Frank Lampard: Coventry City manager talks to Dion Dublin

Here he is. Leon, great to see you. Been a long time, good long time. Welcome, welcome. Welcome. Yeah, I know, yeah, it does feel like home, mate, honestly. When I was here, there was... I thought you was there like 1998. No, no one needs to know about that. Come on, mate, let's go and have a chat upstairs. Lance, good to see you. And you. Thanks for your time today, mate, first and foremost. See you on the training ground, mate, with your... Pitbull. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's on that? Is there anything on it? It's the master plan. Well, the master plan's working, but listen, we'll come to that. Okay. Let's take you back to your debut, your very first professional debut. Do you know when it was? Do you know who it was against? Coventry. Yeah. Gordon Strachan came on with me at the same time, but he was at Coventry, I was always there. Well, you weren't playing that game, were you? I actually played. You were playing. I actually scored. I scored. I should know that. I don't know that. I just know because when I got the job here, the image came out, you know, and I obviously remember it. It's a massive moment for me as a debut, as a young West Ham fan, managed to get on the team, and I remember Harry stood there arm in arm with me and Gordon Strachan. It was at the end of his career, it was at the start. 1996 that was. Wow. I know, it's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. And then we forward a long way to where we are now, but you had a little bit of a time out as well, about 18 months out. During the 18 months, what was the thought process? Were you thinking, I've got to get back in, or I want to learn more, or did you go and speak to any managers? What was going on? Yeah, I mean, I always want to learn more, but when you're in the bubble, it can become very intense. Sometimes when you're out of the game, you can take a different view and watch more football. I watched a lot of games when I'm out of the game, and I'm like, what's happening with Bournemouth? What are they doing off the ball? What's Unai doing at Aston Villa? I said this the other day, and I'm really interested in those things, so you have to keep moving forward. So I did a lot of that. I did some good meetings with different managers and some dinners with Thomas Frank, Gareth Southgate at the time, Roy Hodgson. There's a little bit of a management community that look after each other, and I love tapping into the experiences of other managers that have been there, done it, or different situations. Thomas invited me to Brentford's training ground, and those things are great. They can just sort of influence you a bit. You try and keep your way of thinking, but we will all evolve from my first day at Derby as a coach to now. And I've also learned, when I first walked into Derby, I thought I could go and be a coach, and then I realised I had to be a manager. And people have this thing now of manager or head coach, and now people have tried to make the title of head coach be my role. But in reality, at a training ground, you're the one that is at the forefront of so many things. You say, oh, day off, training time, schedule, lots of people to help you with those things. But you do have that responsibility, and I like that because you understand that as much as football is tactics and team selection, it's also people and feeling and building and positivity. Have you changed as a manager? Not so much your philosophy, just as a man, have you changed? Yeah, I think so. One of my biggest learnings of being out of the game, and I say it every time, and Christina always laughs at me because I say that next time I'm going to be more relaxed, and she's like, yeah, just wait. Wait, because it's not going to happen. Until you're back in it again. And then I'm back in, and it's like, ah, I'm home, and I'm doing training the next day, and I'm explaining to her my challenges, what's happening tomorrow. So I'm better at the balance of it. I feel like I've got better. I think as a young manager, every win and every defeat is there or there. Yeah. And you're so pushing. You want to show everyone, I'm a good coach, I'm a good manager, and my team gets results. If you go up and down all the time, you can put so much pressure on yourself, then I think your own energies can be compromised. So I try and be more level-headed and go, okay, just keep working. Keep working. Things will come right if you keep doing the right thing. The more you're in it, you always understand them a bit. I think you become a little bit more level-headed. I feel that. And when I've spoken to those managers that have got great longevity, you know, the Hodge Roy Hodgson, Harry Redknapp. I can obviously speak to Harry. Yeah. You feel a different perspective from managers that have been through 700 games doing this job. When you go into Chelsea or Everton or Derby, wherever it may be where you've managed, when you walk into that football club, I know they're all in different circumstances, different stature of football clubs, but is there always a different feeling when you go in? Yeah. Because there's got to be, isn't there? Absolutely. You're in a job for a reason. The manager may have left, generally maybe because the results are not so good. I think the thing you try to learn is to try and be as quick as you can in picking up the important things. And at Derby, because we were in off-season, it was like Vidra