If you can pardon the pun – as this really isn’t a laughing matter – it’s time to be Frank and for everyone at Everton to unite behind Lampard because the Blues are in a mess.
The past 127 days have brought just one Premier League victory for Everton and produced an alarming slide down the table to 16th place.
With their next fixture in the competition at St James’ Park on February 8, Everton know defeat to Newcastle United could see Eddie Howe’s side to within a point of them.
Put plainly, the Blues simply have to stop the rot and start getting points on the board again quickly because over the past four months it’s like they’ve forgotten how to win games.
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Such was the malaise under Rafa Benitez that his former employment at Liverpool had become a scratch compared to the gaping wound that was Everton’s hapless form as they haemorrhaged league places.
Even when Farhad Moshiri made the most-controversial managerial appointment in the history of England’s most-passionate football city by drafting in the ex-Reds boss, even the staunchest anti-Benitez critic could have imagined that things would unravel so spectacularly and so quickly to create what has become a (totally avoidable) real-life football nightmare.
Mr Moshiri got it wrong with his recruitment of the 61-year-old Spaniard last summer, badly wrong, and now his club and all their loyal but long-suffering supporters are paying the price.
Given that, and the on-field crisis Everton face as they look nervously over their shoulders, haunted by the prospect of a first relegation for 71 years, it’s been imperative that this time club chiefs chose a manager that a browbeaten fanbase – and players – could get behind.
Regardless of who you wanted to see next in the home dugout at Goodison Park – this correspondent made no secret that Wayne Rooney was his preferred choice but the boyhood Evertonian and former Blues player has decided he’s got a very important job to finish at Derby County – Lampard simply has to be backed.
As fanciful as it might have seemed, for a long time over the past fortnight there was the horrifying prospect of the club actually bringing in someone who might have been just as divisive as Benitez.
Within a couple of hours of his dismissal following the 2-1 defeat to bottom-of-the-table Norwich City who hadn’t scored in the Premier League since November and had lost their last six fixtures in the competition, it beggared belief that Roberto Martinez, the manager sacked by Mr Moshiri just weeks after he took control in 2016, had been approached.
In more recent days, Vitor Pereira, the bad penny that keeps coming back on Everton’s lamentably frequent managerial searches, inexplicably cropped up again.
If Blues weren’t put off enough by his journeyman CV having failed to stay in any post longer than two years other than his stint on the Chinese gravy train (there’s also been another lucrative pit stop in Saudi Arabia), a relegation out of the German second division with 1860 Munich and his most recent spell at Fenerbahce which ended in December after just half a season – contacts in Turkey say he had problems communicating with some of the players and has now twice left Istanbul with bad memories – the car crash television created by his desperate phone call on Sky Sports News was surely the final nail in the coffin.
While it’s been clear from numerous fan polls that seemingly nobody other than Mr Moshiri and agent Kia Joorabchian – spotted in the Goodison Park directors’ box for the last game against Aston Villa – seems to have been in favour of Pereira, there had been a clamour from some to hand the reins to Duncan Ferguson for the remainder of the season.
However, this would have very much been a step into the unknown given that the Scot, who publicly admitted in his pre-match press conference ahead of Villa’s visit, doesn’t consider himself experienced enough to be considered for the role on a full-time basis, and has reached the age of 50 without being in a senior managerial post.
History teaches us that caretaker managers tend to do worse at Everton the longer they remain in charge and with almost half of the campaign still to play and their perilous position, the Blues really can’t afford to be taking any unnecessary risks.
Which brings us to Lampard himself.
While Carlo Ancelotti was perhaps the only one of Mr Moshiri’s managerial appointments to enjoy almost universal support from the fanbase, Lampard has been it seems in terms of popular support, the closest thing to a people’s choice at ‘The People’s Club.’
Nobody could realistically turn their nose up at his old Chelsea boss Ancelotti when he became available given his glittering list of managerial achievements in the game but if we cast our minds back just over a year to January 25, 2021, when Lampard was sacked at Stamford Bridge, who could have imagined the way things would now have played out?
Despite being a legend as a player at the west London club, winning three Premier League titles, four FA Cups, two League Cups, a Champions League and Europa League over a 648 game spell in which he scored 211 times, the former midfielder joined the long list of those axed by Roman Abramovich after just 18 months at the helm.
At the time, Ancelotti’s Everton were three points off a Champions League place and had just disposed of Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the FA Cup, blooding Thierry Small as the club’s youngest-ever player.
Fast forward 12 months and the Italian has defected to Real Madrid, the Blues have hired – and fired – one of Liverpool’s Champions League-winning managers and now turned to Lampard to try solve their ills.
Nobody could have peered into their crystal ball and come up with that one but fact is often stranger than fiction, especially in the unpredictable world of the Premier League, especially at Everton with Mr Moshiri in control.
The on-field slump has now spilled over into serious discontent in the stands with angry and frustrated supporters calling for better communications and better decisions full stop from those in Goodison’s corridors of power.
Given Lampard’s past work where he repeated Derby County’s sixth place finish of the year before and then took Chelsea to fourth position in his only full season in charge, it’s difficult to gauge just what kind of level he’s at as it all seems very par for the course.
Some have cautioned that his points per game average at Stamford Bridge was the lowest of all his modern peers but it’s also worth noting that he was operating at first under a transfer embargo.
This is a fresh start for both him and Everton and both parties will be determined to put things right in a swift fashion.
While this Blues squad is not at a level that anyone connected with the club would desire, they possess the pedigree and ability to be operating much higher than their current station.
They certainly shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking they’re too good to go down but with the right leadership, they shouldn’t be anywhere near the drop zone.
Everton need, and have done for a while, to have a young, hungry manager who can grow alongside his players as the club moves forward towards the move to the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in 2024 and while nobody is perfect, the hope has to be that they’ve finally found the right man now in Lampard.
