Coventry City's best XI as Frank Lampard weighs up mouth-watering prospect of a fully fit squad
With a fair wind and following seas, Frank Lampard should soon have a fully fit Coventry City squad from which to choose for the final run-in of the season.
The Sky Blues boss has been without two of the club’s top players for several weeks and, in Haji Wright’s case, unable to call on the club’s leading scorer throughout his first two-and-a-half months in charge. Nine of the head coach’s 18 games to date have also been without the services of influential skipper Ben Sheaf.
But the good news is that both players are due back very soon, with Wright returning to training last week from an ankle injury and stepping up his strength and fitness work, while midfielder Sheaf was due back on the grass this week as he steps up his comeback from a calf strain.
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Throw in the fact that Ephron Mason-Clark is now back in the mix on a phased return of building up his match minutes, plus the exciting addition of free agent Jamie Paterson, who is yet to make his debut, and Lampard will soon have some exciting options at his disposal.
Not only will he be able to pick his strongest eleven for the first time but also have an enviable choice of game changing subs to make a fresh impact if things aren’t going quite to plan.
With that in mind, then, what is the City’s boss’s best XI when everyone is fully fit and back up to speed?
Despite a shaky start to his Coventry career, Oliver Dovin has since shown himself to be the summer signing we all hoped he’d be. Although still young and learning the game, the Swede has produced some consistently impressive and important saves since returning to the side and is the club’s best goalkeeper on current form.
Although Lampard has enjoyed success with a back three and wing-backs in a bid to navigate through the injuries to the wingers and stem the flow of goals that were being conceded, it feels inevitable that he will revert to his favoured back four at some stage. If and when that happens, Milan van Ewijk is clearly first choice right-back while Jake Bidwell is arguably the strongest and most consistent option at left-back.
Bobby Thomas and Liam Kitching – who served City so well as a central defensive pair last season – have once again emerged as the strongest centre-halves ahead of Joel Latibeaudiere and Luis Binks.
The addition of Matt Grimes in the January transfer window has brought real quality and experience to the midfield, and the 29-year-old has quickly established himself as one of the first names on the team sheet. If Sheaf can get back to his best form quickly after a stuttering start to the campaign, it makes for a mouth-watering partnership in the middle of the park with arguably two of the division’s best operators in that position, with Jamie Allen, Josh Eccles and Victor Torp all more than able back-up options.
Jack Rudoni has performed at a consistently high level all season and might well revert to the number 10 role in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with wide men either side of him in the form of Wright or Mason-Clark on the left flank and Tatsuhiro Sakamoto on the right. Paterson is another attacking option on the right as well as the left, but the versatile 33-year-old can also operate more centrally and may find himself swapping with Rudoni later on in games.
That leaves the lone man up front, and, going on current form, Lampard can’t look much further than Ellis Simms, although a rejuvenated Brandon Thomas-Asante will be breathing down his neck and offers fresh legs and boundless energy. It will also be interesting to see how Lampard fits both Mason-Clark and Wright into his team. One suspects that he’ll rotate the pair on the left wing to start with, certainly until Wright gets his sharpness back, but there may well be a case for the USA international to give Simms a run for his money more centrally.
The one big positive that has come out of Lampard’s first few months in charge is that he’s been forced to experiment with different formations to find a way round the injuries issues, and that’s given him the scope to make in-game changes to suit the available personnel. The players are now comfortable playing different systems which makes the squad really adaptable, so there may be occasions when he goes back to three at the back and starts with two up top.
Here’s my best XI when everyone is fit (in a 4-2-3-1 formation, not 4-2-4 as specified in the graphic):
Pick your Coventry City best XI below...
