Frank Lampard has been linked with a return to Chelsea and as Liam Rosenior leaves the club we look at what has been said by the Blues icon
Frank Lampard has made no mention of a Chelsea return – yet that hasn’t prevented speculation over a third spell in the Stamford Bridge dugout for Coventry City’s head coach.
Liam Rosenior was sacked by Chelsea on Wednesday following the club’s 3-0 defeat away at Brighton. The result meant that the Blues lost a fifth consecutive Premier League match without scoring.
Only Tottenham Hotspur have accumulated fewer points in the top flight, with two compared to Chelsea’s five across the past nine fixtures.
The last time Chelsea they made a managerial change at such a late stage in the campaign to dismiss Graham Potter, they turned to Lampard as caretaker boss.
At that point, though, he was not at another club, having left Everton two months previously, and managed just one victory from his 11 matches at the helm.
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Three years down the line, he has just secured the Championship crown and Premier League promotion with the Sky Blues. Yet, as recent speculation linking him with Bournemouth demonstrated, Lampard could be a contender for a job at the highest level, reports Coventry Live.
Addressing that speculation at the time, he insisted he was making “nothing” of it. Lampard said: “Nothing, because I have been in this game long enough to know that those things happen and very quickly they change, or whatever, and absolutely my focus is on us.”
“I want to win this league now after what we’ve done through the season because it will be a slight anti-climax feeling for myself if we didn’t get the job done there, and that’s a good pressure to have at this point, so I want to do that, and nothing else is taking me anywhere away than thinking about that.”
Former teammates also spoke highly of his prospects of stepping in for Enzo Maresca in January, prior to Rosenior’s appointment.
Carlton Cole told eSPORTY at the time: “I like Lampard as a Chelsea manager. The reason why I’m saying that is because I know he knows the club inside out; he knows the culture.
“He didn’t do too badly in his first outing. Imagine if he gets backed, but that’s another thing. If he were to come in, they couldn’t dictate to him what to do; that’s what none of them wants.”
Nicky Butt likewise posed the question on The Good, The Bad and The Football podcast: “Do you think if Frank Lampard gets promotion with Coventry, they could go back in for Frank?”
He added: “It wouldn’t be a stupid thing to go and get Frank Lampard back in charge of Chelsea for me.
“He’s done a great job at Coventry. He’s got a bit more experience now, and he’s probably made a few mistakes. He would be a totally different manager now. He would find it easier working with better players and easier for him to get his messages across to more technical players. I think he’d do an amazing job, I really do.”
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William Gallas also weighed in on the prospect of Lampard returning to Chelsea in March of last year. He said: “After what happened to Frank Lampard, we had to be patient.
“He is doing well right now with Coventry City; if he can give them the chance to get into the Premier League, that would be the best thing for him.
“But you never know, he could go back. That’s why it’s good for him to improve and do something really good with another Premier League team in the future, maybe helping them into Europe in the Europa League or Champions League.
“That would give him more experience, and then one day, we could see him at Chelsea again, but right now, I don’t know. The best thing that can happen for him now is for Coventry City to go to the Premier League; that will be the best story for him.”
Doug King spoke at length to Coventry Live regarding Lampard’s future in late March. He said: “Well, look, Frank’s put himself back in the arena and we’ve had a great ride.
“If we can top it off with going where we want to top it off to then he will have achieved a great thing. Obviously, he’s been at top levels and won great championships and great cups, but I think even he will look at this as a huge achievement, you know, a non-parachute team that’s not been in the Premier League for 25 years.
“Playing how we’re playing, the goals we’re scoring, how we’re doing it in terms of not just scraping it in with one-nil and playing attritional football, but rather doing it in a really attractive manner, I think he’ll be very proud of that, and I think he’s very comfortable and very happy in his environment at Coventry, and I think he really enjoys it.
“Now obviously, as in anything, decisions have to be made in people’s lives, and I can’t speak for Frank. Obviously, he’s under contract with us, and I’m sure he wants to lead us to the Premier League and manage us in the Premier League, and maybe for the next hundreds of years at Coventry because he loves it forever.
“But look, I don’t even look forward on it, I think everybody’s lives change, we all get older, we all have different things in our lives, and what are our ambitions, and they’re the things that you keep private. But for me, he came in, he put himself into the picture, we obviously gave him that opportunity, and it’s worked incredibly well for us both, so, you know, that’s great.”
