The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Frank Lampard Finally Speaks Out About What REALLY Happened At Chelsea (E264)

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

In this new episode Steven sits down with one of Chelsea FC’s greatest ever players, Frank Lampard OBE. Frank began his football career in 1995 with West Ham United, the same team that his father had played for. He made his Premier League debut a year later in 1996. In 2001, Frank signed with Chelsea and stayed with them for 13 years, making 648 appearances and becoming the club’s top scorer with 211 goals. During his playing career, Frank was named one of the best midfielders of his generation, and he began his managerial career in 2018. In this conversation Frank and Steven discuss topics, such as: His father’s role in his success His fear of failure His work ethic and understanding of his weaknesses The coping mechanisms he has used along the way What it takes to be a modern manager Creating an environment for success The challengers of being a modern player How his mothers death impacted him His plans for Chelsea Follow Frank: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3XVSjNV Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. When you get that call, had you known the context, the behind-the-scenes, that unhealthy culture? Honestly, do you think you would have made a different decision? I think I can say this. Frank Lampard! Lampard! Lampard has found an ex! Premier League icon, Chelsea legend! I read that your dad was the biggest influence on your career, and then I read a separate quote saying that sometimes I hated him. You know, my dad was a tough man, pushed me very hard on the football front,

and it got probably a bit too much. The fear of failure was a huge driving force, but it made me what I was and gave me the career I got in the end. Chelsea fans will be listening to this because they want to get your opinion on what's just happened, because since you've left, we've not really heard from you. I came back here because this was an opportunity to come to Chelsea, a club close to my heart, but I could see in training the level wasn't enough. The size of the squad, with players that will test you and question you. Questioning you.

And then Chelsea spends more money than anyone's ever spent in a window. It seemed like chaos. I could see that the players were ready for the season to finish. But low standards are a symptom of something further upstream that's happened. We didn't get the results I wanted. And I know a lot of the reasons why. Like what? So, one moment occurred in your life

that really tested you at a much deeper level, the passing of your mother. And while you were playing at the very, very highest level. I was a mummy's boy. I lost the closest person to me, you know, everything to me, the emotional support. I wanna say something more, you know, I couldn't. What would you want to say something more you know i couldn't what would you want to say frank is a legend there's absolutely no denying that but so much has happened in recent times in

his life as a manager that unanswered questions remain and And I wanted to have a conversation with Frank, an honest, open conversation, to see if we could get to the bottom of some of those unanswered questions. What was happening behind the scenes? How did it actually feel for Frank? Is anyone to blame? What does Frank want to do next? And how and what caused Frank to be

the man that he is? And that's maybe the most fascinating question of all. Because there's some things that Frank has just never talked about before, but he's made the decision to talk about them today. And if you have unanswered questions, I don't think you will at the end of this episode. Frank, how are you doing? Really well, thank you. There's always a short and a long answer to that, isn't there? I was waiting for your secondary for that.

What's the long version of that? no i'm doing really well i'm um i'm currently uh on a break i suppose from working which is a pleasure in ways because i um obviously the the work as a the manager i was gonna say premier league manager but any manager in football is intense um so at the moment i'm on a break it's sort of holiday time for me a little bit family time um and probably when i'm out of work i learned this when i left chelsea actually um it was i had a year out after that and i really learned to try to improve my appreciation of when you're out of work you're fortunate enough to be able to be out of work whatever that circumstance is but try and enjoy your family and be very very present so the minute I'm pretty present at home which is a good thing

hopefully for my children and wife and uh I'm in a pretty good place I remember my my brain would often drift off when I had my time out of work um and I would think about things professionally so I think about things that I could be doing or you think back to the past when you're when you're having those moments where you meet I know your kids are running around and you you have a moment where your brain drifts off to work what is what are the subjects that your brain starts thinking about professionally you you think a lot in management uh about people so if I if I reflect on situations like leaving Chelsea or leaving Everton and those things,

there are a lot of things that are out of your control. You get to a point where you kind of can get probably 70% of them and lock them away and kind of go, I'm all right with that. You know, results you can't control, but 70% you're okay with. And it's 30% that kind of niggles at you. That's how I am.

