Coventry City: Chairman Doug King says Frank Lampard links to Chelsea out of my control

King claimed Lampard was in “a happy place” at Coventry and added: “You can see how emotionally connected [Lampard] is with the city, you can see what it meant to him to get promotion and then the title and I think he’s found a happy place at the moment.

“It doesn’t mean there’s not going to be some staggering bid for him in the summer and he’ll have to make his choices, because he’s shown his credentials as a high quality head coach, but I’m not going to comment on that, I can’t control it.

“I just think he’s happy, I’m happy, everybody’s happy, we’ve just got smiles on our faces and we don’t worry about what may or may not happen for the head coach.”

King also revealed Coventry have been planning for the Premier League for a while but says simply throwing money at the challenge “would be a mistake”.

He said: “We’ve been top of the league since October and were quite a way ahead. We’ve been having due analysis of what we’d like to do for quite a period of time.

“Everybody wants to know everything immediately – I’ve been clear – let it sink in.

“We’re trying to work out a philosophy. Ultimately we will decide on what our strategy is going to be and then we will tell no one and will try and quietly, stealthily get on with it to try and give us any and every advantage to be successful in the top league.”

Asked about the prospects of avoiding relegation in their first top-flight season since 2000-01, King said: “It’s taken a long time to get there. Obviously we have beaten two teams who will join us so we have only got to beat one more, if we can beat them again next year, right? If you put it like that.

“I’m embracing it, the team’s embracing it, it’s exciting, it’s a challenge. We had a challenge to get out of the Championship and we’ve achieved that in a spectacular way and now the next one is to challenge ourselves to see what we can do in the top league.”

King said simply throwing “zillions” at signing new players was not the way to approach the Premier League, adding: “People spend money very badly at times, I would say what we do is we look for value.

“A very expensive footballer might still be value, there are lot of footballers who are very expensive but who are not value.

“We will do what we’ve got to do, but don’t associate staying in the league and being very successful just with how much money you throw out of the door, I think that would be a mistake.”