Not exactly good man management is it, hahaha but no seriously, he lost the dressing room
Frank Lampard’s sacking will not have come as a surprise to anyone who has watched Chelsea for the past six weeks, or the past 16 years. Results weren’t good enough, there was no clear identity and, as has become clear since the news broke on Monday, he had lost the dressing room as a result.
But it wasn’t such a knee jerk decision as many have made out. This has been months in the making and according to some reports, Lampard would have walked before the start of this season if it weren’t for his emotional connection with the club he represented as a player for 13 years.
The notion of ‘losing the dressing room’ is something of a cliché but it’s also a very real phenomenon, and was the case at Chelsea this season, with many players – even those playing regular first team football – becoming disillusioned with his management.
According to The Athletic’s inside story, Lampard would go months without speaking to certain players, causing huge damage to their confidence levels.
“The problem was, the manager didn’t talk to the players — well only the ones he liked,” one source told them.
“I know of players who weren’t in the team that didn’t hear from him for many months. That’s very frustrating for a player because you don’t know what you have to do to do better, what the manager is thinking. It’s crazy.”
Given Lampard was still a player as recently as 2016, and benefitted from the carefully brilliant man management of a young José Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti to name just two of the many managers he played under, it comes as a surprise that Lampard would not invest more time in maintaining the morale of the whole squad.
Another source told The Athletic: “The communication of Lampard with the players was not fluent. When I met with one of the players last year I was asking if the manager was telling him things. He said to me: ‘No, but usually he never speaks to the players’.
“I said I could not understand that because Lampard needs a professional relationship with every player. You need to know players need information and guidance.”
