Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has been cut from a different cloth than previous managers. He will not allow himself a Kevin De Bruyne.
Frank Lampard was once a teammate of Kevin De Bruyne at Chelsea. And Romelu Lukaku’s as well. The now Chelsea manager only just missed Mohamed Salah’s brief time with the Chelsea first team.
All of these players also played under Jose Mourinho during his second spell when it was well known that the Portuguese manager was not overly fond of using youth. On its own, that is what it is with a manger like Mourinho (then) guaranteeing success. But Chelsea also had one of the world’s best academies even then. They also had hoarded several of the world’s best youth from abroad. None of it seemed to matter.
Chelsea lost De Bruyne without really ever giving him a chance. Lukaku showed he had Premier League level ability and the Blues loaned him out again and eventually bought a readymade striker. Salah’s chances were few and admittedly poor, but another would never really come. Frank Lampard saw all of this, both first hand and from afar. At some point he decided his teams would not have a De Bruyne situation.
Speaking ahead of the Boxing Day fixture and in the afterglow of the victory over Mourinho’s Tottenham, Lampard said young players require patience. The players need to earn their chances of course, but that patience is also required when they have bad days.
Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Fikayo Tomori, and even Christian Pulisic have had rough days. But the important thing Lampard has done is to stick with them. He has been able to tell the difference between a bad day and a bad run. Previous Chelsea managers could not make that distinction and it saw several young players forced to be perfect immediately or make way.
It saw De Bruyne leave for the Bundesliga where he proceeded to set assist records before Manchester City snapped him up. Lukaku went on to be one of the Premier League’s most potent strikers for an inferior team, matching and occasionally surpassing Chelsea’s own. Salah had to return to Serie A, but Jurgen Klopp saw something special in him and drew it out.
Mount, Abraham, and Pulisic could all have easily been their latest matches. The Blues could have just continuously gone through this cycle as the rest of the world filled up with amazing Chelsea “rejects”. Instead, Lampard trusted them
Young players will have young days full of young mistakes and occasionally young brilliance. That is a sort of hump to get past that most managers simply do not bother with. Chelsea now has someone who has the patience to do so and a club willing to back him.
Those that are trained in the game have long said these young players more than have what it takes. All that was ever missing was someone up top willing to trust the bad days are not bad players. Chelsea has that in Frank Lampard and under him, there will be no more De Bruynes.