had been a top scorer the year before. He left. We injected energy in the legs and some young quality. We found a really good balance that year. And when I went into Chelsea, it's obviously a different story. Transfer ban, Hazard's left. The kids were there for me in the academy. And that, again, we found a good balance. And I think we had good success, obviously, in year one. Everton was firefighter. You've got to stay up. They're all great challenges. I've had a lot of challenges, and all managers do. But you come through them, hopefully, stronger. You learn more about challenges. You learn more about yourself. And you learn about, hopefully, trying to, in management, prioritise what are the things we need to hit now. So when you went in at Chelsea, obviously that is your club. It always will be your club. You're now in the technical area, and you can't affect the game. Was that very difficult, not thinking, just pass me boots? Yeah, definitely. My legs were telling me that. My brain, I knew by then. I felt a great pride and honour of being on the line at Chelsea. Because I think as a player, I knew what my job was. I was a pretty low-maintenance player. I knew my job. I respected my manager. I hardly knocked in the office in my career. Not many times. Just got on with your job? Just got on with it. And to then be on the other side is somewhat surreal. There's no doubt. But I went to Chelsea, even after just one year of management. It was very unusual to get the Chelsea job then. And I understood the circumstances. The band, my playing career, all those things aligned for me slightly. But I had this real sense of confidence that I could do it. That makes me sound like I'm a machine. I'm not. There were every one of those days where you kind of go, oof. You've got to back yourself, haven't you? I did back myself. Because I think players have to feel that. Modern players, if you give off a sense of, I'm not sure what I'm doing here. Is this right for me? They jump all over that. I was one. You came here when Coventry were 17th to offer relegation. You're now fifth. Great chance of staying where you are or even doing better. How have you done it? I think some of the jobs I've gone into are, as a manager you look at what are the expectations of this club? What do I feel like I can deliver? And when I came into the squad here, I thought that we could improve. It was a difficult moment for whatever reason. But when you get in, you try and really analyse quickly the problems. We were conceding too many goals. And we analysed that in terms of the video and with the players. We weren't compact enough. We weren't aggressive enough in our opinion for whatever reason. So we tried to really prioritise our off-the-ball work. And the players, to be fair, you asked me how we've done it. The players have done it. Because they're bought into everything that we try to say. I have to say this group of players, the humility, the application of them is amazing. As a group, absolutely amazing. They're a pleasure to come in and work with. Because whenever you say something, run through there and run through there. It's like, no problem. As a group, it's really, really impressive. So when you've got that, you've got a chance to affect things quickly. I'm under no illusions. It's a lovely period of time because we're winning games. The next challenge is the bigger one. It's like we've got the end of the sea. We've got the run in here now. The minute, you know football as well as I do. The minute you go, we've cracked it. This game, this championship will smack you in the face. There's no doubt. I've got to be the first one to see that and keep pushing. Do you still speak to certain managers now? No, not so much. I come back to Uncle Harry. He's the best support ever. Harry reads me when I'm on the M40 after a game. Win or lose, particularly if we win. He's like, I was following every bit of it. Me and Sandra were on the phone and then they came up and then they scored. So I appreciate that. It's always a wise word from him at the end of those things. But it's more support. The beauty of the championship is we still have the tradition of coming in and having a glass of wine or a beer. Does that still happen? Yeah, they're great moments. Because you go, what do you think of him? What's that? You're set up there. You've got coming up. They're great ways because we've all got these different challenges. And there's some really, really good, not just young coaches, coaches in this league. So the question is, is it harder than playing or is it easier than playing right now in management? It's harder. It's much harder. It's physically not. Yeah, of course. I can put my feet up much more. But the responsibility on your shoulders of the team, of everybody through the week, it's harder up here for sure. So you get two things from that. I think you get the beauty of wins feel better. I enjoy wins more because that responsibility is a bit more like, yeah, what we planned for the week, in the end it all comes off on Saturday for whatever reason. That's high, high. And then the responsibility when it goes the other way. Should I have done that? Could I have done that? What did I get wrong there? Individually as a player, you can kind of, it's just you and you can be helped out by your team mate and you go home and you succeed. As a manager, the responsibility makes it harder. Brilliant. Listen, good luck, mate. Well done. Cheers. Thanks a lot. Pleasure. Thank you.