Carlo Ancelotti brings Chelsea’s Frank Lampard’s last mentor to the league

Carlo Ancelotti has returned to the Premier League with Everton. His arrival brings Chelsea manager Frank Lampard’s last mentor to the league.

Carlo Ancelotti has been out of a job for basically a week but he is already back. Napoli fired him for a mixture of increasingly poorer results and locker room coups, but that did not scare Everton away. He is the big name they have long craved even if he is on the downward wind down of his career.

Everton may seem an odd choice to many, but their Frankenstein mixture of players is actually something Ancelotti tends to bring the best out of. Add in that they have been one of the Premier League’s highest spending clubs in recent seasons and it is not as wild as it appears.

More interesting from a Chelsea perspective is what it means for Frank Lampard. Lampard has many clear and unclear influences on his tactics and management style but Ancelotti brings the last major mentor to the Premier League. What that means in matches against them remains to be seen.

It is hard to deny that Jose Mourinho took Chelsea to a different level when he first arrived at the club. He turned good players into world class players, including (but certainly not limited to) Lampard and John Terry. Tactically, Lampard’s teams may not have much in common with Mourinho’s but behind the scenes, the motivation is largely the same. Much like Mourinho did, Lampard constantly asks more out of his players.

Ancelotti’s return brings with it one of Lampard’s tactical inspirations. Ancelotti was never one to stick to tightly with one shape if it meant keeping a good player off the field. The Italian chops and changes and often uses lopsided formations to put the best players on together. Lampard shares that, especially on the attacking side of things. Furthermore, Ancelotti’s attacks are very much decision based like Lampard’s. Attackers are not stuck to a routine but rather know a few guidelines to follow and are then left to their own devices.

Manuel Pellegrini is the third leg on the stool that Lampard sits his management on. Lampard has mentioned that his time at Manchester City helped to push him towards management and Pellegrini’s high octane style likely played a great role in that. The Chilean does what he can with the West Ham side, but it is often forgotten how potent his Manchester City side was. They controlled space and moved the ball far more aggressively than most opponents could handle. That appears to be something Lampard strives to do.

Those three form the majority of Lampard’s inspiration but there are others in the Premier League he draws from. Gegenpressing, popularized by Jurgen Klopp, is a major part of Chelsea’s defense. Positional play, a favored tool of Pep Guardiola, also shows up in certain ways with Lampard.

Chelsea has already lost to Pellegrini’s West Ham. Mourinho’s Spurs are next and Ancelotti’s Everton will be much further down the line. One of the hardest things to do in the game is to find the holes in one’s own tactics. Ultimately, the test makes managers better. Lampard can, in part, face that test several times now with all of his mentors looking over his shoulder.