Throughout his 18 (ish) months at Stamford Bridge, Frank Lampard has always done a great job of keeping his cool in the face of adversity.
However, as things have started to turn sour this season, Lampard’s calm aura has started to crumble.
If he hasn’t exactly thrown his players under the bus, Lampard is no longer hesitant to call his players if he’s not happy with their performance, and he does so with alarming regularity recently. Reports of unrest in the locker room were quick to surface.
The media then faced Lampard’s wrath.
In his pre-match press conference ahead of Sunday’s FA Cup match with Luton Town, Lampard should have given answers about N’Golo Kante and Olivier Giroud’s fitness, but we got nothing from Phone. Instead, we had a surprisingly personal attack on Athletic’s Liam Twomey.
“To be fair, Liam their confidence would be drawn if they read some of the articles you write by the minute,” he told Twomey (via the Daily Mail). “I’ve read them and some of the confirmation biases you reflect on after games… it’s almost like a social media expert trying to get a negative reaction.
I’m reluctant to answer because I’m really not important to what’s going on at Chelsea (certainly not enough to be discussed in a presser), but I’ll just say that I respectfully disagree with Lampard’s opinion on my objectivity.
Good or bad, is it never personal? #CFC
– Liam Twomey (@liament_twomey) January 22, 2021
“I read the articles when we were doing well and they didn’t go both ways. So, for a journalist, being objective would be a good start because players read it.
These are not the words of the Lampard that we have seen over the past 18 months. These are the words of a man who feels the pressure.
For Chelsea, this is nothing particularly new. The Blues have had some of the thorniest managers in recent Premier League history, and they’ve seen more than their fair share of thorny press conferences.
One man in particular, Jose Mourinho, is not the type to bite his tongue, and when things started to turn sour for his Chelsea side in 2015/16, the Stamford Bridge press room became the most toxic place in the world.
Mourinho became so frustrated with life at Chelsea that he turned his back on almost everyone. Players, journalists and even fans have all been targeted, and the mood around the club has deteriorated every week.
No one wants to be part of an atmosphere like this. This is why Chelsea almost stopped playing in 2015/16, and there are signs that the Blues are heading in the wrong direction this season.
You can argue that this is simply a case of Lampard’s passion overflow. No one wants to see Chelsea succeed more than him, but he’s doing it wrong these days. He may have picked up a lot of pieces from Mourinho’s book, but this is the one he should avoid.
Things are already bad enough at Chelsea and everyone is already looking at Lampard under the most intense microscope. the boss therefore cannot afford to fuel the misery around Stamford Bridge. It’s his job to keep things on track.
When players are going through a difficult time, they turn to the manager for help. They need to see someone calm, calm and up for the challenge, and this press conference made Lampard look like the exact opposite.
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