Today, we are going to break down the information that has recently come to light, following the controversial sacking of Frank Lampard at Chelsea. It seems it wasn’t all down to results. Curious. A quick caveat, this isn’t really about my opinion, we’ll save that until the very end. Now, as recently as December 5th 2020, the blues sat pretty atop the premier league, following a 17-game unbeaten streak. However, two victories from Lampard’s subsequent eight games have left Chelsea lingering around the mid-table. Unacceptable territory for owner Roman Abramovich, but, fair to say that the situation isn’t totally beyond saving. After all, Chelsea are five points behind Liverpool, who is sitting 4th (Ya, I had to take the sly dig). However, following a fairly brutal announcement, rumours quickly surfaced that the club had been pursuing Red bull Hotshot, Ralph Ragnick and his young German protégé Julian Naglesmann. And, when I say brutal, listen to this (The official club announcement of Chelsea Football Club), “We are grateful to Frank for what he’s achieved in his time as head coach at the club, however, recent results and performances have not met the club’s expectations” Until now, pretty run-of-the-mill, “Leaving the club mid-table without any CLEAR PATH TO SUSTAINED IMPROVEMENT”. Ouch! That is what zero faith looks like. After the club’s ambitious ploy for a Ragnick-Naglesmann double act failed, they turned their ruthless yet ambitious heads to Thomas Tuchel. All of this happening in the wake of the Leicester, when Super Frank was still in the job. It’s understood that Tuchel didn’t want to take the job until the summer, but he was convinced by the Chelsea board that action was needed now to arrest the slump, as it could leave them out of the CL spots. As I said, all of this points towards a startling lack of faith in Super Frank Lampard’s managerial abilities, but I guess the question now is, “How much faith did they have in him to start with?”
MARRIAGE OR CONVENIENCE?
Now, it is easy to forget that when Maurizio Sarri departed Chelsea for Juventus at the end of the 2018/19 season, there wasn’t a host of top-class coaches queuing up to take his place at the Stamford bridge. As well as the looming transfer embargo, Chelsea’s timing was a touch unfortunate. Max Allegri had announced that he wanted to take a year out after his all-conquering spell at Juventus, a return for Jose Mourinho was off the cards after his last spell ended so acrimoniously and Erik ten Haag, who has impressed with Ajax, was still a bit of an unknown entity. In short, there was no real front-runner for the job. In fact, when Lampard was named as the bookies favourite to become new Chelsea manager, only Rafa Benítez at 9/1 came close, who was coming off the back after leading Newcastle to 13th place. So, was Lampard just a stop-gap, despite the talk of a three-year plan to rebuild a squad that could then challenge for the PL title. Only the Chelsea board will really know their long-term intentions for sure, however, there’s been some compelling evidence that suggests this may have been the case. When Lampard was installed as head coach in 2019, he was given a 3-year deal. Given his lack of top-flight experience, this looked like some sort of a leap of faith from the usually trigger-happy club. Probably, because of the romanticism of a club legend returning back home in their time of need. All of us, sort of, bought into this narrative that Chelsea would stick by their manager as he learnt the rope, however, Chelsea is operated in both a smart and ruthless way, so we now know they were hedging their bets from the start. So, it’s recently come to light that the third year of Lampard’s contract was actually optional. This means 2 things. One, the club only have to pay a million-pound severance package, which is an absolute bargain compared to what Chelsea paid to previous divorces, and two, more interestingly, the club didn’t trigger that third year after his promising first year, when he seemingly met an awful lot of objectives. This begs the question; did he ever have the board’s full confidence at any point in his Chelsea tenure? Because it doesn’t really feel that way. Now admittedly, Antonio Conte won the league but I think it was largely viewed that Frank Lampard had done everything he could given the circumstances at Chelsea. However, reports suggest that Roman Abramovich was pretty hurt by the 33-point gap between his side and Liverpool. 66 points, while it secured CL football that term, it would’ve only been good enough for 6th, the season prior. So, the table that year was quite forgiving. It was also, six points fewer than their much-maligned Maurizio Sarri had got the season prior. And, while they were serving that transfer embargo, they still got Matteo Kovacic on a permanent and Christian Pulisic returned from Dortmund on Loan. This means that despite the transfer ban, they were able to get 2 expensive players through the doors of Cobham. This all added to the sense that there was some unfulfilled potential at the club, despite the picture that the media had painted.
Club Politics
Given the fact that the club spent 220 million pounds in the summer and the calibre of the players that they bought in, you’d be forgiven to think that Lampard was pleased with the way the things panned out. However, according to the athletic and Matt Law, perhaps not. Apparently, for the most part, Lampard was refused his primary targets. One insider alleged that the six players that came in in the summer of 2020, only Ben Chilwell was his first choice and idea. The same report also mentioned that Lampard was thwarted time and time again in his pursuit of Declan Rice. Also, the club rebuffed his approach for Burnley defender James Tarkowski. The same article also stated that he wanted Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Arsenal in January 2020, when the striker was considering an exit from the Emirates. Instead, the club signed Hakim Ziyech after the winter window closed. This space is pretty interesting, to be true, as this move would’ve stunted Tammy Abraham’s growth and potential. Now, it wasn’t only the players coming in that was a contentious issue, apparently, Lampard’s handling of players at the club already, irked his superiors. Record signing Kepa Arrizabalaga, for example, was a great source of friction between Frank Lampard and director, Marina Granovskaya. The Englishman wanted a shot of a goalkeeper as soon as possible, while the board wanted Lampard to safeguard their investment, put an arm around him and coach him back to something that resembled his best. The whole scenario was summed up pretty well by one unnamed football agent, the problem Lampard had with Marina was obvious but fundamental. He has a series of huge investments, he doesn’t have the ability to maximise but more that he appears to have given up attempting to maximise them. It appears that the Chelsea board shared these concerns about Frank Lampard’s inability to bring back misfiring stars from the brink. Again, it comes down to that theme of trust or even mistrust and when you learn that Lampard wasn’t given full control over who was in his backroom staff, it only adds to that narrative even further. It’s since been reported that Lampard didn’t really want to operate with a huge group of support staff, as was the case under Maurizio Sarri. Instead, Lampard wanted a few trusted capos to help insulate him from the infamous politics at Chelsea.