Jose Mourinho of Tottenham Hotspur is sad and disappointed over the sacking of Frank Lampard by Chelsea on Monday, January 25, 2020.
The English tactician was asked to leave Chelsea after a poor run of games in the Premier League which saw Chelsea moved from the first spot on the league table to the 9th spot.
Lampard’s downfall started on December 12, 2020, when he was defeated by Everton 1-0. From there, he suffered 4 defeats and a draw which left Chelsea with 29 points in 19 games.
The 6 defeats and 5 draws he suffered in the Premier League this season made Chelsea’s board believe that Lampard has nothing more to offer the club and if a drastic decision was not taken, Chelsea might end up not qualifying for a Champions League spot.
In reaction to his sack, Jose Mourinho who has experienced a similar fate at the club twice, 2007 and 2015 described Lampard’s sack as ‘brutality of football’.
Before Lampard became a coach, he has played under Jose Mourinho for about 5 years during the two eras of the Portuguese tactician at Chelsea. Frank Lampard was an integral part of Mourinho’s squad and his assistant captain.
When Lampard was the head coach of Chelsea, he had the opportunity of facing Mourinho twice in the Premier League, the first meeting between them ended in favor of Frank Lampard, while their second meeting ended in a draw.
The fact that Lampard was able to hold his own against a successful coach like Mourinho in his 18 months reign at Chelsea, makes the Portuguese coach believe that “modern football” was not fair to Lampard.
Mourinho whose team narrowly escaped humiliation in the hands of a Championship side, Wycombe in the fourth round of the English FA Cup on Monday, said football managers should always expect to be sacked at some point.
“I am always sad when a colleague loses his job,” Mourinho said, “Frank is not just a colleague, he is an important person in my career, so I feel sorry he did (get sacked).
“But it is the brutality of football, especially modern football, so when you become a manager you know that sooner or later it is going to happen to you.”
Jose Mourinho led Tottenham Hotspur to knock out a stubborn Wycombe from the FA Cup fourth round, thanks to three late goals from Harry Winks and Tanguy Ndombele.
The Championship side took the lead as early as in the 25th minute of the first half and Tottenham had to struggle to equalize towards the end of the first half, thanks to a goal from Gareth Bale.
Tottenham and Wycombe dragged the game until the 86th minute before Jose Mourinho and his boys were able to find a way to prevent the match from going into extra time.
Harry Winks gave Tottenham the lead in the 86th minute, while Tanguy Ndombele scored in the 87th and in the additional 3rd minute to end the game 4-1 in favor of Jose Mourinho.
“I knew that the game was going to be difficult – we started preparing for the game by showing the players what they did a few years ago at White Hart Lane,” Mourinho said, referencing the 2017 fourth-round match which Tottenham won 4-3 in the dying minute.
“Six of these players and the manager are still in this team. So that I think was a good start and then we prepared for the game knowing it could be hard and it was. It’s not easy to handle their style of play.
“If you don’t score goals they stay in the game and it was great for us to score in minute 85 because that gave us the possibility of not playing extra-time, which would have been not good for us.”
ποΈ πππππππππ§π¦ | πͺππ°πΌπΊπ―π² π-π° π¦π½ππΏπ#THFC βͺ #COYS pic.twitter.com/gHBcIQwOZ8
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) January 25, 2021
