In 2020-21, Chelsea started the season with Frank Lampard in charge and ended it with Thomas Tuchel at the helm. In 2022-23, they began it with Tuchel in the technical area and will finish it with Lampard in the dugout. There are plenty of ways of illustrating the mess Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital have made and this feels another. After the upgrade two seasons ago, the downgrade now.
Sacked by Everton after 11 defeats in 14 games, with Sean Dyche now looking an improvement on him at Goodison Park, Lampard instead returns to Chelsea. In a season of 16 signings and two sackings at Stamford Bridge, his comeback may be the most unexpected bit of business. So far, anyway.
There is, however, a glimpse of some method to the madness: not of trading Tuchel for Lampard as – over eight months with Graham Potter in between – Chelsea effectively have, but of bringing their record scorer back as Potter’s interim successor. Potter’s failings were myriad but Lampard is the antidote to some.
The miscast Potter did not understand Chelsea. Lampard does. He is a better communicator in public. The fans who never took to the former Brighton manager still idolise their Champions League-winning captain. Even if only temporarily, he can restore a feelgood factor.
Much of his initial reign took place in lockdown; fans deprived of the chance to support him then can welcome him back. The players who were underwhelmed by Potter, his persona and background, will at least respect Lampard as a great midfielder and goalscorer. If the past is a guide, he may offer a little more excitement. Potter’s Chelsea scored too few goals: at least Lampard’s Blues, who conceded too many, had a different failing. He had a better record as Chelsea manager with lesser spending.
None of which renders Lampard the world-class manager Tuchel is and which Chelsea want on a more permanent basis. He owes his return to his stellar playing career and the amenable persona that makes him an owner-friendly option. That likeability bought him extra time at Everton. The general consensus will be that he has got lucky even to get a temporary return: some perhaps thought his managerial career was over when dismissed by Everton, or wondered if he would take a Championship job.
Instead, he is pitched into a Champions League quarter-final, perhaps with unfinished business. He steered Chelsea in 2020, then through the group stages but has never deemed himself a Champions League-winning manager when Tuchel took over his team and had a catalytic impact in the knockout stages. There is an obvious parallel with Roberto Di Matteo, a beloved Chelsea midfielder who was the caretaker who steered them to Champions League glory. There is a more realistic scenario that an underachieving Blues side are outclassed and that Lampard is outwitted by a manager they sacked: if not Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti in the last eight then perhaps Bayern Munich’s Tuchel in the last four.
Certainly Tuchel had the kind of attention to detail that can be decisive on such stages. If Lampard suffered by comparison with his successor, memories can be coloured by a sudden slide in the last 11 games of his first spell at Chelsea. Until then, he did a decent job in difficult circumstances, which is the aim again.
He begins with inherent advantages and disadvantages. Despite the vast influx, many of the pivotal players remain from his previous spell. Kai Havertz proved a conundrum Lampard never solved – not that he is alone in that – and Kepa Arrizabalaga was dropped by him after saving too few shots. But Mason Mount, his protege who was marginalised by Potter amid an uncertain future at the club, looks ripe for a recall. Reece James was another granted his chance by Lampard, Ben Chilwell a signing the Englishman pushed for, Mateo Kovacic their player of the year in his full season there.
He could be a unifier in some respects: in others, no one can. He inherits the problem Potter had, of making sense of the vast squad without alienating too many, of showing the clarity of thought to arrow in on the strongest side, of laying a platform for next season. Lampard’s first spell was mixed but there were at least some players who developed and excelled under him; there was no such sense of progress under Potter. After the more prosaic talents at Everton, he may relish the chance to work again with those with greater gifts.
Maybe, though, Lampard is just a clever distraction tactic. Given the draw and their season, they are the rank outsiders in the Champions League. Five points and four places off seventh place, they are unlikely to qualify for Europe. But if there was precious little of Potterball they wanted to keep, there were precious few reasons for keeping Potter’s old ally Bruno Saltor in temporary charge. If it gives Lampard a chance to restore a reputation and a chance to position himself as a candidate for other jobs, he is tasked in part with bringing a sense of calm at the front of the house. But in the background, the chaos of the managerial search will go on.
