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FThe Lampard rank can afford a smile of regret, though only when the pain begins to subside. At another club, the last former Chelsea manager could have had more time; the means to get out of the nosedive.
Take Manchester United and Arsenal, where Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Mikel Arteta appeared to be close to crashing and burning at various points. Solskjær looked doomed following United’s 6-1 home loss to Tottenham on 4 October, as he continued to play dice with disaster throughout November and early December. Arteta’s period of horror was more sustained, the moments of respite more sporadic. When his Arsenal team lost at Everton on December 19, they had only won five points from 10 Premier League games.
But United made it clear that they would back Solskjær and Arsenal did the same for Arteta: the club’s chief executive, Vinai Venkatesham, voiced his support on 12 December, describing their coach as a “really powerful individual”.
Look at United and Solskjær now, sitting quite at the top of the table and if Arteta hasn’t completely turned it around at Arsenal, he has at least restored an upward trajectory with four wins and a draw in five league games. .
Lampard has similarities to Solskjær and Arteta. Like them, he returned to the club where he enjoyed success and adulation as a player. The trio are in the same age group and are in the early stages of their managerial careers, having accepted elite jobs for the first time.
But Lampard always knew that Chelsea from the Roman Abramovich era has a different culture when it comes to backing up a coach in a crisis. As a player at the club, he has undergone nine managerial changes in 13 years and each time, and indeed the ones that followed his first outing from Stamford Bridge in 2014, there would be no escape once the death list began; just silence from above and a growing sense of inevitability.
It has to affect the players. High-level professionals are used to constant pressure, but when it is increased to this point, a particular type is needed to be able to maintain performance. Meanwhile, the disillusioned may begin to think that they could outlive the manager.
Lampard finished on Tuesday last week after the mess of a 2-0 loss at Leicester, his fifth setback in eight league games, and sources expected him to be gone in 24 hours. That said, when he stuck around and took over Sunday’s FA Cup win over Luton, he raised the possibility that he would keep fighting a bit longer.
It’s strange to remember that Chelsea were third on the morning of December 12 and only two points from the top. The slide then began with a 1-0 loss at Everton but, when management noted in the Lampard firing communication on Monday that the team was “without a clear path to sustained improvement”, they were looking at the bigger picture. .
It showed this season that every time Chelsea faced high caliber opponents in the league, they either drew 0-0 or lost miserably. It showed that expensive signings lacked direction and faith. And it showed a general lack of positive collective identity. United and Arsenal were able to see the structures on the field that their coaches were trying to implement, even in bad times. Chelsea, whose managers are notoriously nervous when they feel that qualification for the Champions League is in jeopardy, couldn’t.
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Lampard has paid for the lack of progress, and expectations have been inflated by the squandering of £ 220 million on new signings last summer. It felt like Chelsea’s transfer ban in the summer of 2019, when Lampard arrived, had offered him a bit of freedom. This season the pendulum swung the other way and the struggles of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, in particular, who were bought for a total of £ 119.5 million, were a great stick to beat Lampard with. There was odd symbolism in Werner’s 85-minute penalty foul against Luton, which was pretty much the last act under Lampard.
Recruitment, as always in Chelsea, has been a problem. Did Lampard really want so many new attack options, with Hakim Ziyech added as well? It left him struggling to please a cast that also included Callum Hudson-Odoi, Mason Mount, Christian Pulisic, Tammy Abraham, and Olivier Giroud. The team was equally bloated in other areas, including central defense, where Lampard’s decision to freeze Antonio Rüdiger early in the season created friction.
There were times, especially in recent weeks, when Lampard was overwhelmed with frustration over basic multiplayer mistakes and called them out publicly. It is well documented that he built his career as a midfielder out of a fierce desire to prove people wrong, to use criticism as a spur and he would argue that his players should be able to deal with some local truths about him. And yet there was a lingering suspicion that he came too close to laying the blame for Chelsea’s downfall at the feet of his team, which is a risky business in modern football with egos involved.
Where Lampard triumphed was last season, finishing fourth to secure qualification for the Champions League; in a series of impressive victories, especially the two over José Mourinho’s Spurs and Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, and in the blood of a handful of young players, proving that there can be a path from the quarry to the first team. Mount was the most successful story, with Reece James and Abraham in close proximity.
Surrounding all of this was something intangible: the connection Lampard restored between the club and the fans who attended the match. After the burden of Maurizio Sarri’s tenure, the fans really enjoyed going to Stamford Bridge again and desperately wanted Lampard to do well.
In the end, there is the impression that Lampard was simply the last interchangeable piece of the Chelsea puzzle. You couldn’t say no to the opportunity, even if you had been aware of your lack of managerial experience, what would that have said about your boldness?
If Lampard had won trophies it would have been incredibly sweet for Chelsea, but now they are in the form of Thomas Tuchel. This is a club where creative tension around the manager is used as a badge of pride and is seen as an engine for honors under Abramovich. No one knows what patience and greater stability could bring.
