The Sky Blues have signed 11 players during the window, with Caleb Yirenkyi, Carl Rushworth, Sidiki Cherif, Loum Tchaouna, Aurèle Amenda, Taiwo Awoniyi, Gustavo Hamer and Ethan Pinnock accounting for at least £127.2m in reported fees. Frank Onyeka also arrived from Brentford for an undisclosed fee, while Daniel Bentley and Billy-Ray Cullinane joined as free agents.
For Richard Chamberlain, author of "Back at Last", the scale of the investment says as much about King's ambition as it does about Coventry's return to the top flight after 25 years away.
“There was a lot of talk early on in the summer about, well, we're going to try and do things a bit on the cheap,” Chamberlain told Football Presse.
“We're gonna spend maybe £40 million, £50 million. We're not gonna do what some of the other clubs have done.
“But he's gone and spent well over £100 million this summer. Yeah, he's absolutely going for it.”
The spending began with Loum Tchaouna's £20m move from Burnley and Aurèle Amenda's £17.2m arrival from Eintracht Frankfurt before Coventry committed £22.5m to goalkeeper Carl Rushworth.
Yirenkyi then became the club's record signing when he arrived from Nordsjælland for £26m, with further major investments following in Cherif, Tchaouna and Awoniyi.
The return of Gustavo Hamer from Sheffield United for a reported £6m added an emotional dimension, while the £6m signing of Brentford defender Ethan Pinnock brought Premier League experience to a squad that had very little of it.
The strategy is clear: preserve the core of the Championship-winning side while adding players capable of competing at a higher level.
And Chamberlain believes King's approach is about far more than chasing the immediate financial rewards of promotion.
“When you hear him speaking, he's an owner who clearly has a real business brain and has a plan for what he wants to do,” he said.
“He was saying there that he's got no interest in basically taking Coventry up for one season to take the money that we get while we're up there and come back down and then try and go again.
“He said it's taken us 25 years to get there, you know, we need to go for it and try and stay there.”
That represents a significant change from the uncertainty that surrounded Coventry for years.
King initially arrived with an 85 per cent stake and faced suspicion from supporters who wondered whether he was simply another face for previous owners SISU. He subsequently took full control and, after Wasps' collapse, completed the purchase of the Coventry Building Society Arena from Mike Ashley's Frasers Group.
The stadium deal was transformative for supporters, Chamberlain believes.
“For a very, very long time was just this soulless stadium,” he said of the CBS Arena.
“It never felt like home because it wasn't home because we didn't own it. We were renting it.”
Now, with King owning both club and stadium and having committed heavily to the squad, the relationship is very different.
“And he's absolutely loved by Coventry fans,” Chamberlain said.
“You've got to respect him for what he's done with what's happened on the pitch, getting the stadium.”
King's biggest decision before the spending spree, however, was also his most controversial.
He dismissed Mark Robins despite the manager's enormous popularity among Coventry supporters, then entrusted Lampard with taking the club into the Premier League.
“If you'd asked 100 Coventry fans, 99 at least would have said no, that's the wrong decision,” Chamberlain said.
“But he did it. And it's — look, you know, you look where we've been taken on to the next level.”
Lampard's success has subsequently made King's judgement easier to understand, while the transfer window has reinforced the sense that the owner is prepared to support his manager.
Chamberlain says that has changed the perception of King completely.
“He came in and there was a lot of suspicion to start with,” he said.
“There were a lot of conspiracy theories of, well, he's just another part of SISU. They're doing this just to — it's like a new face for SISU and all of this, which has turned out to be complete nonsense.”
The summer's spending also carries a different significance for Coventry because of where the club has come from.
They were in League Two when Robins returned, had endured ground-sharing in Northampton and spent years fighting financial and ownership problems. Now King has committed more than £100m to giving Lampard a squad capable of staying in the Premier League.
For Chamberlain, that is the point.
“It's taken us 25 years to get there,” he said. “We need to go for it and try and stay there.”
Coventry may still face the reality of a relegation battle. But after years when simply having a stable home felt like an achievement, King has made it clear that the Sky Blues are not returning to the Premier League merely to make up the numbers.
Richard Chamberlain is author of "Back at Last: How Coventry City Finally Returned to the Premier League" from Pitch Publishing - which is available here.
