Frank Lampard, passion and crowd-pleasing triple overlaps at Everton

Nobody was expecting Frank Lampard to conduct his first interview as manager of Everton atop an overturned blue bucket and with a copy of Inverting the Pyramid tucked neatly under his arm. But many a Blue Nose was left scratching the their heads on Monday afternoon at the Hollyoaks-soaked introduction, as well as what actual tactics Lamps might use to dig the Toffees out of the almighty mess they are in: four points off the relegation zone in 16th place, with over half a billion notes of Moshiri’s moolah down the pan.

Instead, Lamps put on a clinic in “heart”, “fight” and “ambition” and much like Augustus Gloop and Ferenc Puskás, insisted he was “hungry” to get started. In fact, the word “passion” was mentioned 10 times in the first three and a half minutes of said interview, at an average of once every 21 seconds – a little glimpse into the half-time team talks to come. Lampard was probably a little lucky to get the Chelsea job in 2019 and a tad unlucky to lose it just over a year ago. But as the appointment of Tactics Tommy [Tuchel] has shown, a little bit more Double Pivot and a little less “desire” had quite the effect at Chelsea.

Some people have questioned Lampardia, what it all means, and where it came from and where it might take us. Was his early success at Derby because he galvanised a bunch of underachievers to a Championship play-off berth, via a gegenpress and triple overlap the likes of which had never been seen in the second tier, or more to do with the fact that he passioned Chelsea loanees Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori to within an inch of their lives, into a division that was well beneath them? The jury remains out.

But fear not, now he’s back in the managerial saddle, Lamps is talking tough again.