FRANK: BEING A BRIDGE LEGEND WON’T SAVE MY JOB

CHELSEA legend he may be, but Frank Lampard expects no special favours when it comes to keeping the manager’s job.

The Blues have lost four of their last six games and slumped from second to ninth in the Premier League table.

Although a home FA Cup tie against League Two Morecambe today should end that dismal sequence, Lampard knows his future will remain a hot topic until league results improve. And while given time during his first year in the post – when Chelsea were banned from the transfer market – that is not something he is counting on now.

Quizzed if, given his status at the club, he deserves extra patience from owner Roman Abramovich, Lampard (right) said: “It’s his prerogative. I certainly don’t want to rely on anything that’s happened in the past.

“All I can look at is what I see right now. A month ago, everything was rosy and now, a month later, everyone is looking negatively.

“I have to be the one who looks positively.

“I felt huge support from this club, coming back here to manage them and the way it’s worked in the period I’ve been back.

“I felt huge support for 13 years as a player. I left because they wanted to move on to other things. I understand what football is and the expectations.

“But I don’t think that should give me any head start or earn me the right of anything that takes me out of that equation.”

Defeat to League Two play-off contenders Morecambe would surely signal the end of Lampard’s 18-month reign in the hot-seat. If such a massive upset seems unlikely, Lampard has experienced being on the wrong end of a giant-killing – in 1997 with West Ham he lost 1-0 to Wrexham in the Cup.

The four-time FA Cup winner, 42, recalled: “I remember the disappointment. These lower-league teams raise their game, see it as a huge occasion and do anything they can to get that result.”