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Super Frank Lampard

Sack or Back Frank ?

  • Sack now.

    Votes: 34 29.8%

  • Back until the end of the season, unless relegation dooms, then evaluate.

    Votes: 80 70.2%
  • Total voters
    114
If there's one major obstacle to Lampard being a great manager, it's that he rarely recognises his own privilege.

Listening to his podcast appearance with Paul Merson and Jamie Redknapp was quite eye-opening. He talked a lot about his development as a player and also development of young players today. It was clear that Lampard often underrates his own natural talent and creates somewhat of a mythology that he was a limited player made great entirely through his own efforts.

It is a humble perspective but it is not accurate. If you are manager that believes players are entirely self-made, then you will not have a script to turn around a sinking ship. The idea that anyone is completely in control of anything is a fundamental cognitive bias that leads to poor decision making. Lampard as a player had a great degree of agency to win games, but as a manager that is hugely reduced. As a manager, you have to offer more than just "work harder".

I think this was borne out in his first Chelsea stint too. We genuinely were a great team for until around December that season, after injuries to Ziyech and Werner started to derail us. He just couldn't arrest the decline. Ultimately he did a lot of minor things that added up to a bigger problem (eg his bench manner, or lack thereof) because he seems to fundamentally believe that players are solely responsible for and in control of their outcomes.

I do think there is either a tinge of ego there too, as the same skillset that impedes him as manager would make him incredible as a youth coach or DoF.

 
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Nibs said:
Good to see Lamps doing well at Coventry. That's four straight wins - keep this up and they could make the play-offs.
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Agreed. Nice to see him enjoying some success after a couple of rough managerial experiences. I wonder if they will try and get a loanee from us?

 
Nibs said:
Good to see Lamps doing well at Coventry. That's four straight wins - keep this up and they could make the play-offs.
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I've always said that some, a lot from our own fanbase, were really harsh on Lampard. So many comments saying he should give up on management entirely and he wasn't good enough for it, but there was little evidence of this. Just because he hasn't made it at the top level of the game, that doesn't mean he's not good enough for any level.

 
Scott Harris said:
I've always said that some, a lot from our own fanbase, were really harsh on Lampard. So many comments saying he should give up on management entirely and he wasn't good enough for it, but there was little evidence of this. Just because he hasn't made it at the top level of the game, that doesn't mean he's not good enough for any level.
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One of them would be me.

My main critisism was he just wasn't seeming to be learning from his mistakes and if anything was worse in 2023 than he was in 2019. He felt at that point like the equivalent of the player that shows some initial promise but then gets to his 20s and all the rawness is still there but a lot of the promise gone.

You can say he didn't have great situations at Everton and Chelsea 2.0 which would be true, but Dyche took over and instantly improved, even with us it's easy to forget we totally outplayed Liverpool the day before he took over and within 3 days we looked a carbon copy of the situation he left in 2021 (where he had eventual UCL winners spiriling to a possible bottom half finish), and he couldn't get even to level Potter/Bruno left us, which in itself wasn't near good enough.

So far so good at Coventry and I truly do hope he can prove me wrong, but I can only go by what I saw at that point and by inlarge little to nothing between our return from lockdown and leaving us the second time had me convinced.

 
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Scott Harris said:
I've always said that some, a lot from our own fanbase, were really harsh on Lampard. So many comments saying he should give up on management entirely and he wasn't good enough for it, but there was little evidence of this. Just because he hasn't made it at the top level of the game, that doesn't mean he's not good enough for any level.
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The problem with most fans is that if you don't play inverted, positional football or whatever is trending right now you are a bad manager. 

 
Scott Harris said:
I've always said that some, a lot from our own fanbase, were really harsh on Lampard. So many comments saying he should give up on management entirely and he wasn't good enough for it, but there was little evidence of this. Just because he hasn't made it at the top level of the game, that doesn't mean he's not good enough for any level.
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I agree, the first season where he got the 4th spot with an ordinary team ( on paper) was a great effort. To honest, getting into CL probably did him no favor in the following season, his inexperience started to show up in the CL games and consequently in the league.  Although it was the right decision to replace him with Tuchel, it's not like we were abysmal under him from both points and performance perspective. Ideally, he should have continued with Derby ( at the time) and kept working his way up, but life is never ideal and nobody wanted to touch the Chelsea job at that time. His second term was a disaster, but that whole season was, Frank just managed to open up a few more wounds. Do I believe if he's capable of winning trophies and playing entertaining football if he got an easier job like Celtic? of course I do

 
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