Old and new Chelsea meet with the box-office return of Frank Lampard

It’s the circle, the circle of life. It moves us all through despair and through hope. Although to be fair, in some cases with a little bit more in the way of the former.

But not today! For he is returned, Chelsea’s own royal blue lion king. As expected, and equally, as massively unexpected, Frank Lampard was unveiled just after lunchtime on Thursday as Chelsea’s new, slightly more permanent caretaker manager.

And so the wheel of Frank continues to turn, just as New Chelsea can now move on into the promised new era of fresh ideas and disruptive thinking, this time by hiring the single most old Chelsea figure imaginable.

Perhaps the next stage in the great moving on could feature Todd Boehly being papped looking mournful on a yacht, or threatening to sue people for saying he’s friends with Vladimir Putin.

It is, of course, all too easy at this point to scoff and mock and snark at the Boehly era’s ongoing hallucinogenic take on the business of running a football club. But nobody could ever accuse the board of being fixed in its thinking. Four days on from the departure of Graham Potter, Chelsea have now re-hired the guy they sacked so they could hire the guy who was sacked so they could hire the guy who was just sacked, thereby allowing the rehiring of the guy they sacked before the guy they sacked.

And there was something undeniably more-ish and fun about seeing Frank Lampard back again at the managerial plinth, already in full Chelsea tracksuit with monogrammed FL branding. He looked good too, glossy and fit and impressively re-energised from the slightly ragged version who walked out of Everton, where by the end Lampard would appear on his touchline looking like the kind of pouchy and frazzled middle-aged man you might