It’s a mad life as a manager but I LOVE it
HAVING lacked the time to ring Carlo Ancelotti or Jose Mourinho for insights into his weird new world, it is mildly amusing to know who Frank Lampard did contact this week.
‘Steven and I were texting back and forth, discussing the mad life of management and how we both see it,’ Lampard said. ‘We are enjoying every minute of it. We are both the same.’
They always were, Lampard and Gerrard, and they still are, right down to that old instinct to bomb forward at the same time when sense and logic would suggest one or both should sit back and enjoy the quiet life.
There was a reassuring beauty in how they each snubbed that easier path within a month of each other in May, but equally it is intriguing now to see if their ideas of football management crash hard against the reality of what they are getting into.
That learning process ramps up over the next three days, with Lampard taking charge of his first league fixture as Derby manager at Reading tonight and Gerrard doing likewise with Rangers at Aberdeen on Sunday.
It will be fascinating not only because former England players have almost disappeared from management — in the top four divisions of English football, Lampard joins Joey Barton, Lee Bowyer and Nigel Clough as the only managers with a full cap — but also because they each face major challenges.
Gerrard has inherited an institution that has often resembled a madhouse and Lampard’s club has been through six other managers in three years, despite twice reaching the Championship play-offs.
For both Lampard and Gerrard, it has been something of an ice-water immersion, and that is particularly the case for the former, who was drawn back to the struggle of it all aged 40 after an 18-month break following his retirement as a player.
‘You miss the bug,’ he said. ‘TV work is comfortable, there is pressure because you want to do the job as best as you can, but when you’ve been competitive for a long time as a player you miss it. Myself and Steven were talking about that last year when we were working on BT. It draws you back in and for all the 24-hours-a-day talk and the lack of sleep when you’re a manager, you can’t help but love it. Ask me again after a few results and we’ll see.
‘But it was something that I couldn’t not do and I couldn’t settle for that easy life when there was an opportunity to come and do this.’
Always a captivating speaker and a deep thinker, it is easy to understand why Derby’s owner Mel Morris took what amounts to a gamble on Lampard, given the possibilities in a man whose playing career spanned 21 years and 11 major trophies under Mourinho, Ancelotti, Guus Hiddink, Rafael Benitez and Manuel Pellegrini, among others. Lampard has been reluctant to draw too much from any one source, lest he becomes too much of someone else and not enough of himself, but the plausible theory is that plenty of wisdom may have passed down.
‘I haven’t asked for advice yet,’ he said. ‘I speak to my dad regularly and Harry Redknapp. But to be honest, I haven’t had the time. I haven’t thought, “That’s one for Jose, I’ll give him a ring.” If a situation arose, I wouldn’t hesitate to use them, but I’m busy and I’m learning on my feet.’
So far the signs have been promising — Derby won four out of five pre-season games since his arrival two months ago, including fixtures against Premier League sides Wolves and Southampton, and connections have been demonstrated with the loan signing from his former club Chelsea of Mason Mount, a highly-rated 19-year-old.
But for all of that, and for all the best intentions of a 4-3-3 system and a ‘personable’ approach to players, it will count for little if the league table makes for unimpressive reading. Morris has said promotion isn’t ‘make or break’ but recent history suggests it has been.
‘I’m certainly fully into this and I want to be the best manager I can possibly be — no matter what my name is, no matter what my playing career was,’ Lampard said. ‘I’m starting afresh here. I might have a tiny honeymoon period because it’s my first job, but I’m not the first or the last one to have done that. I know I’ll be judged on what happens in the weeks and months.
‘We’ll ask for patience, but results will define us. There’s a breaking point for every manager, but I have a plan here and the owner has a plan that he sold to me. It’s not like we’re trying to change the world instantly. We’re trying to build something.’