Can anyone stop Coventry running away with the Championship title?

The Championship season has not yet reached the halfway stage but one team are proving themselves to be head and shoulders above the others. 

Were it not for a last-gasp Dan Ballard header in last season's playoffs, there is a chance that it may be Coventry and not Sunderland ripping up the established order in the Premier League this season. 

But rather than wallow in disappointment, the Sky Blues have had the bit between their teeth. With 18 games gone this season Coventry, 14-1 shots ante-post, are already ten points clear of the chasing pack and have racked up a half-century of goals. 

The Racing Post's Mark Langdon spoke to Coventry fan and host of The Anytime Notebook Podcast Gavin Horsfall to find out why the sky is the limit for free-wheeling Cov. 

Did you expect to be in contention this season? Absolutely. The last few seasons of progress never felt short-term. This season feels more like the culmination of a team that has been making really smart footballing decisions over the past few seasons. We know the division, we've bought the right players and sold them at the right time. The chairman is ruthless with his ambitions and we've been knocking on the door over the last few seasons. It felt like our time to go and get it done.

How does it feel to be a Coventry fan at the moment? It's built into our DNA that despair is never far around the corner so we're all just enjoying the ride at the moment. When we heard about the stadium acquisition I think most of us said we'd take a mid-table finish and own our stadium – then we went and beat QPR 7-1 on the same day and expectations never really dampened since then! Matchday experiences have improved beyond recognition, it's a great occasion now, we're selling out most weeks and the club is doing everything to make it feel like home. We're definitely not taking a mid-table finish now by the way!

Frank Lampard has done a great job. Has he surprised you? Lampard was just what we needed at just the right time. Mark Robins will get his statue built at the CBS eventually but you could sense towards the end of his tenure that the club were fed up with being plucky underdogs. Fed up with being everyone's favourite second team who took Manchester United to extra-time in an FA Cup semi-final. 

We didn't want to hear anymore about what a romantic story it was to go from League Two to being losing Championship playoff finalists. You knew as soon as Lampard walked in the players were in awe, the club was done making excuses, this is a player that has been in some of the most successful dressing rooms of the last 20 years and he knew how to set about giving this set of players the confidence to go and do the same. I hope he feels it was the right fit for him just as it was the right fit for us. 

Who have been the key players? There are match-winners everywhere you look across the side. Ephron Mason-Clark, Jack Rudoni, Victor Torp – most of us would have let Brandon Thomas-Asante go in the summer but now he's the first name on the team sheet. 

All those make a difference on the scoresheet but I've seen enough of this league over the last decade to know that you need an orchestrator in the middle of the park to run the show and how we managed to steal Matt Grimes from Swansea for £3.5m might be the most important bit of business this club has done in 20 years. 

The Championship motors along at 100mph every week, but having Grimes in the middle to slow things down, make all the right decisions and retain the ball feels like cheating.

Are you good things for promotion and the title? We have to be. I've sat and watched some very good teams get promoted from this division – Leeds last season, Fulham and Bournemouth a few years ago, and we look every inch as dominant as those. 

Opportunities to get promoted don't come around too often, the relegated Premier League class of 24-25 felt like it would give teams like us a real chance of breaking into the automatic places and that's the way it has panned out. Mind you, a Leeds supporting friend of mine did warn me about what's to come: Sky messing with the fixture list during the run-in, desperate to build a narrative around "Cov throwing it away". We'll have plenty of challenges come our way but put in the levels we've shown already for anything like half of the remaining games and we'll be back.

Give us a bet for Ipswich on Saturday Lampard will have something planned for that Ipswich left-hand side, just like Oxford did. As soon as Leif Davis overcommits, expect to see Van Ewijk on his bike down the right. Back him to score at any time.

Analysis: Stats suggest there is no fluke about Sky Blues' superiority

By Joe Casey, Racing Post Sport

From League Two to runaway leaders of the Championship, via stops at Northampton and Birmingham, Coventry have been on quite a journey since they were last a Premier League club in 2001.

Playoff heartache and FA Cup semi-final disappointment have seen the Sky Blues classed as nearly-men in recent campaigns, but they are dominating this season's second tier in a way rarely seen before. 

Coventry are already ten points clear after only 18 games and as short as 1-5 to win the title, having started out as 14-1 shots.

Frank Lampard has taken what was a solid second-tier side under Mark Robins to a new level as he undertakes a redemption arc of his own as a manager.

To put it plainly, nobody is getting close to Cov in the Championship this season. They have scored 50 goals in 18 games, some 20 more than the next best, and their free-scoring forwards have been backed up by the second-best defence in the division, with only 18 goals conceded.

Ominously for Coventry's rivals, the underlying statistics suggest that there is no fluke about their superiority.

Lampard’s men have the best expected goal difference (+19.8), have taken the most shots (325), and have had by far the most touches in the opposition penalty area (544).

Set-pieces are back in a big way in this season's Premier League and Coventry are by far the best exponent of the growing trend in the second tier.

They have scored 19 goals from dead-ball situations, almost double that of the next-best team, and in Milan van Ewijk they have a long-throw weapon in the mould of Rory Delap.

The strength in depth available to Lampard is also unrivalled. Ten Coventry players have scored at least two league goals and the Sky Blues are responsible for four of the top six in the Championship top-scorer charts.

Carl Rushworth's summer arrival to take over in goal can also not be understated. Coventry ranked 20th out of 24 teams the Championship last season for post-shot expected goals (-1.7), but they rocketed to fourth on that metric (+3.6) with the Brighton loanee in net.

Midfield controller Matt Grimes leads the division in completed passes with 1,165, and he is second only to Barry Bannan in terms of key passes made (38).

Defence may be one area for Lampard to tweak as both teams have scored in seven of Coventry's last eight games, but it is tough to pick holes in the runaway leaders.

A visit to Ipswich this weekend will be one of Cov's sternest tests of the campaign, but right now the Sky Blues are not just playing up but looking up.

Coventry were second to only last season's Championship winners Leeds on Entain's xG model following Frank Lampard's arrivalCredit: Getty Images

The bookmaker's view: 'Our season-long projection model now puts their true odds at roughly 2-7 to win the league'

Ivor Davies, principal pre-match football trader at Betfair and Paddy Power

From our perspective, Coventry have been a solid position in the outright books throughout. 

We took a relatively positive view of them pre-season as mentioned in the Racing Post earlier in the summer, and felt that the 14-1 available before kick-off slightly underestimated their profile. With fewer uncertainties than some of the teams priced above them, we opted to keep them a touch shorter. 

Ipswich were understandably very popular, while Southampton, Sheffield United and Leicester occupied larger portions of the book. Our only really notably poor position before the season began was Birmingham, who attracted strong support as you might expect. 

We were encouraged by Coventry’s underlying numbers last season. Leeds were exceptional on our xG model but from Lampard’s arrival onwards Coventry rated a clear second. Maintaining that level, which they largely have done, was always going to make them a difficult side to oppose this season. 

While some regression is to be expected, they’re a deserved short-price favourite at this stage and good value for their current position, with our season-long projection model now putting their true odds at roughly 2-7 to win the league and around 1-12 for promotion.

On our week-to-week ratings they sit fractionally behind Ipswich by around a tenth of a goal, although they lead most shot-based models. We’ve upgraded them by almost three-tenths of a goal since August and unsurprisingly they’re now one of the more popular sides in accumulators for punters on a weekly basis.

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