Everton 2022/23 Season Preview: Manager | Frank Lampard

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A Tale Of Two Bosses

Last year, under Rafa Benitez, Everton started off hot, but it quickly proved to be a facade that would crumble at the slightest confrontation. When he was fired after the embarrassing display against Norwich in January - after just months on the job - the newly-departed Duncan Ferguson, legend of Everton, and to lay into the Blues about what it meant to wear the shirt; when Frank Lampard arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, he continued trying to rebuild a side that looked nothing like the team of the previous season.

Frank Lampard proved that he was ready for the scrap however, and he ended up leading this side to a dramatic late-season comeback victory against Crystal Palace to secure another season in the Premier League. It was a tale or two bosses, and many, smaller seasons, comprising of streaks and stretches of games from August to May. Now, with a new season, new players and new hopes, Frank Lampard and Everton are looking to make the jump back up to the position in the Premier League where they feel they more properly belong.

Photo by Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images

Tactics

The manager will likely try to shape the side into a back three, or else a 4-3-3, this year. Last season the boss tried out different shapes and combinations with what he had available, but Frank Lampard’s pedigree and ideas are well known and understood.

With a healthier squad, new players like Dwight McNeil, James Tarkowski - and maybe some new midfielders and forwards - this team will be more dangerous than it was even with Richarlison on the pitch last year. Richy was great for the Blues for years, and he will be missed; however, the money he returned to the team will likely make the side noticeably more competitive and deep too.

Having versatile, creative and dangerous options to mix and match across the side is what the best coaches are looking to do today, and Lampard is no exception. Whether he has a back three and wingbacks or else a back four and the like, Everton’s boss wants his players to enjoy the ball, to feel comfortable attacking and expressing themselves, and he wants more possession than this team was able to sustain last year by a long shot.

Manager Profile

Frank Lampard wants to attack, and he wants to play fluid, positive and exciting football. On the sidelines, the boss is ablaze with emotion, whether it be bemoaning a call to the ref, pumping his fists to the cheering crowd, beaming or scowling at his players, or roaring with laughter. He remains the same person ostensibly that played for so many years with Chelsea, bringing it to a position that it had never previously reached in its many, many decades in existence.

Coaching Derby County was another chapter in his football development, and one that saw him then receive the job coaching his old team Chelsea. Both of those spells have moulded the current Everton boss into what the team has before them. He knows pressure; he knows it from having to earn his place in footballing history from no one to someone, he knows it from coaching at a famous old club and at Chelsea too.

While things don’t always work out across each of a person’s professional stops, what those people take away from those periods of their lives can make all the difference on their future. For Frank Lampard and company, Everton is that next opportunity, and is likely the biggest club - historically speaking - that he has ever been a part of.

Photo by Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images

State of the Position

Frank Lampard has learned from each part of his footballing career. He learned as a player and leader of men at Chelsea football club for so many years, becoming a legend of that team and of the Premier League itself - whether you liked him or not. He learned from his time coaching Derby, and he learned from his time coaching the team he once led so forcefully as a player.

Now, in his first full season at Everton, Frank will be looking to make this team more the side he sees when he closes his eyes and imagines his practically-ideal football team. While Carlo Ancelotti brought calm and poise to the club and players, Marco Silva and Rafa Benitez did not, and the team suffered under each of their respective regimes. Judging by the way the team responded to Lampard last season, however, it seems that the side chose a winner to lead the next era of Everton football.

Things will not be simple this year, and the boss has recognized as much. Yet they are recruiting well, they are looking to sign young players from England and abroad, and they aim to be more fun and explosive than they were from August to January of last season.

But Frank Lampard is the man for the job, and he deserves some patience and confidence. Rafa deserved that too, but he quickly proved that he was not the man to overcome the woes that befell last year’s outfit. With Lampard and Kevin Thelwell, the energy and recruitment feels different, and it feels more optimistic like when Ancelotti prowled Finch Farm and Goodison Park; the state of this position is therefore, in my opinion, quite positive. COYB!