Pep Guardiola has welcomed Frank Lampard's return to Premier League management following his interim appointment at Chelsea. The 44-year-old was appointed as the Blues' caretaker boss on Thursday afternoon as higher-ups at Stamford Bridge continue their pursuit of a permanent successor to Graham Potter.
The west London outfit have struggled to get points on the board this season, slipping into the bottom half of the Premier League table following defeat to Aston Villa last weekend. With a feel-good factor back at Cobham training ground, Todd Boehly will be hoping that Lampard can end the season on a high and lay the foundations for whoever takes the reins in the summer.
While the Englishman has only been brought back on a temporary basis, Guardiola has wished Lampard well on his 'new opportunity'. Speaking to the press ahead of Manchester City's trip to Southampton on Saturday afternoon, the Spaniard said: "We were in touch when he was at Everton.
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"It is good to see him back, it’s a new opportunity at the club he loves and a new challenge for him. In this country when I was younger it always had the tradition to keep the managers.
"What happens today with a lot of pressure for everyone, a lot of investment, in a way I understand there’s a lot of pressure. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It is what it is, you have to adapt."
When asked why he's never been sacked before, Guardiola said: "I will tell you the secret: we win games. If we don’t win games I would be sacked. It’s not because my hair is better than the other ones. I’m not sacked because we win a lot of games."
As Chelsea prepare to lock horns with Wolves, Lampard said that he understands what his 'opportunity' entails. The interim Blues boss said: "I think the role and the explanation of my role speaks for itself in the period that I'm here for.
"On that term, I'm not getting anywhere ahead of myself. I want to do the best possible role that I can impact the club in the best way in this period. After that, we'll see what happens."
Then, on the Blues' target for the remainder of the campaign, Lampard added: "I think to attempt to instil the highest level of confidence I can with the group. For them to exert and show a level of passion of playing for Chelsea and an urgency and energy in their game.
"Those are principles that I really want to talk to players about. In terms of targets we want to win as many games as we can. It's the simplest answer your going to get. It's more complicated than that but at the same time I think there are big games ahead of us. Premier League is hard, Champions League is of course hard.
"We have to have a belief in the players we have in this squad. I've got a huge belief in them from the outside and I'll tell them that today. It's how we can take them in the right direction and of course we want to win games."
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