Frank Lampard has been backed to steer Everton to their new stadium by former Blues striker Tony Cottee, who insists the new manager will enjoy a level of support that rival candidate Vitor Pereira never could.
Lampard, 43, has signed a two-and-a-half year deal which takes him up to the summer of 2024 when Everton are scheduled to move from Goodison Park, England’s first purpose-built football ground and their home since 1892 to their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock.
Cottee, who scored 99 goals for the Blues between 1988-94, believes that Lampard will have been successful enough at the club by then to have penned a new contract and still be leading them by the Mersey waterfront.
He told the ECHO: “I think it’s a wonderful appointment for the club. I’m really pleased that they’ve atoned for their poor decision to appoint Rafael Benitez and hopefully it’s onwards and upwards.
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“This should be a four or five year project for Frank and should take in the move to the new stadium along the way.
“Again, Frank will be aware from West Ham that’s a difficult thing to go through and you need a pair of steady hands.
“You need someone who has got the best interests of the club at heart to look ahead and bring the young kids through, planning for the future.
“Hopefully Frank will be given that time to go to the new stadium. If he’s any sort of measure of success, then he’ll get a new contract and that will take him beyond the move.
“In terms of targets it’s quite simple. He just needs to get some results under his belt and get moving up the table.
“You can move up very quickly in the Premier League, it’s all very congested.
“It’s not like when Joe Royle took over and we were in a real relegation dog fight but they’re flirting with it and they need to get points on the board.
“If you look at their next six fixtures, I know they’ve got Manchester City in there, but there are some good games for Everton, where they can look to get points.
“Hopefully they can get themselves safe and Frank can then take stock and start planning for next season and being back where they should be, challenging for Europe and putting in better performances in the cups.”
Lampard is Everton’s first manager from the South East of England and even though he was a regular opponent of the Blues during his highly-successful playing career – scoring the winning goal against them in the 2009 FA Cup final – Cottee reckons his fellow Londoner might not yet grasp the size of his new employers but nevertheless reckons he’ll soon find himself at home.
He said: “As a London boy, I don’t think you realise just how big Everton Football Club is.
“You get a bit of an inkling from being like myself and playing against Everton and he’s also managed against Everton as well so that will give you a little sample of the atmosphere at Goodison and the travelling support that Everton always take to away games.
“He genuinely wouldn’t understand – as I didn’t – how big a football club it is. It’s a massive, massive club. Not just in the UK but all around the world. When you get there, you feel the passion.
“Frank will have grown up as a West Ham fan, watching his dad play, being around West Ham fans and I always say, and I’ve said it from the moment I first joined Everton, that the two clubs’ supporters are very similar.
“They’re both working class fans who love their local football club and there’s a community, family feel about them both.
“Frank will have seen all that as a West Ham fan and he’ll now go to Everton and will feel the warmth and the genuine love from the Evertonians that I felt.
“Of course you’ve got to perform, whether you’re a player or a manager you’ve got to but the one thing that Frank will get that someone like Vitor Pereira wouldn’t have got, is instant love and the fully backing of the Evertonians.
“If you get that, it can be worth an extra six or seven points a season at Goodison Park, maybe more.”
Cottee believes that much of the new Everton manager’s will to succeed comes from his father, whose name he obviously shares.
However, rather than just being some kind of ‘Daddy’s boy’ who got by on favours from his old man, Lampard has long since proven himself as a stellar talent in his own right and that drive can now help galvanise the Blues.
Cottee said: “I think a lot of Frank’s character comes from his dad.
“Believe it or not I’m actually old enough to have played with both Frank Lampard junior and Frank Lampard senior!
“My first full season at West Ham was Frank senior’s last season, obviously I had six great years at Everton and then after I’d gone back to West Ham and I was very much a senior player, young Frank was coming through with Rio Ferdinand.
“I got to be a team-mate with both of them and I think young Frank certainly learned a lot from his dad who was one of the most-disciplined, best trainers I’ve ever seen in terms of putting in extra hard work and maintaining the standards he set.
“I was Frank senior’s apprentice at West Ham and in training I’d have to chip the balls into the box for him and he’d volley them into the net and he’d do extra sprint training.
“He was already well into his 30s by this stage but I looked at him and thought ‘wow, what a fantastic pro.’ There was him and Billy Bonds, two senior players who set such a great example.”
He added: “What I really admire about young Frank comes from the experience he had at West Ham. When he first came through, everyone was saying ‘it’s only because of his dad, his uncle, Harry Redknapp is the manager,’ and that must have been really hard for him.
“We could all see that there was a talented player there but he was purely being judged on what was seen at the time as nepotism.
“That must have put huge pressure on Frank and even after he’d made his big-money move to Chelsea I think most of the West Ham fans were still saying ‘how have we got £11million for him, he’s never worth that’ but when you look at what he went to achieve at Stamford Bridge, that fee was an absolute snip.
“I admire Frank for going to Chelsea and proving to everyone that it wasn’t about him being in the team because of his family connections, he was there because he was a fantastic player and great goalscorer.
“I think he’ll take all this into the management side of things now.”
