good article here from Sporting Life,... quite objective -
Is Frank Lamaprd a good fit for Everton?
Alex Keble: Are Frank Lampard and Everton a good fit?
By Alex Keble
14:10 · WED February 02, 2022
The one positive for Everton supporters stuck with an erratic owner is that the cycle is renewed pretty often.
Optimism is restored on a yearly basis, and there is something seductive about
the lurch from Rafael Benitez to Frank Lampard, a move towards wild attacking football supported to the point of cliché by
the signings of Dele Alli and Donny van de Beek.
The kind reading of Lampard’s appointment is that we just don’t know enough about him as a manager.
Guiding Everton away from a relegation battle and towards the European places is an entirely different prospect to chasing promotion at Derby County or navigating an elite club through a transfer ban.
He has also spent the last year studying the game and learning from his mistakes (if you believe the PR churned out by friends in high broadsheet places) and, most tellingly, has completely changed his backroom staff.
His closest confidante Jody Morris will not join him at Everton. Paul Clement, Carlo Ancelotti’s long-time collaborator, and Ashley Cole will be Lampard’s sounding boards.
Lampard may well have changed, although the late swoops for Dele and Van de Beek – two overwhelmingly Lampardian midfielders – are evidence to the contrary.
Exciting or concerning for Everton?
What is, on the surface, a time of great excitement for Everton fans ought to be mildly concerning.
A club dragged towards the relegation places through general disorganisation, most prominently characterised as defensive ineptitude and the tactical confusion brought on by a mishmash squad that reflects the club’s disjointed transfer policy, is no place for a manager devoted to free-form football.
The worry is that Lampard’s light touch and fluffy attacking instincts will only compound the club’s most glaring weaknesses, and although relegation is highly unlikely, it will be tough for Everton to break out of their mid-table funk.
It should be said that Lampard performed reasonably well in his single season at Derby, maintaining a steady course by repeating the feat of his predecessor, before taking Chelsea back into the top four despite a transfer ban.
But throughout his tenure at Stamford Bridge there was very little beneath the surface, and the job – cushy until it wasn’t – proved too much for him.
Is Lampard a good manager?
What Lampard gives you is a thirst for attacking football, for hard pressing and expansive possession; play high up the pitch and in high numbers.
It is an approach as vague as it sounds on paper, because while those broad strokes are adopted by many of the world’s leading coaches, there is ordinarily more detailed plans to back it up.
With Lampard, there is no evidence of pre-set attacking moves, of tactical minutiae drilled in training, of specific patterns of movements and shape.
Instead, his Chelsea team were more unchained than arguably any Premier League team in the last five years.
Like Lampard the player, they rampaged around the pitch with careless abandon; without a second though for what it does to the formation further back.
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Football has moved on a lot since Lampard was a player, and to design a system without total compression between the lines – both in and out of possession – is to design a system hopelessly open to being counter-attacked.
Chelsea’s high press was remarkably erratic, enacted in bursts of ones and twos, the ball chased down by the first line of attackers even while the midfield and defence drops or hesitates, lacking direction.
It left holes everywhere. Evade the first wave of pressure and countering was simple. Intercept a pass and - with Chelsea attackers bunching into clumps, rather than spreading evenly to maintain discipline as at other ‘Big Six’ clubs – find acres of space in which to work.
The flip side is that Chelsea could be devastating when confident, sheer force of will crippling opponents as they became overwhelmed by the number of attackers and confounded by the unpredictable patterns of play.
Lampard would take advantage of this by changing formation relatively frequently, moving between 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 but also trialling a 3-5-2 and a 4-4-2, showing a dexterity that allowed him to shuffle things around after a flurry of poor results, keeping the plates spinning.
But none of these positives are likely to work at a club of Everton’s size.
Chelsea held a technical advantage over most of their opponents, meaning a soft touch could yield good results while the squad had belief in themselves and the manager, whereas Everton go into most games on an even footing a best.
That requires detail, preparation. It also means attacks will be less potent and the exposed defence even more vulnerable.
'If Kante couldn’t cope, how will Doucoure manage?'
Often this problem was in central midfield, where N’Golo Kante was left alone with too much grass to cover when a Chelsea attack broke down. If Kante couldn’t cope, how on earth will Abdoulaye Doucoure manage when Van der Beek and Dele are wandering upfield?
Everton fans, however, will be more concerned with how Lampard intends to fix a back four that cannot stop conceding goals, that looks terrified at set-pieces and is guilty of unforced errors in virtually every match.
Lampard’s desire to play out from the back isn’t good news for the error-prone Michael Keane, and nor is the likely deployment of a high defensive line.
Once the new-manager bounce wears off, there is nothing about Lampard’s most recent job that inspires confidence in his ability to improve the defensive record – unless he really has grown enormously over the last year.
Perhaps he will drop Everton a lot deeper. Perhaps the Chelsea system was designed specifically for Chelsea, and perhaps lessons have been learnt. Lampard did tend to drop his defensive line, and to play on the counter-attack, against ‘Big Six’ teams in his second season at Stamford Bridge.
There is always the chance Everton will become more cautious, benefitting from the coaching expertise of Clement in particular.
And yet Lampard will know he needs to maintain his USP of adventurous football to rebuild his reputation.
He will also know that for a club like Everton, stuck in limbo just outside the financial elite, success means entertaining football and a push for Europe.
To be fair to Lampard, whatever happens it will, without doubt, be entertaining.
