Birmingham City beat Frank Lampard’s Coventry City 3-2 at St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park
15:30, 04 Jan 2026Updated 15:38, 04 Jan 2026
Coventry City manager Frank Lampard
Frank Lampard believes Coventry City should have been awarded a penalty at the death in their defeat to Birmingham City and insisted ‘the game was there for us’.
Blues became only the third Championship team to defeat the league leaders this season thanks to goals from Marvin Ducksch (2) and Lewis Koumas.
Coventry twice hit back through Josh Eccles and Ellis Simms and Lampard felt that Ephron Mason-Clark should have been awarded a penalty late on.
Lampard said: “We have a clear penalty at the end of the game. For some reason, we are on a run where we, as Coventry City, are not getting penalties. These ones are really clear.
“I think there’s a handball one but handball’s a funny rule, pulling someone down isn’t a funny rule. It’s clear cut.”
Coventry enjoyed the lion’s share of possession and had more shots than Blues, which gave Lampard the impression that his team deserved to travel back down the M6 with something to show for their efforts.
He added: “I don’t like to talk about opposition but I normally credit them if they beat us but here I think the game was there for us to go out and win.
“In terms of general play, we had a lot of the ball. It wasn’t a game where we felt a really hot atmosphere and big pressure and things like that. It didn’t feel like that.
“It was there for us to take control and we did, but without the extra urgency to hit them on the sides of the pitch like we normally do, with the speed and repetition that we normally have.”
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