Chelsea coach, Frank Lampard opens up on ‘player power’ and what effects it has on the team as a whole. The term ‘player power’ came up when Lampard was one of the integral footballers of the Chelsea team. The term comes into play when the results are worse and pressure falls totally on the manager itself.
The Chelsea coach mentioned that it was rather about players taking up responsibilities for their individual displays on the field. The top players, who are in their prime, find their own mistakes and fix them personally. This was an indication of strength but he also pointed out that there can be negatives of player power as well.
‘Having been in those squads, I can state clearly that sometimes how that player power phrase got relayed out to the open world and how it was inside was not always the same thing,’ Lampard said to the Chelsea Official website.
‘Player power can be two things, it can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing, and a lot of times in my time here at the club, when you have a strong squad of players in their prime performing at the top level there will still be dips but they have personality and they dig in and find a way, that’s what players do at top clubs who are successful time and time again.
‘Where we are at the minute means we have been off the pace in terms of winning the Premier League for a few years so we’re not in that. When you’re in a rebuild you’re searching for anything that can help this squad grow because as it’s growing there are tough times, they have to react and get over it. Then there’s another tough time and they have to react and get over that.
‘The players have to do that, so for me I’m looking closely now at the players, as I look at myself because the players will do it on the pitch but I’m always at the forefront of it, to find how they react and dig in as a group because a lot of them are young, some are very new, it’s a big ask to ask young players and players fresh to this club to be like the players who have been here for many years and seen it all before. Other teams around in the Premier League have that, we do not have that, so that’s the first part of player power.’
Lampard says that he has a variety of players who are new to the club compared to the set teams of other big Premier League clubs. The players who don’t get enough game time react differently, particularly when the team loses. As a manager, he needs to deal with that as he knows that his squad at his disposal is very large and that he cannot give game time to every individual out there.
‘The players that are wanting to play, some of them will use that for real positivity but some not so much,’ he says.
‘Maybe some will speak behind backs because that’s how life is, I can’t be concerned with that. All I can say is the players here I feel have a real desire to get out of this mini-run of bad results and I can see that in them. If there are players that don’t have those concerns to get out of it then they have decisions to make, and if there are opportunities that players leave it will have to be right for them, for myself and for the club and then that can happen. But if not we keep fighting and moving on because they want to play and contribute and I want to tap into the positive side of that.
‘Players that are not playing will not be happy and they shouldn’t be happy because players want to start for this club, but the basic maths of it is that I have to pick a team that goes out and on top of that because we have a big squad then there are some players that are not playing. I don’t ask for them to be jumping up and down when they get home about how great I am but all we’re asking for is to train well, back your team-mates, have a determined attitude every day and that’s it.
‘I don’t expect it to be a popularity contest for myself, I never felt that in the dressing room under any manager at the best of times or in tough times, that’s not the point. The point is that the club and players have to keep fighting in tough times. What we have to do is stick together.’
Lampard knows that a manager’s primary target is to win games for the club and not be a popular manager that wins the hearts of each and every footballer. The main target of each individual should be to win games at any cost despite what the atmosphere is in the dressing room and perform whenever an opportunity is given.
