To nobody’s great surprise, the dam has broken at Everton and Frank Lampard – a contentious appointment to begin with – has been relieved of his duties. Aged 44, the midfielder who was renowned for his ruthlessly efficient on-pitch performances is mirroring that as a manager, by making his way through coaching jobs at such a rate that he might have speedrun the average manager’s career by the time he turns 50. As Everton’s attention turns to looking for the next saviour, the post-mortem will now begin on why Lampard was not the answer they were looking for.
Everton has gone through a large field of managers in recent years, with Champions League winners such as Carlo Ancelotti and Rafael Benitez mixed in with more speculative appointments like Ronald Koeman and Lampard himself. While any new manager will need to overcome a sense of doom around the club that will have bettors at 1xbet PH backing the Toffees to go down, it is worth considering why Lampard never quite cut the mustard on Merseyside, and what Everton as a club needs to learn from this misadventure.
There’s no track record to speak of
When a team in Everton’s situation hires a boss with a team like Chelsea on their CV, it can look like an ambitious appointment. However, Lampard really hasn’t achieved very much as a manager in his stints at Derby and in London. His first season at Stamford Bridge had some high points, as he brought youth players into the first team (not through choice but due to a transfer embargo), and those players are still key members of the first team there. Results wise, though, Chelsea achieved diminishing returns particularly on the defensive side of things, where they kept showing frailties in bigger matches. At Derby, meanwhile, he was backed financially above what most Championship clubs could muster; he finished sixth.
Many fans were unconvinced
There will be no shortage of Everton fans who, if they weren’t so concerned about the Premier League status of the club, could tell everyone “I told you so”. In truth, Lampard wasn’t a wildly popular appointment in the first place, though he won some over with decent performances to get out of the relegation mix. It shouldn’t be forgotten, though, that they weren’t in the relegation spots when he arrived. Although few if any Blues regretted the departure of Rafael Benitez, a more popular appointment would have been Graham Potter, Rudi Garcia or, if recent England internationals were the selection pool, Wayne Rooney – who has shown an ability to take on a struggling side without blaming the players.
The rot goes deeper than the dugout
As easy and popular as it may be to lay Everton’s current predicament at the door of Lampard, the short-termist approach of the board has been concerning for some time now. Each new manager comes in, wins some early games and looks to have turned the club around. The ability of the club to recruit in the right areas is in doubt, and as a result every new manager is tasked with a rebuilding job they never complete. Whoever comes in next, the board needs to acknowledge that any fix needs to be more than short term and, even if it means relegation in the immediate future, the club needs to think more than one season ahead.