And a lot of those things when you become manager are maybe of like people things I think there's tactics and all these things are huge in the modern game and I'm certainly a coach I'm not a manager but when it comes to managing 25-30 players managing a building because you are the figurehead of a building when you're the head coach or manager I think sometimes when you're reflecting you can reflect on things did I have that was that interaction right would I have dealt with that right could I dealt with it differently and hindsight is like the best best thing you know it's so simple to sit there with hindsight and think you know I should have done that so I suppose I have moments where I go over things like that but they're all with a with a

yearning to sort of be a bit better or learn that you might have done something wrong or actually you come to a conclusion now maybe did it right so you know i dip in and out of that stuff um and that probably is you know as i say i wouldn't say i'm the only one but i certainly am someone that is you know i can never control when those moments come i can be now pushing the swing you know with my kid and then my mind goes back to something or thinks ahead to something kind of you know that probably means that i'm absolutely invested in what I do. Yeah, I can relate to all of that. I think anybody can.

And I also really liked your analogy of once you get to like 50, 70% peace with something, it's kind of resolved as much as you know. And then there's other things which feel kind of unresolved, I guess. Or there's more wisdom to garner from those experiences. Well, I think if you don't get to peace with the 70%, I think you can get yourself in a bit of a mess. You know think you can go over everything can correct yourself and then what is the answer going forward so i think kind of understanding what you are and then going no no that that was

fine whatever the result for a win or for a loss i've had games as a coach and as a player where i we've won a game and i know i got something wrong in the game but you take the plaudits afterwards but inside i know i got it wrong i've had games that we've lost and you get criticism from the outside. And I know my prep was right, you know, in my head. So I think those sort of things you can kind of stack up and go, no, well, that's fine. But then there's always the 30% and we'll always strive for it. And it might be less.

I don't know if 30% sounds a big number when I say it. Sometimes I think it's 10% to try and make you as good as you can be. So I kind of go over that stuff because when you're out of work, when you're not working and you don't know in foot we don't know what your next gig is you know it's very hard to jump too far into the future because everything looks different there so how can you stack yourself up as good as you can now i want to get into all of that but i i want to take a step back because i think um i feel like there's more i need to understand about who you are as a person and your characters and your character and really the the like the foundations you're built upon to understand all of these things the things we're

going to talk about so what do I what do I need to know about Frank Lampard in terms of the influences and the experiences that shaped your character the character of the man that sat in front of me because you know I've spoken to a lot of people about you in preparation for this conversation no no but they all they all seem to sing from the exact same hymn sheet they all say everyone says you're just a wonderful man like a really good solid gentleman and it's people don't know this but we were meant to have this conversation before yeah but you've just been a total class act in even not being able to come last time because of you know reasons outside of your control um the way you conduct yourself you just conduct yourself as a real gentleman and then in terms of your mentality when i was reading through your early years it's clear that

there was this real obsession to be better i mean harry said harry redknapp said that you were the hardest training hardest working person he's ever worked with when you're a young man. Tell me, why is Frank Lampard the way he is? I grew up in Romford in Essex. So I would call it probably a middle class upbringing in terms of my dad had been a professional footballer. And so I went through a pretty comfortable upbringing where I was going to school every day, aspiring to do pretty well at school,

training pretty much every day and playing at the weekend so after school we're going to train at Tottenham and Arsenal and West Ham at one point I was training all three you could in those days now it's different uh I was playing cricket I was playing for Essex as a child so that was on Monday night having nets at Chelmsford and then on Sunday Saturday I went to school because I was going to school on Saturday so I was I was devastated with at the time, is the real word. But that was how the school worked. And on Sundays, I played.

So my week was so busy, but it was content, very content. In terms of relationship of my family, I had a dad who was pushing me very hard on the football front, very, very hard. He was quite a hard taskmaster. What does that mean in reality? That means that probably when I was, I probably started kicking the ball when I was like four, very very hard he was quite a hard task master what does that mean in in reality um that means

that probably when i was probably started kicking the ball when i was like four or maybe as soon as i could walk but you know like remembering my early days would be four or five and then so that was me in terms of i loved the football um but probably by the time i was eight or nine i was probably getting like coached or pushed in in what a 15 or 16 year old might be when they're sort of going into an academy at West Ham, say, where I ended up. As in work on your weaknesses, go over the park. You need to have more stamina. Your left foot's not good enough.

