Lampard doesn’t feel like a good fit for Everton

With Duncan Ferguson now installed for the forseeable future as temporary manager at Everton, stories continue about who will take over permanently.

One of the names that keeps popping up is Frank Lampard. The ex-Chelsea player and manager has been out of work since being fired in January last year by the London club and is being linked with Everton.

Lampard is similar to one of the other most prominent candidates Wayne Rooney in that he is, like his former England colleague, a legend as a player with a storied career and having won a bag full of trophies. In addition, both have managed Derby County so there is a weird symmatry to it all.

The former midfield star began well with Chelsea when he was the surprise appointment to the Stamford Bridge job in 2019.

At that time Chelsea were facing transfer restrictions and so bringing in their former player seemed the right choice to the club, despite his inexperience.

At first things appeared to go pretty well and Chelsea finished fourth qualifying for the Champions League again.

But, there were underlying issues. Most of all Lampard’s Chelsea team leaked a lot of goals, fifty-four in total, and seemed to have particular problems defending counter-attacks and set-pieces.

That last element is especially troubling given Everton’s terrible record so far this campaign dealing with corners and free-kicks.

The following season things started to go seriously wrong and after a poor run of form and seemingly increasing problems with players, Chelsea pulled the trigger and Lampard was fired.

All this would indicate that either Lampard wasn’t up to the job of managing high-profile players at a club which is used to competing for major honours every season.

Or, perhaps he wasn’t afforded enough time to build what he wanted and external factors impeded him in making progress. Does he need another chance to prove he can quickly learn and develop his coaching ability?

Lampard lost his most important and genuinly World Class player Eden Hazard the summer before his first season, had injuries and problems due to Covid fallout and of course restrictions on spending in his first transfer window too.

He did promote young players, perhaps as much out of expediency as faith, and several of them particularly Mason Mount and Reece James developed into fine players and have become mainstays of the current Chelsea and England teams.

Everton obviously have some talented young players like Anthony Gordon, Jarrad Branthwaite, Lewis Dobbin and new signings Vitalli Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson. These are the players any new manager needs to consider building his team around.

Lampard is also a ‘big name’ something that seems of considerable importance to the board and owner Farhad Moshiri. He may still become a good and effective coach but it Goodison Park the right place for him next?

In the end I just think in terms of my gut instinct that Lampard isn’t a natural fit for a club like Everton with it’s history and traditions, which are very different to a London club like Chelsea.

And, given that he has so many questions around his style, tactics and those defensive issues, I don’t feel this would be a sound appointment, especially with the team in such a precarious situation facing possible relegation.