STAN COLLYMORE Lampard’s A MODERN BRAT PACK lesson in graft for the craft

COLLY If the FA Cup has proved anything, it has shown that English football beneath the top couple of tiers is thriving. Managers such as Pep Guardiola might want a B League, but the fact is that we have the most comprehensive structure of professional fo

Follow us on Twitter: @peoplesport WHEN Frank Lampard first crossed my path, he was a chubby-faced wannabe who hung on pretty much every word said by senior professionals.

We once went on holiday together – with Jamie Redknapp and Rio Ferdinand – to Ayia Napa in Cyprus. And if someone had told me that the teenager who followed us around would go on to carve out the career he has... well, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Lampard has come a long way since then, establishing himself as a legend for both Chelsea and England.

But the real beauty of Lampard’s career was the clinical approach he took to lift himself to the very top of his profession.

For a player who was very good att most things, the Londoner stood tallest whenhen it came to goalscoring. None of the soocalled Golden Generation came close to matching him in the priceless art of finding the net.

David Beckham may have supplied more assists. Paul Scholes might have been a better passer, and Steven n Gerrard a better all-round player.

But none of them approached the game with Lampard’s cold steel. And got a comparablebl return in front of goal.

The only player I believe you can compare him with is Liverpool great Kevin Keegan. The Kop idol was very similar to the Chelsea midfielder in the way he squeezed every last drop out of his talent.

Keegan was a supreme athlete who worked out what he needed to do to succeed. And then he set about giving himself the best chance of achieving all he could in the game through hard work. By the time he finished, the former Scunthorpe boy had become the captain of his country and European Footballer of the Year. Lampard may not have scaled those heights but by sheer determination he managed to fill his trophy cabinet. At some point as a young professional – probably after hanging around with me – he must have asked himself serious questions. “What do I need to improve to get to the top?” and,, “How do I go about getting there?” His u uncle – and manager at West Ham – H Harry Redknapp suggested that he ne needed to get quicker at Upton Park ( (left).l So Lampard used a trick out of his dad’s book – he bought himself running spikes – and his speed off theth mark and general fitness suddenlyde leapt a couple of levels. HeH understood that there was a value in scor scoring goals. And he worked tirelessly on hi his fi finishingi h – particularly from outside the box. Lampard’s was no God- given talent. It was earned through graft. And how fortunate was he to have someone around like his old fella, Frank Senior, to guide him. My mum, rather than my dad, was the major influence on my career. She was the one who dropped me off to trials at Walsall and traini ng at Stafford Rangers in the early days.

As helpful as that was, I would love to have been able to get feedback from someone like Frank Senior.

How good it must have been for young Frank to say: ‘What do you t hink?’ whenever a problem arose. But it is one thing being told the answer to a question. It’s another one altogether to act upon it.

If Frank had stayed at West Ham, I believe he would have become every bit the East End legend that his dad was. But he chose to go to Chelsea. And as hard as that has been for West Ham fans to truly accept, it was the right move.

The only subject for debate is whether England could have got more out of him.

When I was around the national team, the attitude was that the likes of Lampard, Gerrard, Beckham and Scholes were good enough to work it out for themselves.

One thing’s for sure, if all of England’s squad had shown Frank Lampard’s dedication to becoming the best they could be, perhaps that Golden Generation might have delivered. JOSE MOURINHO reacted petulantly to a perfectly reasonable question in a post-match interview – and Manchester United’s boss, along with Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, all need to stop acting like children.

The Portuguese (below) was downright rude when responding to questions from a BBC reporter after United drew yet anotherr blank against Hull City.

I’m getting sick and tired of managers acting like spoiled brats if they are asked a poser that doesn’t fit with their agenda.

Contributions from the he media pay a huge proportion of Mourinho’s £8million-plus yearly salary. Top-level bosses should act with a bit of dignity – if not, those cheques should be withheld by the broadcasters.

Once the managers get that message, you can bet your last fiver they’ll change their approach towards interviews – and interviewers too for that matter.