After being handed one of the luckiest breaks a young manager can hope for in football, Frank Lampard can consider himself particularly unfortunate to have been sacked by Chelsea less than two years later.
Say what you like about an inexperienced manager just turned 40 being handed one of the biggest jobs in football – and much was said about it at the time of his appointment – it’s hard to argue that Lampard did not do himself justice during his 19 months in charge.
The former Chelsea midfielder – considered a club legend and hugely popular with fans – wrestled with a transfer ban inherited from previous years and to compound matters also lost Eden Hazard, one of the world’s leading players, to Real Madrid, giving him £89million but without the ability to spend it.
Undeterred, Lampard turned to youth, giving first-team debuts to eight academy graduates including Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, Reece James and Billy Gilmour.
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And then, as though there was nothing left in the kitchen but the sink for football to hurl at Lampard, the game decided to throw that anyway – the pandemic struck, obliterating any sense of normality in English football.
In Lampard’s first full, coronavirus-impacted season, Chelsea finished fourth, qualifying for the Champions League, and they reached an FA Cup final which they narrowly lost to Arsenal. It was a season that felt like justification in the face of all the doubters.
The results this season, however, paint a less impressive picture. Three wins in Chelsea’s last four games do not suggest crisis. Yet their victories came against Luton and Morecambe in the FA Cup, and only a narrow win against relegation-threatened Fulham.
Maybe Chelsea’s decision-makers looked closer at the run of defeats to clubs they consider Premier League rivals: Leicester, Manchester City, Arsenal, Everton.
In fact, Chelsea have yet to beat any of the sides they have faced who fall into that category this season, their highlights being draws with Tottenham Hotspur (twice) and Manchester United.
Not great, admittedly, but certainly improvable. What image, therefore, does Lampard’s sacking paint of Chelsea football club? That is, perhaps, less clear.
It is such an unpopular dismissal that owner Roman Abramovich took the unusual step of releasing his own statement to accompany that of the club, the very first time he has taken the time to put on record his thoughts in 14 managerial sackings since he bought Chelsea in 2003 and used his vast wealth to transform them into a major player in world football.
In all that time, however, it seems as though Chelsea don’t really know what or who they want to be, as though they no longer have a true identity. Are they the big club appointing megastar managers bringing in megastar players at megastar prices? Are they the big club bringing through gems from their academy with a former fan-favourite manager building a dynasty of success? Are they something else entirely?
Look at Manchester United. Executive vice chairman Ed Woodward has long resisted huge pressure – from fans, media and pundits alike – to part company with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and look where that, currently, has got them: challenging at the top of the Premier League. Yet, equally, in six games’ time, United could be back outside the top four, given the unpredictability of the top flight this season, and Chelsea could be right back up there, given they were in the race not so long ago.
Cast a glance back at other clubs: Jürgen Klopp had ups and downs in his early years at Liverpool and even Sir Alex Ferguson was famously somewhat fortunate to ride out a rough early period at the start of a 26-year reign at Old Trafford.
Perhaps Abramovich simply wants them to be a revolving door, a club who consistently consume and spit out managers in one-, two-, three-years spells, occasionally recycling them.
Who knows, maybe Jose Mourinho will be back for a third term in a few years’ time, when Thomas Tuchel, Lampard’s replacement, has delivered a few trophies but is on a bad run and the latest signing is not hitting form quick enough.
The struggle to integrate big new signings into his plans definitely counted against Lampard. The lack of goals from Timo Werner – a £45m signing from RB Leipzig has one in his last 17 games – didn’t help and neither did the mediocrity of Kai Havertz – the 21-year-old arriving for £71m from Bayer Leverkusen with the highest of reputations. Overall Chelsea spent over £220m last year.
Maybe Chelsea’s real identity is that of a billionaire’s plaything, one that will always persist until such a time that Abramovich is no longer their owner.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/39gRCa5
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