Chelsea FC manager Jose Mourinho told reporters after the Hull City match that the Blues let Frank Lampard go because the club wanted to move on and focus on the future. Mourinho pointed out that the Blues have two excellent players in central midfield in Nemanja Matic and Cesc Fabregas and even mentioned Jeremie Boga from the academy. He continued to say that Frank Lampard would have stood in their way and would have prevented their development.
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Farbegas and Matic are 26 and 27 respectively so there is not much development left for them to do but they are both clear upgrades over Lampard in their positions. Fabregas has stepped in to that Frank Lampard in the Chelsea midfield and has become that same attacking lynchpin that the Englishman used to be.
Although he does not score nearly as many goals, he contributes in other ways with his assists and key passes. He has also taken over Lampard’s set piece duties and his penalty duties when Eden Hazard is not on the pitch.
Jose Mourinho, as quoted in ESPN FC, explained why Chelsea FC let Frank Lampard go:
"“He left Chelsea as a free agent and chooses his life, we can’t complain about it, that’s football,” Mourinho told reporters. “It’s his life, nothing to do with us. We made the right decision. My view is that when you want to look forward, look to the future and have people like (Cesc) Fabregas and (Nemanja) Matic and Jeremie Boga (a midfielder with the under-21s) which are the next 10 years of the club.“The project is to prepare for the next 10 years, not for the next year. We made the right decision. You can argue ‘You have John Terry and Didier Drogba’. Different. Drogba is a striker that is coming to help and support the team. John Terry is the best central defender in English football and it doesn’t matter how old he is. The nucleus of the team has to be developed and to have a big player like Frank we would stop the development of the other guys.”"
Mourinho is right to point out that the argument against cutting Frank Lampard for younger players is that he signed both Didier Drogba and John Terry. Drogba of course is not starting and was brought in to bring depth, scoring off the bench, and came on a free transfer. Terry is still the best defender in the Premier League as Mourinho pointed out so there would be no reason to replace him, even for a younger player in need of development.
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The one argument Jose Mourinho makes that does not hold weight is his insistence that Lampard was let go so the club could focus on developing academy players. Perhaps if he was actually giving regular minutes to midfielders like Lewis Baker or Ruben Loftus-Cheek then he could make that argument but that is not the case.
In the long run that may be true but to say that Frank Lampard would not be an asset to this club, even just off the bench, is ludicrous. If Mourinho wants to truly focus on the future then he must begin to trust these young academy players and give them more than just cameo appearances.