Sunderland remain bottom of the Premier League table after a defeat to Coventry City

Frank Lampard said he was 'very happy' with Coventry City's performance after they climbed out of the relegation zone with a 3-1 win over Sunderland.

The result also increased the gap between the two sides to four points in the early Premier League table.

"Very happy, I think the performance was good, the energy was good. Quality, I think we had good variation in our game. It showed in the goals we scored, in terms of we could play and play well from the back and we also could be direct and effective in our game, which is us at our best.

Similar to how Sunderland play in a way, I think, in a sense. But yeah, the energy we brought and the positive feeling in the performance which rubbed off on the stadium allowed us to get ourselves in front in the game and of course they get the penalty and score. But even then, I think we continued to see out the game in a very professional manner.

"So I'm very happy with everything."

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The Coventry boss made four changes for the game and though one of them was enforced due to defender Bobby Thomas's calf issue, Lampard made the tough call to drop club captain Matt Grimes to the bench.

"There's two things," Lampard said afterwards.

"There's my opinion of players to select when I'm thinking about the squad and how we have to use the squad. Sometimes to bring in freshness is a good thing. The issue for us is sometimes some of our players have not played in the Premier League so they're desperate to, but they're learning as they go and this is the highest level.

"Sometimes they come into the club and need to adapt a little bit so sometimes you feel like now they're more ready and you want to get them into the team," he added.

"I think after last week I felt that was the right time to do that. And also players that train at a level that says, 'put me in the team'. And when I think of that, I'm thinking predominantly about Victor Torp because he's been training at such a level with a great professionalism about him that's a real example and I'm very, very happy for him today. I thought he played great."

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