Why dealing with defeat is key for Lampard at Coventry
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Managing a newly-promoted team in the Premier League is very demanding, as Frank Lampard is finding out at Coventry.
It's the highest level, not just for the technical ability of the players that your team faces but also the sheer physicality that these players possess, and it feels like the gap to the Championship is getting greater every season.
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From my experience in the same situation, you have to be really smart in the way you approach each game and recognise the importance of preparation for each specific opponent, because your team has to be organised in possession, and definitely out of possession.
Teams in the Premier League counter-attack with greater efficiency so being solid behind your own attacking play is absolutely vital.
But the real advice I would give to managers in Frank's shoes is to manage yourself, and your own time, as well as your players.
By that I mean you have to try to stay fresh and positive, because invariably you are going to go on bad runs of defeats like Coventry are on, which can drag your mood down.
Lampard's Coventry side have lost all four of their Premier League games so far. They only lost seven of their 46 games in the Championship last season [Reuters]Find a way of getting everyone back on track
I can tell you now that, whoever you are playing, if you get beaten - and especially beaten heavily like Coventry were by Brighton on Sunday - then it resonates with you. It's the same for every manager.
For Frank, whether it is losing at home to Hull or Brighton, or against Arsenal and Manchester City, then it will hurt.
But it is how he deals with those defeats that will decide what happens next.
Being the leader of a group of young men, you cannot look washed out and empty on a Monday morning after a heavy loss.
Yes, inside you will be hurting and your pride will be taking a bashing but everyone at the club will be waiting for your reaction, and will act accordingly.
Walking into the training ground in a dark mood and with your head around your backside just does not work, irrespective of what you are feeling inside.
I've been in that situation many times myself as a manager and what you have to do is puff your chest out and find a way of getting everyone back on track and working even harder with a set focus on the next game.
That's what all good leaders do. It is draining at times, but that is why managing your time and prioritising the issues that you can resolve is so important.
When I took Stoke up to the Premier League in 2008, I was learning on my feet.
We did not make a great start and I had to roll my sleeves up and get on with what I'd got in my squad, and really focus on getting results.
But away from that I was always forward thinking and I was quick at recognising what was needed to improve our chances of staying up.
When the window opened again in January, we were already in discussions with Tottenham for Matty Etherington, to supply us with crosses and chances from the wing.
We needed more goals too, so I took James Beattie from Sheffield United. They were a Championship side but that didn't matter because he had a record of scoring goals in the top flight.
We have heard so much about recruiting the right players in the right positions, and it is true today as it was in my day. Both lads played a significant role in keeping us up.
Coventry haven't scored a goal yet, and people might look in from the outside and feel the forward areas are an issue for them because the usual thinking is that the centre-forward has to lead the scoring charts, or a wide player or the number 10.
But the emphasis is on everyone to chip in and I would also reinforce one of the points I made in this column last season, about the importance of defending properly too.
On average, clean sheets earn you more points than scoring a goal, which is something I always stressed to my players. Nailing down the importance of both ends of the pitch is the narrative, whatever kind of run of results you are on, because games are won and lost there.
Coventry are the only Premier League team yet to pick up a point this season. Tottenham are the only other top-flight side yet to score a league goal [BBC]Why I was confident Stoke would stay up
Coventry have made a poor start but what has happened in their first four games does not have to become the story of their whole season.
With Stoke, we got a win in our first home game - against Aston Villa - but that was our only victory in our first seven league matches after getting promoted.
The thing I remember most from that time is that Hull had come up with us and, after seven games, they had won at Newcastle, Arsenal and Tottenham and were in the top five in the table, while we were third or fourth from bottom.
I went out for dinner with my chairman, Peter Coates, and he said how Hull had made a wonderful start. I replied by telling him I bet you now that we finish above Hull... and we did.
The reason I thought that was because of the mindset of the team, and the fans.
I was confident my players were not going to go weak at the knees, and the togetherness we needed was already there in the squad, while the support was just off the scales, which helped us enormously at home.
Every defeat was taken on the chin, and accepted, but the lads were always ready to go, again and again.
Survival is success for every promoted team
It was Steve Coppell who said to me how you have to deal with the fact you are going to lose a lot of games - or at least not win a lot of them - when you take a team up into the Premier League.
It is a very unusual situation, to go from being in the Championship and winning regularly week after week, to dealing with defeat after defeat.
Steve told me to get ready for going on runs where we would not win for five or six games on the bounce, but then if we could win two or three games in the same period after that, we would fly up the table.
But getting your head around that is hard, and it is the same for the players who were part of that promotion - especially if you were dominant like Coventry were last season.
They were expected to challenge at the top of the Championship, but in my opinion over-achieved by finishing clear at the top.
It was different for Hull, who achieved a promotion under Sergej Jakirovic that no-one outside that club believed was possible.
They have started the season on fire, just like the Tigers did in 2008 when Phil Brown was in charge, and now they have to try to sustain it.
They are third at the moment but if they are 17th come the end of May, which is where they finished under Brownie, then that will be a successful season.
I will be taking a closer look at Hull's progress in this column in the weeks to come, as well as the other promoted team, Ipswich.
Gary O'Neil has a really tough gig at Portman Road but it is one he will relish. I gave Gary his senior debut with Portsmouth in the Championship in 1999 and he's a smart lad who was always football mad.
Ipswich are a great club and I hope both are successful this season. Gary has experience of the Premier League with Bournemouth and Wolves, and he is going to need it.
New season, nine new managers - which appointments make sense?
Including O'Neil, there are nine new managers starting with clubs in the Premier League. It's a bigger number than usual and I wanted to quickly run through all of them.
Enzo Maresca at Manchester City seemed like common sense to me, even before they started the season with four league wins out of four, because he has worked with Pep and the club before.
City had a large turnover of players with their ins and outs over the summer, but I'd expect them to be in the mix for all the trophies again this season.
Another place where lots of changes have taken place is Stamford Bridge. Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso has experience of playing in England and will understand that no game in the Premier League is a shoe-in - as Saturday's draw with Hull showed us again.
Andoni Iraola did an amazing job at Bournemouth but he will need all of his managerial ability and acumen to succeed at Liverpool.
At Liverpool, teams will drop deep and rely on counter-attacking situations. At Bournemouth that did not happen very often.
So, Andoni has to prepare his coaching philosophy to overcome teams who will definitely play deeper and be much more defensive-minded against Liverpool than they were against Bournemouth.
In my opinion, given time he will a great success but as he prepares to take his new team back to face his old one at Vitality Stadium on Sunday, we are already seeing that Liverpool will need more changes to develop into the title-winning side that their fantastic supporters demand.
At Nottingham Forest, Oliver Glasner did a wonderful job at Palace and I am sure we will see more of the same at the City Ground.
At the moment I know less about Marco Rose, Matthias Jaissle, and Pierre Sage, at Bournemouth, Newcastle and Crystal Palace.
Unlike the other managers I have mentioned, they have no experience of the Premier League but they are all joining established top-flight sides which is a huge help.
Finally, there is Alvaro Arbeloa at Fulham. He had a fantastic playing record at Real Madrid and Liverpool and coached in the Real Madrid academy and their B team before taking charge of the first team for the second half of last season.
While he has not had much experience in the dugout, he has worked with many top managers and players.
Fulham will be a real test for him, as we've seen from the way they have started the season, so again they are a club I will be keeping a close eye on - but there are plenty of those!
I got stuck into lots of topics in this column last season, at all levels of the game and covering every aspect of management, but I'd love to know what you would like me to talk about over the next few weeks.
Please make any suggestions in the comments section below - and also feel free to ask me any questions too.
Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.