Chelsea: The first step is the biggest for young managers and players

Chelsea’s Frank Lampard has played the youth like many other young managers have done. For all of them, the hardest part was the first step.

“You can’t win anything with kids” is a phrase that has stuck around in football despite being proven false time and time again. Several managers have won things with kids but success has a way of justifying all things.

And in the modern game, there is a push by many clubs to bring in a new, young manager who supports playing new, young players. And nearly every single one of those young managers shares a similar story. There is almost always an initial hurdle where many question the young manager and his choice in young players. But once that hurdle is past, things get much rosier.

Frank Lampard is clearly at that point now. He has gone all in on the youth revolution and so far the youth have delivered. But the transition to them is harder than many would realize and the older players have been letting him down. But this is not a new story. Several other managers have gone through this as well on their way to the top.

When Leonardo Jardim came into Monaco, they had been also-rans for many years despite throwing tons of cash into the squad. Jardim began using more and more young players from the academy but initially things were no better. If anything, they were worse as his style came across as incredibly boring.

But then everything clicked with an incredibly young squad in 2016/2017, Jardim’s third year at the club. With this young team including Chelsea’s Tiemoue Bakayoko, Monaco easily won the title and pushed deep into the Champions League.

Erik ten Hag’s story at Ajax is similar. While playing youth at Ajax is more or less a given, their standards remain high and in the early days Ten Hag was not living up to the task. Mind, dropping a few points is enough to derail an Ajax season but the club stuck through the “bump” with Ten Hag. The following year saw Ajax rock the Champions League as they knocked out several excellent elite sides. The kids showed they were alright with the kid manager.

Fellow Premier League managers Mauricio Pochettino and Jurgen Klopp also saw similar hiccups at first. It took Pochettino into his third season before he made Tottenham into the top six club they are now as he transitions the squad towards the academy players. Klopp at Dortmund saw the side become much younger overnight, but they did not become the force they are known as now until a few years into his tenure.

This is all not to mention perhaps the greatest example of all: Sir Alex Ferguson. It took Ferguson years of tinkering with his side and making it younger before the Class of ’92 came along and changed things. He continued to build upon that success with the youth during the rest of his career.

Lampard is a young manager using young players and they will all make young mistakes. That is to be expected. But similar cases show that once that initial hurdle is gotten over, things become much, much better.

Lampard’s style has already shown itself to be entertaining and really only suffering from poor errors at the back. The errors (all over the pitch) have come from the senior players as the club transitions over. So long as Lampard is supported through that transition as is expected, the club can rebuild as an elite club once again on the backs of the youth.