Lampard returns to lead Chelsea

After being agreed by the owners, Chelsea has expedited the signing of a short-term contract with Lampard. The decision to appoint the 44-year-old military leader will be announced by the London club today.

According to The Times, Lampard will immediately start working, to prepare for Wolves' away game in the Premier League on Saturday 8/4.

Ashley Cole - another former Chelsea player, Lampard's teammate in the 2012 Champions League generation, and Joe Edwards will join the new coaching staff at Stamford Bridge. The duo worked as assistants to Lampard when he led Everton from January 2022 to January 2023.

The Sun newspaper assessed that the appointment of Lampard as interim manager was the right step for Chelsea, when they needed an experienced coach to lead the team for the rest of the season, including two Real matches in the Champions League quarter-finals. League in the middle of this month. Lampard, with 13 years of service to Chelsea as a player (2001 to 2014), is expected to have enough prestige to stabilize the dressing room and win back support from fans who are disgruntled by the decline in performance under his administration. Coach Graham Potter.

The fact that Lampard acts as an interim also gives the Chelsea leadership more time to search and negotiate to appoint a new head coach. Currently, former Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann and former Spain coach Luis Enrique are the two brightest candidates.

Lampard is no stranger to work at Chelsea, having worked as the team's head coach for a year and a half, from July 2019 to January 2021. In the 2019-2020 season, he was highly appreciated when he introduced many young players, helping Chelsea finish fourth in the English Premier League, finish second in the FA Cup and enter the eighth round of the Champions League in the context of the team being bought. sell players. Going into the 2020-2021 season, Chelsea started strongly, but winning only two of the eight games in the mid-season and falling to ninth in the Premier League caused him to be sacked. Then, with the personnel background he left, his successor Thomas Tuchel helped Chelsea win the Champions League.

Some young players promoted by Lampard to the first team from the summer of 2019 are still the mainstays of the team, such as right-back Reece James, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Mason Mount... In a year and a half as Chelsea manager, Lampard led. led the team in 84 matches, won 44, reached the rate of 52.4%, drew 17 and lost 23 matches.