Lampard for Everton but could Rooney have rekindled Toffees?
Stuart Hodge
- Updated: 29 Jan 2022 10:19 GMT
- 8 min read
Frank Lampard is set to win the race to become Everton manager.
It’s a return to Premier League management for the former Chelsea superstar, who departed the Stamford Bridge hotseat last January.
Lampard’s former England team-mate Wayne Rooney was among the names linked with the Toffees job but it’s understood Portuguese boss Vitor Pereira and caretaker Duncan Ferguson were the two main candidates he beat to the job.
TRENDING
The imminent appointment of the 43-year-old comes after Rafael Benitez was sacked after winning just one of his last 13 games in charge.
Bringing in Lampard is certainly a glitzy appointment but will it prove the right one for the Toffees – and were they right to plump for the former Derby and Chelsea boss over other candidates?
What Lampard brings to Everton
‘Frank Lampard’ is a name that will command respect with all of the players in the Everton dressing room.
The new boss won’t have to worry about any of the more established international stars doubting his pedigree, having won the very best prizes the game can offer at club level as a player including four Premier League crowns and the Champions League in 2012.
His managerial record though, isn’t quite as glamorous or eye-catching.
Lampard’s first job came at Derby County, where he was appointed in May 2018. In the 2018-19 campaign he guided the team to the Championship Play-off Final (where they lost 2-1 to Aston Villa) and a shock cup win over Manchester United at Old Trafford.
That earned him a crack at the Chelsea job where he took over in July 2019 with the club in the midst of a transfer embargo. His first – and only – full season in charge saw him guide Chelsea to 4th in the Premier League and an appearance in the FA Cup Final, where they lost to Arsenal. More notably, and perhaps by necessity, he gave debuts to multiple academy graduates including the likes of Reece James and Billy Gilmour.
Chelsea recruited heavily for his second season in charge, with the arrivals of Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Edouard Mendy, Hakim Ziyech and Ben Chilwell. After a positive start to the campaign, a run of five defeats in eight games saw them fall to ninth in the table last January and Lampard was dismissed to make way for Thomas Tuchel.
Some people believe Lampard has the makings of a top-level manager and others think he was elevated well beyond his station managing Chelsea – what he can do with Everton, a really good vehicle for him to prove the doubters wrong, will determine who is right.
No re-Roon-ion
Wayne Rooney declared himself out of the race for the Goodison Park hotseat earlier this week as speculation about arguably the club’s greatest homegown player of all-time returning as manager gathered pace – but let’s pause and have a think about whether he could’ve been the ideal man to help Everton rebound from their current malaise.
Rooney may be inexperienced as a manager but last season he lifted Derby – again – from the bottom of the table to safety last season with the pressure severely on and the spectre of points deductions lurking in the background.
This season, Derby have been docked a total of 21 points: 12 for entering administration in September and nine for historical financial breaches, yet Rooney once more has managed to lift them off the bottom of the table and potentially into a position to realistically fight the drop.
The fact he has been able to do this once again, proves he’s capable of keeping a team focused even when things are falling apart off the field. That is not the case at Everton, but certainly the firefighting nature of his career means he could’ve been a viable name to put forward.
Realistically though, Rooney has probably made the right call in not pursuing the job. The gravitas of his name means better clubs will come calling, and even a relegation for Derby this season won’t taint the good work he’s done making the team competitive in the direst of circumstances.
He’s not Everton manager now but who is to say he won’t be in future?
