Ep 1: A Legend Returns | Frank Lampard: Coming Home

My first season back at Chelsea in management has been a crazy season for many reasons. The challenges I knew coming into this job at the start of the year to achieve Champions League football for next season gave me lots of positive feeling for how we can go forward from here. There were some tough moments along the way. I was very upset after the final because I know what it means to Chelsea to try and win the FA Cup final but I think the real feeling I come through is a positive one that I'm back managing the club that I love. He will go right to the very top, right to the very top. When I came back with Derby it was surreal to have a moment as an opposition manager but to have the support I had from the fans it was incredible and it was emotional. I don't want to proclaim we're going to do this and we're going to do that but in my instinct, my instinct to come to this job and I think the instinct of Chelsea from above will always be that we are competitive when we start the season wanting to win. I have to say when I woke up this morning it was official. It felt good. It felt really good and I'll have to get over that. It's a nice emotion now to get to work tomorrow but I'm not going to lie it felt really good this morning. It was obviously always and I've spoken a lot about this a very proud at that point idea that I could come back here and manage. Slightly unexpected to come back in the circumstances after the year at Derby, my first year in management. It had gone pretty well we just missed out on the promotion to the Premier League but of course it was calling me. When you get the call of a club that is so close to my heart, it's my club, the opportunity to come back and try and be a success in my new role now as manager was huge. Personally as Frank being you know a role model for me and kind of in my position and being a midfielder, what an opportunity to learn and to grow under Frank. I played with the boss two seasons and it was different times. Now he's our manager. Obviously his passion, him and his staff, all of them, they are Chelsea people. They love the club. We know that we have a big challenge for all of us. He's a great man, great person. I think he will be a great manager as well. Pre-season, taking two trips to, well the first to Dublin and then to Japan, gave us the opportunity to start working properly with the team and I think what I wanted to do and what we did as staff in Dublin was focus a lot on the physical side of pre-season. We've got great support over here. We've had it at the hotel every day really, fans coming to see us. I knew we had big support here and thanks to them for turning out and seeing us play. It's a tough game for us. It's our first game. We haven't been back for a long bit of pressure on the lads to work today. We've been working very hard. So I'm pleased. I'm pleased with the outcome. Learning from him day in day out, speaking to him, being at Chelsea from a young age, he was my idol growing up. Where we had quite a mixed group of players, some not returning, some returning halfway through that trip, it wasn't time to get too tactical. There were a few messages in there, but it was more about running and physical nature and starting to work with the ball. By the time we then travelled to Japan, it was kind of stage two where we wanted to start working a little bit more on team shape, how we work on and off the ball in the team and things that I want to see from the players in terms of our patterns of play. Keep working. You know, he's done a great job at Derby. He's come back here now and hopefully can kind of not bring back the glory days because this club has always been winning things, but I think just bring back that kind of feeling of what it means to put on a Chelsea shirt. I had my own idea how I would want my teams to play. So in terms of how quickly we move the ball and how quickly we get after the ball, when I say get after, I mean how much we can win it back higher up the pitch. So when I came in in Dublin and when I came in in Japan in pre-season, it was how quickly can we work on the basics of our game? Firstly, a big welcome to Christian to come up today, join up and sing us a nice song on the way somewhere this week. I think we all feel the same a little bit today, a bit groggy, a bit tired, a bit stiff in the back, etc. So absolutely no risk, no risk. It's going to be really light today. Nobody overextends yourself. Make sure you do exactly what you need to get loosened up for tomorrow. There were things for me that I felt I had to get right. Can we switch the ball with more speed so we're attack one side and have the capabilities to attack the other? And can we win the ball back higher up the pitch as a collective unit with a real work ethic? You cannot say that in one pre-season you can affect everything that you want to. Buzzing to be back, you know, training's been fantastic. Obviously with a new manager, you know, everything's looking positive and looking up for the season. Gaffer has brought in the way he wants us to play and we're understanding it more and more every day. You know, like I said, the fitness level is high, so hopefully against Barcelona we can show what we're made of. My overall feeling about how pre-season had gone was probably pretty good because of the game we played against Barcelona where we showed a real work ethic off the ball and made it difficult for Barcelona. But there's a long, long way to go because it does take time, that stuff. There is a progression and that takes a bit of time. See you later, Japan. Yes, he can. Chelsea back into the game. Obviously to be back here, I've spoken a lot about it already. It's a huge thing for me. But the most important thing is I want to make a success of it. So this is where it really begins. The Manchester United game, which was obviously my first game back here as manager, first proper Premier League match. And it was very exciting for me. It was a very proud moment. I spoke about being proud to take this job on. When you actually walk out of the team for the first time in a game that means something, when it's somewhere like Old Trafford, which is obviously such a great stadium. It felt great for me, but coming into the first game, you always know that day one can be very difficult. But for whatever reason, the result could be tough to get. Obviously with the 4-0 result afterwards, it was certainly a tough result to take. I felt over the course of the season, could be a game where I would hopefully look back on and feel like we've come a long way because I could see a lot of good things and good points. And even though it was the full starts for Tammy and Mason within that group alongside the players and we're trying to implement different ideas to the year before, I saw a lot of good things that made me very happy, even though I was obviously disappointed with the result. The Liverpool game, even though, again, it was a defeat on penalties, the team really showed me something about them. I saw a character in the team that night and it made me understand the way the team really dug in and wanted to win and kept running to the last minute of extra time. Yeah, I mean, it'd be incredibly special. I'll be very, very proud. Speak a lot about what I feel for this club. I think that's hopefully well known to the Chelsea fans in particular, but it was my home for so long, it feels like home. And yeah, for me personally and my family, it will be a special moment. Of course, to come back here and be actually manager of this club that I love so much and walk out of the bridge was something that will always be with me. But on the day that the game overtook me and I was obviously very focused on trying to win it, I'd become so focused on my work and that the game in front of me was the only thing that I could really care about. If I come back to the bridge and it becomes a bit of an incredible atmosphere, which it was, I want it to be three points. But I appreciated the atmosphere. The roof is about to come off. Many others have dreamt about and it's come to fruition here. The worst part of that first week and the first three games for me was the second half against Leicester. We were really open. It was good timing and good to the fact that we got a point from that game and we could address certain things that happened in that game. We need to maybe be a little bit tougher. We need to be resilient. If a game turns, we need to be strong to do it because those are the sort of attributes that get you wins. Then I don't want to stand here every week and talk about good performances, good 20-minute periods in games. I want to stand here and talk about winning games. So that's certainly the big challenge for all of us and we'll do everything. We'll do everything to get there. Even in week one, when we don't win in our first three games, we lose two of them. I saw some big signs in the team that we could be all right this year. I knew it was going to be tough then, but I knew we could be all right.