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Coventry City could hardly have imagined a poorer opening to their first season back in the Premier League.

The Sky Blues have played four and lost all four. New arrival Taiwo Awoniyi was sent off against Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday, leaving his team-mates to battle on in a match that took their goals conceded tally to 10.

Frank Lampard's side have still not managed to score a single goal at the other end. Only Tottenham Hotspur can say the same, and even their defensive record is only half as bad.

There is plenty of doom and gloom around Coventry, and with good reason. History suggests promoted sides that begin with four straight defeats usually finish the season in the Premier League relegation places.

Lampard is facing outside scrutiny based purely on results, but a significant section of Coventry supporters understand the brutal reality of stepping up to the Premier League and value the work Lampard is doing away from the mainstream spotlight.

Of course, these are difficult times. The results are nowhere near where they need to be. The Brighton match was a harsh reminder that some afternoons this season will be very tough to take. No one is pretending otherwise, least of all Lampard himself.

But supporters are, by and large, staying calm, and the same should apply to Sky Blues owner Doug King. Nothing in football lasts forever, but Lampard can continue his work knowing that his chairman is his strongest backer in the game.

There was never any hiding from the scale of the challenge ahead when King and Coventry handed Lampard a new three-year contract.

King made it absolutely clear in the summer that he would stand by his manager, explaining that he is more concerned with the club doing the right things in the right way than with shallow, surface-level results.

It is a confident stance and reflects a notably enlightened understanding of just how enormous the challenge is for clubs newly arrived in the Premier League.

There are 19 other teams trying to beat Coventry, and King appears unwilling to make a self-defeating decision in a moment of frustration.

That is the part likely to be missing from the broader debate in the weeks and months ahead. King should be drawing on the early stages of his patience, not reaching the end of it, because Lampard has earned that trust.

In FourFourTwo's view, this is not the moment to lose composure. Coventry are in a grim position, but King and the Sky Blues fanbase seem broadly aware that avoiding such a situation was never guaranteed. And failing to avoid it does not erase Lampard's positive development as a manager over the past two years.

When Coventry face Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday, it will be the Premier League's bottom two sides taking the field at the Coventry Building Society Arena.

Unai Emery enjoys wide support at Villa because of what he has achieved. It should be no different for Lampard.