On a muggy Friday last August, Frank Lampard took charge of his first game as a manager. That evening his Derby County side had spells where they looked disjointed and uncertain, spells of excellent football, and right at the last, when it mattered the most, they came up with a goal in the 94th minute to claim a victory at Reading.

He probably didn't know it at the time, but that game would turn out to be a microcosm of how his and Derby's season would pan out.

After some damaging defeats,...

It is the most lucrative one-off fixture in the sporting world, with the financial windfall for the winning team a staggering £170 million -- three times more than the combined value of winning the Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup. The monetary jackpot vastly overshadows that which comes with winning the Super Bowl ($6.25m), NBA Finals ($3.3m) or World Series ($30.4m), but the flip side of the EFL Championship playoff is that the losers not only end up with nothing, they also see...