Chelsea can build a new culture by naming Frank Lampard as technical director

Chelsea should tap Frank Lampard to replace Michael Emenalo as technical director. Lampard can take the club into the next stage of their history while also restoring some of what has been missing over the last decade.

Michael Emenalo shocked the Chelsea world on Monday by resigning as technical director. In a club that is notoriously cliquish and secretive, Emenalo’s role was never fully known and his legacy will be equally ambiguous. As managers came and went, Emenalo remained, suggesting the level of trust he held with Roman Abramovich but also spurring rumours that he held the sword that dangled over the technical era.

Emenalo presided over the most successful period in Chelsea history, adding every major trophy to the Stamford Bridge hall of honour. At the same time, though, young careers flashed and flickered as academy prospects disappeared into the loan army. The club lost some of its moorings as John Terry seemed more a relic at his own club than he did in the Premier League at large. The “palpable discord” of late 2015 arose from a locker room where neither players nor manager remembered the old adage about the name on the back of the shirt and the name on the front.

Frank Lampard is uniquely positioned to succeed Michael Emenalo. The immediate impact of Roman Abramovich appointing Lampard would be the message transmitted to all corners of Chelsea FC: this can be your club for life. As Barrett Rouen pointed out yesterday, Chelsea players have come to see the club as more of a hotel than a home.

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Lampard’s hiring would show that there is a place for ex-Blues at Stamford Bridge beyond “ambassadorships” and the occasional coaching post. With John Terry and Ashley Cole having already expressed the desire to rejoin Chelsea as staff members, the Bluest generation would have a direct role in moulding their successors.

Frank Lampard could do this not only because of his stature in the club but because of his relationships there. He knows and gets along well with Roman Abramovich. As a former player transitioning to a management role he would share an experience with Antonio Conte, and have the humility to learn from Conte while working with him. Obviously, he knows many of the players and knows what they are all going through. He has no allegiance to any of the cliques, which may infuriate people who want him on their side. But it gives him the opportunity to dispense with that dysfunction.

These intangibles would allow him to have a positive impact on the club while he tackles the technical director learning curve. He has only worked as a pundit since retiring from play. He would need to learn the entirety of the job while on the job.

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Fortunately, he is nearly a card-carrying genius. He knows the game and can communicate it, which is a significant part of the job in dealing with scouts, coaches and management. To a certain extent, Michael Emenalo over-complicated the role. His machinations around the loan army sometimes resembled a weeks-long game of Risk rather than a development pipeline for young footballers.

Lampard could simplify and streamline the role to communicating ownership’s vision and ambition to the various managers and coaches who will implement and deliver on them. He would direct the club in matters of technical development, player pipelines and managerial support. He would work with Antonio Conte to identify and execute the 4-6 major transfers of each year, both incoming and outgoing.

Roman Abramovich has shown his preference for a stable technical director at the expense of managerial turnover. Unless he has someone waiting in the wings, he will not immediately trust the next technical director as thoroughly as he did Emenalo. Abramovich will have to grant the new technical director significant time to learn the role and its expectations, and to deliver. Frank Lampard is an effective hedge against Abramovich’s sack-happy tendencies.

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Like managers, there are few people in the world capable of being Chelsea’s technical director. Fewer still are on the market. Frank Lampard could be the only available option who could have an immediate effect on the club by virtue of his stature at Stamford Bridge. His impact, though, would go far beyond the short term as he could bring real meaning back to the words Chelsea Football Club.