Coventry manager Frank Lampard expressed empathy for his Plymouth counterpart Wayne Rooney after their first encounter as managers ended in a resounding 4-0 victory for the Sky Blues.

The home side bounced back from their own heavy defeat at Portsmouth just before Christmas with an emphatic win that helped them move further away from the Championship relegation zone, thanks to first-half strikes from Tatsuhiro Sakamoto, a Josh Eccles brace, and Ephron Mason-Clark.

For Plymouth, it was another disheartening away day, leaving them rooted to the bottom of the table and now three points from safety.

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Reflecting on his former England teammate's situation, Lampard remarked: "The longer you do this for – and I’m not an absolute young manager anymore, in a way – you understand there is a time that this can happen."

He added, "You try and find balance, I’m not going to say too much [to Rooney]."

Lampard also said, "We’ll try and chat football because everyone has challenges in this job, it’s not for me to comment on Wayne’s job there as much as it would be for him to discuss what goes on here."

He continued, praising his team's performance: "It was a game we won, we played well and I absolutely wish him the best."

Lampard concluded by highlighting the importance of reaction in the league: "It was a really good performance. Last week was difficult, but it happens in this league and it’s always more important how you react to things."

He praised his team's response: "We’ve had a good week with the lads, today they performed really well, we looked good at times early in the game and then kept going, kept creating and being more clinical."

Coventry quickly took the lead when Sakamoto headed in Ben Sheaf's cross. Eccles followed up with a low drive, before Mason-Clark exploited a gap in the Plymouth defence to make it 3-0.

Eccles scored again just before half-time, and Plymouth's woes worsened with Callum Wright's late red card. Rooney expressed disappointment over the manner of the goals conceded, saying: "What I was really disappointed with was the goals we conceded because we know what Coventry’s strengths were."

"We identified them, especially about putting crosses into the box towards the back post and then to concede so early on exactly on what we knew they’d do was very disappointing."

"The big issue for us today was lads didn’t switch on quick enough."

Former Derby County boss Rooney also labelled Wright's tackle as "It’s a silly tackle [from Wright]. I think he has a wild tackle just before that, and I get it, I’ve been there myself as a player."

, adding: "It’s disappointing because we prepared well for the game, we’ve done everything we felt was right for the game and then all the fans paid a lot of money, because the ticket prices were quite high."

"They’ve obviously travelled over this [festive] period and to come and see the performance, especially in the first half, they’ve every right to be disappointed."