Football

Rio Ferdinand speaks out on Frank Lampard’s ‘brutal’ sacking at Chelsea and Thomas Tuchel speculation


Frank Lampard will not be ‘surprised’ by Chelsea’s ‘brutal’ decision, claims Rio Ferdinand (Picture: Getty)

Former Manchester United star Rio Ferdinand has questioned Frank Lampard’s ‘knee-jerk’ dismissal at Stamford Bridge and says there’s ‘no better example of how brutal this game is’ than Chelsea deciding to sack a club legend in such a cutthroat manner.

Lampard steered Chelsea to a top-four finish in the Premier League last season and was backed with over £200million to spend in the summer transfer window before overseeing a miserable run of results across a gruelling winter period.

The 42-year-old was relieved of his duties on Monday after just four wins in 11 matches and Thomas Tuchel is expected to take over the reins as manager ahead of the Blues’ Premier League clash with Wolves on Wednesday.

Tuchel is the frontrunner to take over from Lampard as Chelsea manager (Picture: Getty)

Ferdinand shared a dressing room with Lampard at both club and international level and feels his former team-mate deserved more time from Chelsea’s board, especially given the incredible success he brought as a player.

But the ex-England defender doubts Lampard will be ‘surprised’ as the club have a history of sacking and replacing big managerial names throughout the Roman Abramovich era.

Reacting to the news in a video on his Rio Ferdinand Presents FIVE YouTube channel, Ferdinand said: ‘I don’t think he’ll be surprised. He’s an intelligent fella.

‘He would have understood the remit when he walked through that door and he would’ve seen people like Carlo Ancelotti – who has the third highest win rate in Premier League history behind Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson – get the sack a year after winning the league.

‘So he’s not going in there thinking he’s going to have loads of time but I think he would have expected maybe a bit more time, given they had the transfer embargo when he went in there.

Ferdinand believes Lampard deserved more time at Chelsea (Picture: Getty)

‘Then he gets money to spend, he spends over £200million and then you’d probably expect a little bit of time, more than what he’s got, to bed them players in and for them players to become part of the furniture.

‘He has not been afforded that and in the grand scheme of things, with the way this has been reported on, you’d think they’re in a relegation dog fight. But they’re five points off Champions League, 11 points off Manchester United who are top of the league. It ain’t a million miles away.

‘He’s had a bad spell but he’s still only them amount of points behind so when you put it in that context, I feel this is a very quickfire decision and I feel he deserved more time.

‘It was a knee-jerk reaction but Chelsea’s hierarchy are renowned for this, it’s normal for them and they make quick, brutal decisions. On one hand I respect that, they don’t dally, and they get things done but on the other had, it’s Frank Lampard, a club legend. He’s someone all the fans would have been clamouring for and the young players at the club.

‘You’d think that little bit of history would have afforded him a bit more time but this is a results business and the situation shows you that.’

Lampard and Ferdinand came through West Ham’s academy system together (Picture: Getty)

Ferdinand said he was looking forward to picking Lampard’s brain to order to discover the ins and outs of what exactly went wrong during his time as Chelsea boss.

‘I don’t reckon it’s the worst record you’ve ever seen but it’s not standards that Chelsea have set themselves over years gone by. They’re a club that wins trophies and the expectations the hierarchy at that club expect obviously aren’t being met,’ he continued.

‘We’re seeing in the papers that certain players weren’t happy… there’s always going to be disgruntled players at a football club but it’s how you manage them. Has Frank managed them in the right way, has he not? That will all come out, I’m sure.

‘They have big egos and all these types of people have to be managed. I’m really interested to speak to Frank when I can and find out how and why it went wrong and just the experience he gained from this. And if he really wants to continue in management because it’s brutal.

‘There’s no better example of how brutal this game is. People always talk to me about loyalty. Don’t talk to me about loyalty no more, I don’t want to hear the word bandied about in football anymore because it ain’t there from the club side and the player side.’

Werner and Havertz have so far struggled to live up to expectations at Chelsea (Picture: Getty)

Ferdinand believes the Chelsea hierarchy were being wildly unrealistic if they expected summer arrivals Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Hakim Ziyech to all hit the ground running in their debut seasons under Lampard.

‘When you sign that many players that he did in the transfer window, surely that needs and requires time,’ he went on.

‘You need time to get those players to bed in, to understand the culture at the football club, to get them to understand your messages as a manager, what you want from them as an individual and part of the team, moving into a different country… there’s so many different parts of becoming someone who can adapt to life in a new country and club.

‘There’s so many different layers to it that I just don’t think it was realistic to expect Frank to be fighting at the top of the Premier League immediately. I think he said that when he got in there and at the beginning of the season, to expect Chelsea to be trying to win the league would be foolish, given their transfer embargo and they’ve recruited a lot of players.

‘They’re only five points off of the Champions League positions right now so I really do feel it’s a quick decision. Are you expecting all these players to be performing 9 and 10/10, to their full capacity and potential immediately? It’s not realistic to expect that.

‘Yes, Havertz hasn’t performed to the levels that we expected him, Werner hasn’t been as consistent as we expected, Ziyech has been injured a fair bit, Pulisic is coming back from injury now.

‘Their best performer in terms of recruitment that they’ve brought in has been Thiago Silva, who is nearer my age! That tells you it hasn’t gone completely right in terms of transfers.

‘I believe all these signings he’s brought in will come good but they are being afforded time. Frank isn’t. So it’s very different being a player than it is a manager these days.’

Ferdinand was blown away by Tuchel when they met for an interview in 2019 (Picture: BT Sport)

Tuchel – the man set to replace Lampard in the hot seat at Chelsea – left a huge impression on Ferdinand when the pair met for a BT Sport interview in Paris back in March 2019.

‘They’re saying now Tuchel is coming in, the former PSG manager, I was lucky enough to meet this guy,’ Ferdinand said when asked about the speculation surrounding Tuchel.

‘I had a good interview and conversation off the camera as well with him, off the training ground in Paris and I have to say he’s one of the most impressive individuals in terms of management that I’ve ever been with.

‘The detail with which he would go about things. Even just the little details, the one per cent-ers like changing the time of training because he had so many South Americans. He changed the time of training to suit their lifestyle a little bit so they’re not going to be phoning home at 3am and coming to training jaded.

‘Little things like that that to the eye, people think it’s only a little change, but for the culture of the football club and the ambience within the training ground and the players responded to that, actually he cares about how they are. That goes a long way with players.

‘How he saw certain indiviudals, his ideas on honing and helping the maturity of someone like Kylian Mbappe and that experience. He was part of a project, I know he didn’t finish it, but was on the road to developing the new training ground and how much that would lift the new team.

‘I watched his PSG team play at Anfield and their attacking players were horrendous in terms of their work ethic off the ball. I thought, “These guys are gonna get him the sack”, but he turned it around.

‘He won the league which happens with every manager there but they had a fantastic run, got the furthest they ever have in the Champions League to the final. Yes they got beat but he got these world-class, big ego players performing and that’s a hard job.’

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