Why Frank the perfectionist couldn’t resist following in Clough’s footsteps

WHO’S GONE FROM GOLDEN GENERATION TO THE DUGOUT?

Even in the small details of a conversation about something completely different, it was hard to avoid the impression that Frank Lampard would not be on the sidelines for long. Conveying opinions from a television studio would not be enough.

Our talk had turned, a week or so back, to Sven Goran eriksson’s habit of asking england’s players to prepare for penalty shootouts by practising the walk from the centre circle to the penalty spot in training. It wouldn’t have featured on his own list of preparations, Lampard admitted with due deference, explaining to Sportsmail that ‘for me, the moment is when you place the ball down and step back, but I understood the thought process behind it’.

Soon, this most intense of individuals was ruminating on how you can overthink the whole penalty business. He was so spooked by missing one in the build-up to the 2006 World Cup that he hammered home 48 out of 50 in training, studied endless videos — then ended up missing one when the quarter-final shootout arrived against Portugal.

‘I second-guessed myself,’ he said, the memory clearly still branded across his consciousness. ‘I learned afterwards never to do that again.’

His anecdote says something about the perfectionism in Lampard, which was always shared by Steven Gerrard. The sky was the limit for the pair of them and it is the intensity they share which lead them to take hugely challenging strides into management within weeks of each other.

The size of the task for Lampard cannot be overstated. Derby owner Mel Morris has gone through eight managerial changes in less than five years since nigel Clough parted company with the club. The chance to work for Lampard will help attract talent but managing on a budget in the Championship is not a cakewalk. Fulham and Wolverhampton Wanderers have been promoted paying Premier League salaries this year. Financial Fair Play brings restrictions.

Lampard also arrives at a club where hopes of a return to the Premier League have never been less than intense in the decade since Paul Jewell’s squad were relegated. The healthy crowds, averaging 27,000 last season, reveal a football city with pedigree, yearning for the profile Brian Clough delivered in the 1970s when they won the title twice in four years.

True to type, Lampard was absorbing the game this weekend, watching the League Two play-off final between exeter and Coventry with his father and in so doing, doubtless contemplating the kind of talent which can be moulded to his new cause.

It felt significant that his father was beside him at Wembley and you imagine he will be a sounding board in the weeks ahead. From the very early years in which Frank Snr moulded him as a player, his father’s wise counsel was everything. The younger Lampard always remembered how his dad kept out of the clamour of parents making their voices heard on the touchline during youth games.

‘You might think my dad would be at the centre of this scrum of tactical nous,’ he said a few years ago. ‘He would stand behind the others parents, collar up, and stay deadly silent. He’s my football touchstone, my coach and critic; an inspiration and an aggravation.’

He will also certainly take plenty from the managers he has known, though what he always loved most about Jose Mourinho was a realisation that sometimes the best players know more than a manager about what they need to excel. What always drove him mad about Claudio Ranieri was a predilection for ‘trying to tell me that I should do this or that, even if I felt I needed something else’.

The challenge for a manager with no prior experience will be to know when to instruct, dictate, and when to let be, though the excellent Jody Morris will help him with that. For those who have only known the elite, perfectionism can be an impediment.

THE conversation with Lampard ventured into a discussion of his passionate obsession that england should be cut some slack this summer. Yet he rapidly extended into analytical talk about strengths and weaknesses in the Russia-bound squad. The goalkeeping inexperience is a concern to him, and he would have wanted the presence of an old hand, Joe Hart, in the squad. ‘We should be careful we don’t start a conversation about our goalkeepers not being good enough. That’s not the case,’ he then said, checking himself.

Gary Lineker has suggested that hopes of winning the World Cup should be put aside and that england look to 2022 for glory, instead. not Lampard. ‘I’m not quite with that,’ he said. ‘We are better than that. We can give it a good go. We dropped the ball for years but we’ve brought through younger groups now. There’s a longer game. The future looks rosier, better.’

In some respects, the challenges of the england years may be as good a preparation as any for what is about to follow. Lampard’s autobiography hinted at a profound irritation with the media when the going was getting tough for the national team.

He seemed to see the need for more laughter now: a safety valve. ‘There was laughter around the camp. There was light and shade,’ Terry Butcher told Sportsmail a few weeks ago about the 1990 group, and Lampard seemed to see the sense in that.

The senior players didn’t address the kind of environment

“We dropped the ball but the future is rosy for England”

they created with England, he thinks. ‘ Maybe we needed to connect with players from rival teams. We all feel we could have done a bit more to help the environment. the England team have that more now. there seems less weight on their shoulders.’

of those sometime torturous years with England, he concluded: ‘You can’t cry your eyes out about it. You are coming up against some really strong teams so you have to be a big enough boy to take it.’

For the time being, that kind of philosophy is something the new Derby County manager might require. So be it. Lampard said a few months ago that he had ‘hardly kicked a ball’ in the year since he finished playing and had ‘ no craving’ to do so.

When the next best thing presented itself, he could not resist.

Frank Lampard was speaking at BBC Sport’s World Cup launch