Coventry manager Frank Lampard says keeping the club in the Premier League might be the biggest challenge of his career and he would take a 17th-place finish if offered it now.
Lampard led the Sky Blues back to the Premier League for the first time in 25 years by winning the Championship last season, a year on from play-off heartbreak.
His side are not favourites to be relegated - Hull take up that status - but most bookmakers have Coventry as odds-on to go down.
Asked if this represented the biggest challenge of his career, Lampard told an audience at the Premier League's launch event: "I think maybe yes, and I don't want to sound defeatist in that way because it's fine.
"Life's about having challenges. We're on a good trajectory as a club. The fan base are with us. The players I love working with, so that's great. That's a great base. But of course, we study a lot of the teams that go up and come down. That's pretty regular. There's some teams that have come up and stayed up, and you go, 'What did they do?' So you know, we we have to take on the challenge in our own way with the players that we have and try and make our mark."
Lampard says Sunderland have offered his side a good reference point in the manner in which they earned promotion, spent on a host of new players and excelled in the top tier.
Coventry have backed Lampard in the transfer window, with significant deals executed for the likes of Caleb Yirenkyi, Carl Rushworth, Loum Tchaouna, Aurele Amenda and Taiwo Awoniyi, as well as a club-return for Gustavo Hamer.
Asked if 17th would be an outcome he would take now, Lampard added: "I would. I want to say more than that. I want us to compete every week. You look at what Sunderland did. They ended up in Europe, so I don't like setting benchmarks low. But of course, we start with that as a as a baseline, but we want to go and compete, and maybe we can do better than that."
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