t get a game for whatever reason at their club, would jump at the chance of joining Coventry and being coached by him. His name is a big draw for players and chairman of clubs who want to be connected with him. That’s why the chairmen of Derby County, Chelsea, Everton and now Coventry City have hired him. It’s the same for Rooney and why he’s had managerial spells at Derby County, Birmingham City and now Plymouth Argyle - those chairmen (like yours) hope the positives outweigh the negatives when hiring these types of what I call “celebrity managers.” The fact that it didn’t work out for Rooney at his two previous clubs is neither here nor there. What matters is that it didn’t deter the Plymouth chairman from hiring him after those two failures, and it hasn’t deterred your chairman from hiring Lampard after his mixed success managing both Derby and Everton as well as two stints with his former club, Chelsea.
In Joe Edwards (as Millwall were starting to find out before they sacked him) his previous connections coaching England’s youth players, as well as coaching (with Lampard as manager) Derby, Everton and Chelsea, would be invaluable in how our chairman, James Berylson, wanted to take our club forward in the 21st century. Berylson wanted to hire a young, experienced coach, full of modern ideas in how the game should be played and who could attract better players to implement those ideas, and Joe Edwards fitted the bill. It was just unfortunate for Edwards (and us as fans) that he had inherited a squad of players (from the disastrous Gary Rowett era) who had varying degrees of talent, but which didn’t have enough talent collectively to mould them into the attacking force he believed they could be.
Edwards was the classic case of right manager, wrong time, but the majority of his games as Millwall manager were poor and he had us perilously close to the relegation spots which forced Berylson to make the decision to sack hIm or face potentially next season in league 1. Neil Harris, when he left us in 2019, had told the then chairman, John Berylson (James’ father) that if the club ever needed him he would happily answer the call to come back. James Berylson made that call in February and now, almost a year on, it looks very likely that we’ll be enjoying our ninth straight season in the Championship when our campaign kicks off for the 2025/2026 season next year.
Not bad for a small club with limited financial resources who seem quite able to hold their own against the big spenders of big clubs in this league (as well as those relegated Prem teams) all of whom are able to splash millions on just one player if need be, when our most expensive signing ever (Ivanovic) has cost us this season the princely sum of almost 3 million Euros!
So all is not lost for Coventry City if both Lampard and Edwards click with the current crop of players you have (and those that might be coming in the January transfer window). And if it doesn’t work out with Lampard, well, you could always fall back on his No. 2 to take over. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a young, experienced, progressive coach like Joe Edwards at the helm?
