Chelsea are closing in on appointing former Blues manager and club legend Frank Lampard as interim boss until the end of the season. Graham Potter was sacked last weekend with Julian Nagelsmann and Luis Enrique emerging as favourites to become the next permanent manager at Stamford Bridge.
Lampard, who won three Premier League titles as a player with Chelsea before returning as manager in 2019, has been without a job in football since his sacking from Everton at the start of the year. He now looks set for a sensational return to west London for the final few months of the 2022/23 season.
Arsenal are set to face their London rivals later this month at the Emirates Stadium and Lampard is likely to be in the opposition dugout for that clash. The Chelsea legend has praised Mikel Arteta in the past and the Gunners manager boasts a strong record when coming up against Lampard's teams, winning three of the five matches that have managed against us each other in.
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With Lampard edging closer to a return to Stamford Bridge, football.london takes a look at everything he has said about Arteta and Arsenal in the past.
Lampard hailed Arteta as an 'amazing coach' earlier this season and believes the Spaniard is setting a great example to young managers in the Premier League. The former Everton boss said in October last year: "We have great examples in the Premier League.
"The coach who’s top, rightly lauded as an amazing coach - there’s been many a time when people have questioned whether he should be in his job. Other coaches...(where) people start to appreciate the job they do over time. As a general thing, I think that would be what I would look at.
"We all understand the jeopardy of the job we work in, and there are a lot of pluses to it, huge pluses. But as a coach in the modern day, you need time to work, circumstances to work.
"We’ve all got responsibilities, we’ve got to try to get results. But sometimes time isn’t afforded in the modern day.
"To go through the patches, to try to get growth, to try to get to where you want to, there’s always something in the road that catches you and moments and periods, and you have to give people time to do that."
The ex-Everton manager has also stated that he feels investment in the squad is the main factor behind Arsenal's rise to the top of the Premier League table. In January this year, Lampard said: "There’s not a story out there if you look at the most high performing team in the Premier League this year in Arsenal for being top of the league.
"If you look at their journey over the last three years you see how typically a journey can look. It’s not an easy road and that one comes with huge investment which is part of their story."
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