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As Coventry City get set for their first season back in the top flight in a generation, there are very few people kidding themselves about the scale of the challenge awaiting them over the next nine months.

Manager Frank Lampard secured promotion in impressive fashion last season, with the Sky Blues responding to their 2025 play-off semi-final loss to Sunderland by cruising to the Championship title and ending the campaign 11 points ahead of the teams behind them.

The former England and Chelsea midfielder is now up against a very different kind of assignment, though, as he looks to make sure Coventry do not suffer an immediate return from the Premier League.

If Lampard wants guidance on how to tackle the season ahead, he need not look too far, because his uncle Harry Redknapp is among the most seasoned managers of the modern era and knows plenty about surviving in the Premier League.

Even so, Redknapp himself is wary of the size of the task facing his nephew, despite watching the 48-year-old thrive in the dugout last season.

“He’s surprised me,” Redknapp told FourFourTwo. “I didn’t see them going up at the start of the year.

“I didn’t see Coventry in it at all. I thought if they could finish sixth, maybe make the play-offs, it’d be a great season for him.”

If Coventry are to avoid relegation this year, Lampard will once again need to outperform expectations.

“What he’s got to do is make sure he goes into the new Premier League season prepared,” Redknapp added. “Are they going to be good enough to stay up? That’s the problem.”

Redknapp also stressed how quickly highly rated coaches who shine in the second tier can find themselves under huge pressure.

“We’ve seen it so many times before,” he said. “Good young managers that know the game and have done an excellent job, quickly watch all their hard work unravel.

“When results aren’t going your way, you have people calling up the radio. You get idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about coming on and going, ‘Well, yeah, we’re losing because he's a Championship manager’.

“What a load of rubbish.”