“If the board sack Lampard it’s another failure by them” proclaimed Neville Southall after Everton’s increasingly grim season sunk to new depths with a shambolic 4-1 home defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion. Less than 12 months ago, Frank Lampard became the sixth managerial appointment in as many years of the Farhad Moshiri regime and his arrival was heralded as a fresh start.
Unlike predecessor Rafael Benitez, the former Liverpool boss who was arguably the most-controversial appointment in the history of the most-passionate city in English football – a decision that owner Moshiri went alone on – Lampard was understood to be the unanimous choice of all Goodison Park’s power brokers. A unifying figure after the disharmony that had come before, Lampard proved an instant hit with the fanbase who chanted his name in his first game in charge, a 4-1 victory over Brentford in the FA Cup fourth round.
It was a rarefied honour that had only been bestowed on one previous Moshiri hiring, the legendary Carlo Ancelotti. But Lampard, famously one of the smartest men in football, is intelligent enough to recognise that merely understanding the Evertonian psyche is not enough to survive as Blues boss, let alone succeed, as if they were the only credentials then there would be some 39,000 candidates at least.
