Frank Lampard had been told of the tale behind one of football's strangest bitter rivalries, long before Coventry had secured a play-off date with Sunderland.
'It's not my rivalry,' said Lampard when warned the Wearsiders might descend on the CBS Arena on Friday in search of revenge, smiling as he added: 'But I am Coventry, so it is now. That's what football is about.'
There are some in Sunderland still aggrieved about what happened at the end of the 1976-77 season when they, Coventry and Bristol City went into the final fixture all at risk of finishing the final relegation place.