Frank Lampard reveals players’ reaction to first session with Matt Grimes & why he stayed away from Swansea
Coventry City snatching Swansea’s captain and best player in the days leading up to playing them turned out to be hugely beneficial to securing the club’s first victory in South Wales.
However, Sky Blues boss Frank Lampard claimed that his team’s preparation was, in fact, made harder because he wasn’t sure how the Swans would respond and react to the 29-year-old midfielder’s absence.
Asked if after the 2-0 victory – courtesy of first half goals from Ellis Simms and Brandon Thomas-Asante – it had been a good time to play Swansea, the City head coach said: “I don’t know. With Matt leaving and being that level of player is a big deal and it was difficult for us to analyse them pre-game because he’s such a big part of their play, and their build, particularly.
“But I think I have to give them a bit more respect than that. I have watched a lot of their games recently and they are competing, they create chances and they do interesting rotations and are hard to play against. We may have caught them on a difficult day.
“They are not in their best form; we’ve all been there. But we are in really good form and it’s maybe credit to us for how we made the game feel.”
Interestingly, Grimes opted to stay away from the Swansea.com Stadium after bringing an end to his ten year stay at the club, instead taking part in a training session back at Ryton.
As for his first day of training with his new team-mates on Friday, Lampard revealed: “Training yesterday on Matt’s first day, it was really good and not just because of Matt but because other players were going, ‘ok, here’s another quality player coming in.’
“That’s a nice feeling, so let’s keep that going.”
Asked if he feels it would be too much of a risk to disrupt a winning team by throwing Grimes in against Leeds on Wednesday night, Lampard said: “We’ll see. I don’t want to pick the team now, especially on the back of what the lads have done today.”
