Frank Lampard reveals how defeat to Leeds inspired Derby County’s impressive season

There is not much more security at Derby’s training base than there was the last time they played Leeds.

There are a few extra sheets of tarpaulin on the fences, the trees are now thick with leaves and you would imagine Marcelo Bielsa would not risk sending someone round with binoculars and bolt cutters as he did in January.

“We’ve done a few bits,” said Frank Lampard. “But I didn’t walk around the training ground and say: ‘Protect the perimeter and build a big wall’. We’ve had to make lots of cutbacks so the idea of building a perimeter wall and hiring a lot more staff to walk around it is just not possible.”

‘I respect Marcelo Bielsa’

That is the reality of the Championship. Big clubs, big fan bases, little cash. Should Lampard steer Derby to the Premier League for the first time since they were relegated with 11 points 11 years ago, he can hire all the security he desires. The first step is to beat Leeds in the play-off semi-finals.

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Lampard feels Spygate is a distraction rather than a motivation. “I have had questions, questions and questions about it,” he said. “All I can say is I respect Marcelo Bielsa. It happened the day before the game and it had no impact on the result [Derby lost 2-0 at Elland Road].”

Of all the big names who have thrown themselves into management this season – Steven Gerrard at Rangers, Sol Campbell at Macclesfield, Thierry Henry at Monaco and Paul Scholes at Oldham – Lampard faced perhaps the hardest task.

Notoriously unforgiving

The Championship is a notoriously unforgiving league in which to manage. There are few rewards and the casualty rate is enormous. Lampard knew that once the glamour of his appointment faded, the only headlines he would make would be in the Derby Telegraph, whose readers might be suspicious of a flash southerner using their club to test his theories.

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When he was unveiled as the club’s manager, Lampard drove around Derby “and felt football in the city,” adding: “It was important that there was a connection.”

This week football has been everywhere in Derby. Pride Park has sold out, buoyed by a rivalry with Leeds not this intense since the bitter days of Brian Clough and Don Revie.

On Tuesday, Derby won the Under-18 Premier League, a trophy won by either Chelsea or Manchester City in the past three seasons.

The game that had the greatest impact on Lampard was against Leeds; not the one after Spygate but the one in August, his first home fixture as Derby manager. Leeds destroyed them 4-1. “Here was the standard for us,” Lampard said. “It was not a bad shock to have that early in the season.”

Revolution at Pride Park

It hastened his desire to overhaul an ageing squad. Only six of that team began the last game of the league season, when Derby beat West Bromwich Albion to make sure of a play-off spot.

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Both Bielsa and Lampard were touched by scenes of Mauricio Pochettino breaking down in tears after Tottenham’s improbable last-second victory in the Champions League semi-final in Amsterdam.

For Bielsa it was the sight of a protégé making very, very good. When Pochettino was 14, growing up in Argentina, he was woken in the small hours by Bielsa, who had driven through the night to sign him for Newell’s Old Boys.

For Lampard it was something much more intangible. When great footballers become managers, they tell you nothing replaces the thrill of playing. Watching the aftermath of Tottenham’s victory over Ajax, Lampard could see how it might.

“It is important fans see what it means to managers and to players,” he said. “As long as it’s not fake, and that wasn’t fake, you could see what it meant to him.

“I don’t know how I’ll react if we make it. I was very emotional in Munich, though I’m not sure I was in tears,” he said, recalling the night he lifted the European Cup after Chelsea’s extraordinary rearguard action against Bayern.

“You have to care to be successful and Munich represented 10 years of hard work with all the failures along the way. That’s how it should be.”