Frank Lampard may forever retain his distinction as the only manager to lose a Premier League game to Nathan Jones. In that context, losing to Carlo Ancelotti, the most successful manager in Champions League history, counts as a highlight. An increasingly surreal 2023 has brought Lampard a promotion of sorts but relegation beckons from Chelsea, set to be ejected from the European elite, unsure when they will return.
Lampard was the nostalgic gamble, the attempt to find the Roberto Di Matteo of the 2020s. Even a red card at one of the citadels of Spanish football evoked memories of 2012 but if Chelsea staged an improbable heist at the Nou Camp after John Terry was sent off, they merely saw their margin of defeat increase after Ben Chilwell made an early exit in the Bernabeu. The past has brought Lampard back but Chelsea lost to the club, Real Madrid, and the manager who personify history and heritage. At least, in a campaign when Chelsea have caused themselves untold harm, a damage-limitation exercise restricted the scoreline to 2-0. In theory, there is a chance in next week’s rematch. Though as their goal drought has gone past the six-hour mark, as they have only scored 14 times since 3 November, possibly not.
Perhaps they can hope that Todd Boehly, who has spent a season being proved relentlessly wrong, is almost right, only six days off in his prediction. The co-owner had tipped Chelsea to win 3-0. It would suffice next week. It would also surprise.
But maybe James Corden will yet have a Champions League winner’s medal to accompany his Emmys. In a season of multiple sporting directors – with Boehly both the first and worst – the celebrity’s role in Lampard’s return probably wasn’t the worst idea in Chelsea’s confused recruitment.
Nor, really, was this a huge indictment of Lampard. Chelsea eliminated Real in 2021 and almost did in 2022. A gulf has opened up between them since but Chelsea languished in the lower half of Premier League before his anticlimactic comeback at Wolves.
Four jobs into his managerial career, Lampard is not intrinsically identified with any brand of football. But neither is Ancelotti, four Champions League wins into his. Lampard did not adopt the free-scoring 4-3-3 Ancelotti deployed at Chelsea and when he had his most prolific season.
But there was a retro feel, with precious little pressing. Parts of it were a throwback to the 2000s – perhaps unsurprising as Lampard learnt from one of the decade’s definitive managers, in Jose Mourinho – while elements of the blueprint were borrowed from his predecessor, Thomas Tuchel. After the well-intentioned ineffectuality of Graham Potter’s experiments, there was an attempt at something more defined and defiant. But Tuchel’s team, at their best, were so finely tuned they were paragons of control. They went to Madrid twice in their glory run of 2021, facing Atletico and Real, and conceded a lone shot on target. Chelsea afforded 10, the most since the second game of Lampard’s first game in charge. They seemed both organised and yet unable to react.
In Lampard’s first spell as manager, his sides felt too cavalier, with too many attack-minded personnel. With five defenders and three essentially defensive midfielders, that was not the case at the Bernabeu. And yet Chelsea still got caught when Real broke. They looked static, stuck in their starting positions as they struggled to track the runners, especially the Brazilian pair of Rodrygo and Vinicius Junior. It brought Chilwell’s red card: no sooner had Marc Cucurella come on than he lost Rodrygo, and the wing-back tugged him back instead. There had been a redemptive element to a wretched season for Cucurella when he was arguably man of the match in the victory over Borussia Dortmund; yet that secured a tie against Real and, against Real, he looked a liability.
Expensive newcomers floundering has been a theme of the season. Vinicius Junior showed his ability to torment Premier League defenders is not restricted to Trent Alexander-Arnold. Wesley Fofana had his toughest outing in a Chelsea shirt; it summed up his night when Marco Asensio’s goal went through his legs.
But Lampard had stiffened the spine with an injection of experience. Chelsea’s best centre-back is still the 38-year-old Thiago Silva. N’Golo Kante’s dynamic start suggested that, even after Chelsea spent £107 million on his new sidekick Enzo Fernandez, that he remains their finest midfielder.
But they can’t score. Karim Benzema has more goals against Premier League clubs this season than Joao Felix, Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke, Hakim Ziyech and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have between them.
Lampard dropped their top scorer, Kai Havertz, and based his strategy on counter-attacking pace. Felix and Raheem Sterling each had a golden chance in the first half. Lampard likes a project player and Sterling is his latest; it took a stunning save from Thibaut Courtois to deny the Englishman an equaliser. Potter never seemed to know what to do with Sterling. Lampard played him as a centre-forward.
His previous project, and protégé, Mason Mount almost halved the deficit in injury time. Chelsea scored dramatic late goals in 2012 – Fernando Torres at the Nou Camp, Didier Drogba in the final – but maybe even at Chelsea there is a limit to how many caretaker managers can turn seemingly moribund teams into Champions League winners.
