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Former Everton boss Frank Lampard has hit out at the lack of strategy at Goodison Park and compared the scenes around the January transfer window he oversaw in 2023 to ‘the Wild West’.
Lampard took on the Everton job at the end of January 2022 after the dismissal of Rafael Benitez, becoming the club’s seventh manager in seven years, with the Toffees sitting 16th in the Premier League table, just four points above the drop zone.
The former England midfielder would guide Everton to safety that season, but the club again found themselves in a relegation battle the following January, with Lampard dismissed at the end of January 2023 after a run of one win from 11 matches left the club 19th in the table.
An uneven playing squad, mounting financial issues and boardroom trouble all contributed to Everton’s malaise during Lampard’s tenure, and are all issues that are still being felt, with the club being docked 10 points this season for financial fair play (FFP) breaches, with the prospect of more to follow after a fresh set of charges were levelled their way by the Premier League.
Lampard has been reflecting on his time on Merseyside, questioning the strategy of chairman Farhad Moshiri in recent seasons.
“I’m not exactly sure, and I’m not saying that loosely because I came into the club four or five years after he’d been there,” Lampard told Sky Bet.
“You could see that there had been five managers – Marco Silva, Roberto Martinez, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez, and Big Sam [Allardyce] – high-level managers. I came in and you could see with the squad that there wasn’t a strategy, and this happens at football clubs. New managers come in and want to go a different way, but you can have a strategy of what you want to be – I wasn’t sure what it was.
“We were having conversations about how I wanted to coach the team, I’ve got an idea but we’re going to have to recruit for that because I can’t make this team what I want it to be now. Which is why, at the end of my time when we stayed up, we went to a back five and we were compact, would engage the fans and go up the pitch, Anthony Gordon was really flying at that time, and we had some pace in the team.
“We fought our way out of trouble, which was great for me having that experience in a tough moment, but in terms of what the club idea was at that point, no [I wasn’t sure]. I don’t want to sound like this is making a real negative on Moshiri or the big decision makers over those years, because I’m sure they did what they did because they bought Everton to make it into a fantastic club, a success.
“I worked at Manchester City for a year, at the back end of my career, and I went into a structure, and you look at it and know that this place is going to go places because there is a vision. Pep Guardiola comes in a year later, and when you lose a couple of games isn’t not like ‘Ergh, what are going to do,’ or ‘sack/change that,’ it was almost like it was going to work, so keep going. Obviously, it hadn’t had that at Everton.”
Lampard also pointed to a chaotic January transfer window shortly before his departure in 2023, when the club were unable to strengthen in their battle against the drop and sold promising winger Anthony Gordon to Newcastle United.
“One of the problems I found at Everton was that we were trying to work a football plan – Kevin Thelwell came in as Sporting Director and Denise [Barrett-Baxendale] was the football plan recruitment – we were working towards it, but the minute January came, it was like the Wild West,” Lampard continued. “Agents, and everyone, it was all about what it was going to be and who we could bring in.
“We were struggling to spend money because of the FFP situation, but I desperately wanted to bring in some players, and in the end after I’d left, where Sean Dyche came in the back end [of the season], he couldn’t make any moves anyways and Anthony Gordon left the club. There was a lot of tension at the club through that and I think it would have been a build up over the past few years, I felt it from the minute I came in until the minute I left – it was almost like we were in a crisis but there is going to be another crisis, it was quite difficult.
“We managed it when we stayed up that year, quite a lot of the plan was to build confidence and feeling and we managed to get over the line with that. But, the second season, towards the end, it was challenging.”
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