Lampard offers few fresh ideas as Chelsea endure new manager splat

T he narrative seemed to write itself: Frank Lampard, having been offed by a famous Roman, resurrecting his managerial career at Easter. But the narrative was wrong. There has been no new manager bounce for Chelsea, quite the reverse. They have had a different manager for their past three games and they haven’t won any of them. This has been a new manager splat.

Sacking Graham Potter with quarter of the season remaining was presumably supposed to jolt Chelsea into life, to at least give them a puncher’s chance in the Champions League. That has not happened. Maybe at Stamford Bridge there will be an emotional surge, the once and future manager returning to save his club in their hour of need, but there was little of that in Wolverhampton.

There was a quick burst of “Super Frank” from the away fans, but it was soon doused by the reality of a game when Chelsea looked even less threatening than they had earlier this year.

At least under Potter, and Bruno Saltor, they were creating chances to miss. Chelsea here had one shot on target and rarely looked like adding to the 29 league goals they have scored this season. It is 99 years since they last scored as few after 30 games of a campaign.

Lampard stalked meaningfully around his technical area. There was a lot of pointing, much rolling up of sleeves. But by the end there was just the familiar sight of him standing with arms folded as another game went against him. He has taken one point from his past eight Premier League games as a manager and has lost six of his past nine league matches at Chelsea. Yet somehow he will lead the most expensively assembled squad in history into a Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid on Wednesday.

It had been here that Lampard had