Everton’s Frank Lampard has called for his fellow Premier League bosses to be given more time after his former England midfield colleague Steven Gerrard became the fourth top flight manager to be sacked this season. Gerrard was dismissed by Aston Villa on Thursday night, just 75 minutes after their 3-0 defeat to Marco Silva’s Fulham at Craven Cottage, the venue for the Blues’ next away game.
Lampard said: “I know Stevie, I get on well with him, and have a huge amount of respect for him as a player, as a person and a manager and coach, that’s the first thing. It’s not nice for somebody to lose their job and when it’s in the public eye, I know that from my experience, it also can be difficult in many ways.
“He’s a very tough lad with good family around him and all those things but I won’t comment much more as having been in that situation, I know there are a lot of things beneath that with situations he’s worked with and he’ll have his views on that, but he’s a great, great football person and that’s all I’ve got to say really.”
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Ex-Liverpool captain Gerrard had been in charge of the West Midlands outfit for less than a year and his side are just a point behind Everton in the table. Lampard, who took charge at Goodison Park on January 31, believes that many of those in his profession need to be shown more patience from their employers.
He said: “This is the thing, we all understand the jeopardy of the job we work in and there a lot of plusses to it, huge plusses and we’re proud to represent the clubs we work for but as a coach in the modern day, you need time to work, circumstances to work, and we’ve all got our responsibilities to try and get results but sometimes time isn’t afforded in the modern day. I think when you’re working at that level, you see really good examples in the modern day of when you give coaches time to go through the patches to try and get growth and try and get to where you want to, there’s always something in the road that catches you in moments and periods and you have to give people time to do that.
“We’ve got great examples in the Premier League, the coach who is at the top of the Premier League (Arsenal’s former Everton midfielder Mikel Arteta), rightly lauded as an amazing coach. There have been many a time that people have questioned whether he should be in his job and could lose his job.
“There are other coaches that have been promoted, or not promoted, stay in the league and struggling and then 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 and that’s unfortunately become part of the modern game.”
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