FRANK’S KEANE TO HAVE LAST LAUGH!
RAMS BOSS LAMPARD PREPARES TO TAKE ON OLD FOE IN EAST MIDLANDS DERBY
THE first time Frank Lampard came up against Roy Keane he got a look and a shove.
It was one of the most important lessons in Lampard’s graduation towards becoming a player of longevity and great distinction.
Tomorrow night, Lampard takes on Keano for the first time as a manager.
He doesn’t expect anything to have changed.
“I never played with Roy Keane or under him etc as a manager or coach,” says Lampard as he prepares Derby for the battle of the East Midlands at Nottingham Forest.
“But in terms of influences, when I was 17/18, looking around the players, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, I just had huge admiration for them.
“I remember playing at Old Trafford against Keane and he did give me a bit of a nudge early in the game. It wasn’t so much a battle with Roy Keane, he just sort of swatted me aside.
“I was just coming into the first team at West Ham and that really opened up my eyes to the sort of player Roy Keane was, what sort of strides I would have to take to get anywhere in the game.
“He wasn’t just a powerhouse, he was fantastic on the ball and led Manchester United brilliantly for a long time.
“I felt that shove and I felt it mentally, that this is the big boys. That is the sort of player he was.
“Now I meet him on the other side of the fence in terms of managing, coaching.”
The East Midlands derby can be a furious, dangerous affair.
Rival managers have been known to kick each other (Billy Davies alleging Nigel Clough kneed him, 2010).
There have been player brawls (2009 and 2010) and players regularly sent off (four in four successive games from 2011 and one just last season).
A game made for Keano, then?
Knowledge
“As a coach or manager you have to be yourself. Players, whether they like it or not, they have to accept that,” says Lampard, getting his taste for the fight.
“Players might not like how I am, but you have to be yourself. So if Roy Keane became a shrinking violet now, it wouldn’t work.
“He has so much knowledge, so much passion, he knows what it takes to play at the top and win things and I guess he tries to translate that to the players he works with.” In manager Martin O’Neill (285 games, 48 goals) and assistant Keane (114 games, 22 goals) Forest have bosses with the club’s fire inside them. They’ve played in these derbies, they’ve walked the streets of the city.
Lampard knows O’Neill only from reputation, from what his dad Frank Lampard Senior has said from playing against him, watching games from back in the day and the odd drink and a bite to eat.
“It’s just through the football world,” says Lampard. “I have been to a couple of dinners where I have been with Martin and spent time with him. Great company, very knowledgeable man, not just on football, on everything.
“When you go up against Martin O’Neill, his success speaks for itself.
“You go up against people like him and then if they are nice and kind and offer you a glass of wine afterwards, you hope they are open to you tapping into what they know.”
Lampard has just the one derby notched on his belt, a goalless Pride Park draw just before Christmas when if the Rams had scored from the penalty he said they were denied, he would have gone third in the Championship.
Currently they are on a bit of a downer, out of the top six following a disappointing home defeat by Millwall and, a young team, they look in a bit of a need of a rest.
They won’t be getting that tomorrow night.
The City Ground is soldout, O’Neill is up for it, deriding the fact that a former manager, Joe Kinnear, once called the derby “just another game” and it could be tasty again.
Forest haven’t won one of these for six bouts. That’s nearly four years since Nelson Oliveira, currently playing for Reading with a mask over his battered face, scored in the fifth minute.
Tough
There hasn’t even been a Forest goal in the last three derbies, so there is a bit for Lampard to live up to.
“Over recent years there have been some tough times for Forest,” says Lampard.
“Derby, obviously, have been in a different scenario but in terms of how the clubs are set now I think the landscape has changed because of the investment Forest have and the strong team they have.
“So it will be very tough for us whether their recent history against us is good or not.
“I love being in the town and people coming up and talking about the derby.
“I was in the gym on Thursday, my daughters are up, and all the Derby fans were coming up to me.
“Firstly, they were little bit upset that we didn’t beat Millwall but also
I felt that shove and I felt it mentally, that this is the big boys
very much looking forward to the Nottingham Forest game. It means a lot to the fans, rightly so.
“This is what we are in football for, and why we love it so much, the rivalry we all grew up with. I would really enjoy getting them the result they want.”
Ask Lampard to talk about the favourites derbies he played in and he finds it difficult. There were so many but he thinks and he hits on one.
“Games for Chelsea against Tottenham tend to be the ones that stick in the memory,” he said.
“We had a really good semi-final against Tottenham in the FA Cup when we won comfortably at a time when they were a good team and it was a dangerous game for us.
“But there are countless ones that stick out because the thing about derbies is that they are so intense. You have a fear of losing them, but if you do manage to win them, then the feeling is even more than in another game.”
Instinct
Even in this world of mega-millions, foreign stars, celebrity status, that basic instinct still applies, says Lampard.
“It has to, and that is led by the players that have been here a long time, the players that feel the city and the club - Richard Keogh, Craig Bryson here.
“Anyone who comes in has to buy into that quickly.
“It was one of the things I was fortunate with at Chelsea with people like John Terry, Didier Drogba, big personalities.
“When you stepped in the dressing room, you knew the demands of everything. That is something I try to work on here, and push people to know how the club feels, what is important to the club, the ethics.
“It builds before the game and I think you would be a bit of a fool to miss it and you have to react to it, and understand what it means.”
Keano will.
This is what we are in football for, the rivalry we all grew up with