Chelsea: Pep Guardiola comparisons tell us nothing about Frank Lampard

Frank Lampard has only had one year to show his approach and abilities as manager. Chelsea fans trying to look ahead should not think they are doing anything useful by comparing him to Pep Guardiola.

If Chelsea had hired a coach instead of a brand persona to replace Antonio Conte, we could all appreciate Frank Lampard’s first managerial season for what it is: an overachieving and rollicking run featuring two of the Blues’ best loanees culminating in a promotion playoff against John Terry’s Aston Villa. But because Chelsea chose Maurizio Sarri, who did what he was hired to do and replicated Napoli 2015-18, Lampard is in the mix for the head coach job at Stamford Bridge at least one year ahead of schedule.

In a world where all those things can happen, the logical if not rational thing to do is to choose Pep Guardiola as the point of comparison for thinking about what Lampard might be like as Chelsea’s next coach.

So many funny things about Pep Guardiola once you see his self-promoting blather for what it is. His trophy case is impressive, yes, but not as much as the mystique around him.

One pillar of that mystique is the studied avoidance of all context when talking about his successes. Guardiola has won eight league titles in 10 years of coaching across three leagues. Mentioned less frequently is how in seven of those eight title-winning years he had the most expensive players in the league. At Barcelona, his players were the apotheosis of La Masia’s greatest modern generation. He took over a Bayern Munich with one of the greatest club sides of all time (and didn’t win the Champions League with them, shhh). His Manchester City squad, the most expensive in history, was purpose-built specifically for him.

Those squads – two inherited, one made-to-order – are inseparable from Guardiola’s style of play. His style of play is, in fact, utterly dependent on those players.

Guardiola is the totem and the ambassador of “the right way to play.” Perhaps if he was occasionally honest about the necessity of Fernandinho’s tactical fouls through midfield, or how sometimes you need Fernandino or a centre-back to send a ball to Sergio Aguero via Route One, no one would even bother with such pap as “the right way to play.” But he does not concede such inconveniences, nor does he or anyone else link “his” way to his breath-takingly exclusive squads, and so people wonder if Maurizio Sarri – a self-appointed student of Guardiola – will create some shadow of Pep at Chelsea; if Vincent Kompany, Guardiola’s captain at Manchester City, will bring Pep-ball to Anderlecht; or if enough short passes, lectures about triangles and the occasional pop-a-Pep-squat on the touchlines will bring the flower of La Masia to pitches worldwide.

What does all this have to do with Frank Lampard? Not very much, and that’s pretty much the point.

Frank Lampard and Pep Guardiola are legends at the football clubs that nurtured them as players, having given years of faithful service and a case full of trophies to the club. That’s about the end of the similarities, which means there is little basis from which to draw any expectations about Lampard’s potential for success as Chelsea manager from Guardiola’s success at Barcelona.

Lampard will not be taking over the most expensive club in England. Chelsea do not have a corps of Cobham-trained players entering their prime playing years. Even without a transfer ban, the next manager will be lucky to get half the number of players at one-quarter the total outlay that Maurizio Sarri received in his first season, let alone anything Guardiola is accustomed to.

Lampard’s season at Derby may not have a lot in common with what may lie ahead at Chelsea, but it is a closer than anything about Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Manchester City (or Zinedine Zidane’s first season at Real Madrid, another fruitless and fruit looped talking point).

Derby is not a place to develop or impose a stylistic philosophy on a football team. Perhaps the Premier League isn’t either, given the level of competition up and down the table and the pragmatic philosophy that pervades the league. At least not unless you’re Pep Guardiola, featuring a squad where even the worst player has enough quality to out-class nearly every player in the rest of the league.

The obsession with Pep Guardiola, and the desire to make him the gold standard for coaching, is based in the mystique as much as the accomplishments. The desire to compare Frank Lampard to Guardiola is not an honest search for understanding, but is instead wish-casting, because, you know, the last go-around worked out so well for the Blues over the last year.

Lampard’s one season at Derby reflected a career steeped in the glory days of the Chelsea Way. Like Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti, Lampard has found ways to win. He tailored the right suit for his Rams, just as he would have to at Chelsea. The squad and the tactics would flow from the team. Nothing about Lampard’s playing history or first year as manager suggests any idea to be a philosopher king, let alone a philosopher martyr.

If Frank Lampard is going to reflect any manager, it will be one with whom he accomplished so much.

But right, Mourinho is a dinosaur who plays the wrong kind of football, and the people making the Guardiola comparisons are already concerned about Lampard’s “boring” football. Well, if you didn’t enjoy all those trophy lifts with the Special One, perhaps you don’t want to be around for the Frank Lampard era.