Shortcomings of Lampard the manager echo those of Lampard the player | Jonathan Wilson


The midfield problems at the root of Frank Lampard’s early defeats as Chelsea manager will have been familiar to anyone who followed the ups and downs of his playing career

C enturies from now, when the world is a wasteland and football exists only in the ruins of stadiums half-buried in the desert, there will still come a wind through the dusty valley and on its breath will be the question: “But if they were great players, why couldn’t they play together?”

The few surviving humans will huddle in caves, squabbling over the meagre crops that remain, divided implacably into two tribes, the Gerrardites and the Lampardians, deaf to the various efforts of minority groups such as the Barryists and the Hargreavesians to unite them, indifferent now as they were then to the proposal of the deposed warlord Capello that it might conceivably work out if only the Gerrardites could occupy the land to the left.

Related: Frank Lampard’s youth policy at Chelsea should be tempered with realism | Eni Aluko

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