Frank Lampard is fast becoming a football manager to be feared within two years of being a coach of two struggling teams like Derby County and Chelsea football club.
Please note that Chelsea is regarded as a struggling team here because when Frank Lampard left Championship side, Derby County, to take up the role of Chelsea‘s head coach prior to the 2019-2020 season, the club was in a kind of crisis. They were not permitted to sign players for the 2019-2020 season because they breached UEFA transfer fair play rule. At the same time, their star man, Eden Hazard left for Real Madrid.
Lampard had no choice than to make do with Chelsea’s academy graduates. Most people thought he could not survive not being dropped from the Premier League to the Championship. But to the dismay of his doubters, he didn’t only survive in the league, he is at the verge of qualifying the team for next season’s UEFA Champions League.
He is currently on the 4th spot on the Premier League table with 54 points, ahead of 6th placed Manchester United who has done a series of big-money signing which Chelsea didn’t have the opportunity of doing due to their ban.
So far this season, Frank Lampard has led Chelsea to win 16 games, draw 6 games and lose 9 games in 31 Premier League matches. He has also helped the team to qualify for the semi-final of the FA Cup and they will have to beat Manchester United to get to the final of the competition.
On Sunday, they beat 3rd placed Leicester City in the quarter-final of the FA Cup. Despite the fact that they won the match, Frank Lampard said he expected his team to play better.
“I don’t think we’ve played that badly this season for 45 minutes,” he said. “We’ve played better and lost games… We were fortunate to be 0-0 at half-time and we must learn from little mistakes from the game.
“I don’t want to sound too down because it’s important to show you’ve got the grit to get a 1-0 win when you don’t play well. It looks like I’m criticising but it’s positive because it’s not the norm for us.”
His statement above is a sign of how far he has pushed himself and his young squad this season. No wonder he has won at least a match against the legendary coaches in the Premier League. From his former coaches during his playing days at Chelsea – Tottenham’s Jose Mourinho and Everton’s Carlo Ancelotti to beating the Legendary Pep Guardiola of Manchester City and Brendan
Rodgers of Leicester City.
However, the aspect that is not certain for the 40-year-old manager is whether he can scale through Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League round of 16 as the German Bundesliga side has beaten Chelsea in Stamford Bridge 0-3 in the first leg of the round before the coronavirus pandemic halted football. It will be a miracle for him and his boys to turn around the scoreline when they meet for the second leg.
Frank Lampard and Chelsea
Going further, Frank Lampard is expected to do great things with Chelsea from next season as he has been very busy in the transfer market since Chelsea’s transfer ban was lifted. So far, he has signed the current Bundesliga second-highest goalscorer Timo Werner and Ajax’s Hakim Ziyech. Bayern Leverkusen’s star Kai Havertz could also be on his way to Stamford Bridge this summer.
As a player at Chelsea, Frank Lampard was so great that he won 13 titles in 13 years of football at the club, including one UEFA Champions League, one UEFA Europa League and three Premier League titles. Despite being a midfielder, he left Chelsea as the club’s all-time highest goalscorer with 211 goals. So, as we had a superstar player in Frank Lampard, we are on the path to having a superstar coach in him.
