Frank Lampard has won only one of his last 17 games as a manager, losing 14 and drawing two. A poor run at Everton saw him sacked in January and since returning to Stamford Bridge earlier this month to take over as caretaker at Chelsea after the departure of Graham Potter, he has lost three from three.
Chelsea and the Todd Boehly-led Clearlake Capital consortium, who became owners of the club in May of last year, will hope that Lampard can turn it all around on Tuesday by masterminding a fightback against Real Madrid to clinch a place in the Champions League semifinals. But that is all they have left to cling on to following a disastrous 11 months at the club. Unless the team can produce a sporting miracle, Chelsea’s season will be over.
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Boehly had predicted a 3-0 first-leg win for Chelsea against the reigning European champions at the Santiago Bernabeu last week; the reality turned out to be a 2-0 defeat. Then again, Boehly has grown accustomed to getting things wrong since buying the club for £4.25 billion from Roman Abramovich last May and an over-optimistic score prediction is some way down his list of errors.
Boehly’s mistakes are well-documented: from firing Champions League-winning coach Thomas Tuchel just seven games into the season and replacing him with ill-suited Brighton boss Potter, to spending over £600 million on new players and then sacking Potter earlier this month when he couldn’t get the best out of them. The latest has been the decision to hire club legend Lampard to steady the ship until the end of the season.
If Chelsea have a strategy or a blueprint for the club, it’s hard to see what it is. Nagelsmann has a different tactical outlook and personality to Luis Enrique, just as Pochettino plays a different way to Ancelotti. Amorim has built an exciting team in Portugal, but lacks the big-club experience of others on the list.
Chelsea’s erratic approach has already seen them make basic errors in their recruitment process. It is a widely-adopted policy by the leading clubs to keep the hiring process under the radar by sending executives to meet candidates at their home, often in a different country, in order to allow interviews to take place without the distraction of a running commentary on their progress. But by allowing themselves to meet Luis Enrique in London earlier this month — on the same day that Lampard was announced as caretaker manager — Chelsea showed their hand to the outside world and the other candidates.
Regardless of Chelsea’s problems this season, and the likely absence of European football next season, the managerial job at Stamford Bridge remains a prestigious position and one that will be prized by many of the world’s leading coaches. That is the major advantage in Chelsea’s favour when they decide who to prioritise as their No. 1 choice. But having lurched from one bad decision to another, the danger is that Boehly and co. fail to learn from their mistakes and set the club back even further this summer.
