The question just a few short months ago, that Steven Gerrard was forced to carry as a pressing burden on his shoulders, centred on his ambitions to return to Liverpool as manager.
Now, after the rather cruel night of the long knives, where he was seemingly informed of his departure as Aston Villa manager while waiting for the coach to return home from Fulham, is focused on his ambitions to be a manager, full stop.
Where does he go from this? How does he rebuild his reputation and career after such a brutal end to his managerial honeymoon period? Who better to answer that question than Frank Lampard, his great midfield rival - and England team-mate - throughout his playing career, and a friend who has suffered such a high profile sacking of his own, at Chelsea.
Now Everton manager, Lampard is proof a fairly swift return to the Premier League is possible for Gerrard, and he thinks there has to be a rather better perspective beyond the knee-jerk reaction against short term results, in analysing any manager.
“It’s going to happen to you at least once as a manager, and probably you are going to come back a better manager for it, in different ways…a better person too, possibly,” Lampard said at the news.
“We all understand the jeopardy of the job, we all understand the responsibility to get results in the short term, even though it’s clear as a modern day manager you need time and the right circumstances to work.
“You see really good examples in the modern day of when you give coaches time to go through the patches everyone hits, to try and get growth and try and get to where you want to. Yet sometimes, that just doesn’t happen.”
Lampard cites Mikel Arteta as an example of a manager who delivered after being given a sensible amount of time to turn around a difficult situation. And he could equally have cited Jurgen Klopp, briefly Gerrard’s boss when he was an academy coach at Liverpool.
“We’ve got great examples in the Premier League, the coach who is at the top (Mikel Arteta), rightly lauded as an amazing coach,” Lampard suggested.
“There have been many a time people have questioned whether he should be in his job and could lose his job. People start to appreciate the work they do over time. So, as a general thing, I think that would be what I’d look at.”
It was a theme touched on by Klopp himself too, a manager who was given time by all three clubs he has managed, and delivered success at all. He argued that the sacking means nothing for Gerrard, and he will be back to prove himself.
“I am sure he will come back from that. I can imagine it's disappointing for him because of the visions he had and the things he wanted to achieve at Aston Villa, so it is obviously not cool,” Klopp said.
“But I don't think we have to worry now about Stevie. How it is in life, we all get knocks here and there and it's all about how you respond. He always came back and he will come back. There are lots of great managers out there who had to leave clubs, and showed up somewhere else learning from it.”
Both Lampard and Klopp agree that Gerrard’s next step will quite possibly be the most important, and the Anfield manager had one piece of advice, as the former Liverpool legend looks at his options within the game.
“I hope he takes a bit of time as well because since he finished his (playing) career he is pretty much working all the time so maybe use it now a little bit for himself to recharge.”