Your agility's not good enough. So I was like, used to put down the cushions in the front room and had me doing reaction, throw a ball against the wall and react and jump. I'm a kid. I loved it. Don't get me wrong. But there were times when I didn't love it and it got probably a bit too much I'm not going to cry about it because it made me what I was and gave me the career I got in the end and then on the other flip of that so I had that pushy kind of thing and so after a game on a Sunday we would lose and I would get he would give me some criticism

on the way home and I would be a bit emotional. And fortunately for me, when I think about fate and how things work together to maybe get you to where you end up being, my mother was the flip, the emotional support, the arm around you, the quiet word. I was a mummy's boy and that was completely my upbringing. So as I say say it was pretty comfortable and in the end it led to me leaving school with my GCSEs getting decent grades and then going to sign on as a YTS at the time an apprentice at West Ham. I read that the quote about your father I

think it was in the independent that your dad was the biggest influence on your career and then I read a separate quote saying that I have an awful lot to thank him for but sometimes i hated him yeah i i stick by that it's i think you'll probably find it um a lot in stories similar to mine um and in the modern day i think it's changed because i think parents now might the thing with my story then in a different era was it felt pretty organic. My dad had played. He saw probably a bit of talent in me and pushed and drove. In an old school way, I want you to be a player, son, you know, and it was like I think he found a new sense of pride in pushing me there.

Now I think some parents get excited about, ooh, the bright lights that may be and they push their children. And I think that's another story, but I think mine was real. real you know my dad was a tough man is a tough man and he pushed me and um i remember being over a park and it was raining it was crossing balls for me to head heading's never been a strength of mine then and now so it never throughout my career and i couldn't you know i couldn't connect i was missing them and he was shouting at me and And I remember sort of stomping off and being emotional about it. And those things stick in my head. And again, they were the building blocks of myself as a person.

So, you know, this isn't a sob story. It's just a reality of what I went through. As I said, I had a lot of other comforts. So, you know, other people don't have it as good. And it was without that, who knows, in a football sense, if I'd have got to where I got. And how does that, what relationship does that make you have with your work and progress and self-improvement at that very young age because you signed at west ham when you're what 14 years

old ish uh 15 maybe yeah 15 and and i and i i mean as i said i had read that harry redknapp quote that you outworked everybody else. Yeah. What is your relationship with your work from that very young age? Well, I'm sort of really interested in this kind of nature versus nurture thing. What was in me already was ingrained in me maybe to be this kind of very work ethic-y kind of person. I think I had, you know, physical capacity. I was a chubby kid, to be fair. I was quite chubby.

I had these cheeks, curtains, as you had in those days. And I remember I know I needed to get fitter and get stronger. And then being pushed by my dad particularly and encouraged by my mum probably gave me this real desire and an understanding that if you don't work, you're not going to get there. And that's what I would try and pass on to my children now. But it really stuck and it became me.

So by the time of being 16, as I remember it, probably been at West Ham my early years, I'd probably been forced into a bit by my dad, but I took it on board. So I wanted to get faster. So he put me in running spikes and I had to run after training, go and run over the back. And I used to hide my spikes go out the backs I didn't want the other players to see me because I felt embarrassed I'd go in on days off I would practice extra shooting I would do everything I could to to improve and it probably was looking

back a desire to be the best and I was never the best. I was probably like the second or third best kid in pretty much every team that I played in, in whatever I did, cricket or football. But I had a real desire to and I also had a fear of failure. And as much as that doesn't sound like a nice driving force, it can be a really strong driving force, I think. Where did that fear of failure come from? I don't know. I don't know.

I think it's in my makeup maybe. I don't know. It's probably just how I am. I probably have it still these't know I think it's in my makeup maybe I don't know it's probably just how I am I probably have it still these days I think it can be really positive it was in my footballing career and it carried on throughout probably still in my management career um it can probably be the flip of that in my life because if I fear of failing something I won't approach it and I that's me I don't want that you know my wife will always Christine jokes with me when we go on holiday and you want a paddleboard or something I'm like I'm not going near that because I know I'm going to fall off a lot you know and so she will laugh at me so I'm like you

paddleboard I'll lay on the beach or I'll lay on the lilo or something like that I actually use the paddleboard as a lilo that's like that's the joke but in the biggest sense in my life you know that fear of failure is and as it can probably maybe make me not try things I should do, but in terms of my footballing career, the fear of failure was a huge driving force. And I don't think it's a bad thing because I think there's a certain humility to it. And my mum would certainly have been the driver of me as a young person to say, stay humble, son, stay humble, never get too high, stay there, and you'll be fine in your own head.

So I think I had a real understanding of my weaknesses and I thought well if I can work on these constantly and then I started to see results really step by step sometimes you go back you go forward a few but I can certainly say looking back at my career from start to finish I didn't leave anything on the table in terms of work ethic and training you know and I don't want to sound like an absolute machine there'll be days when you get older where you come off it a bit or you you start to find life affection different ways but I when I look at my peers in football I certainly had a training ethic that at least right at the top whether you know others can say the same maybe but I felt that I mean that's the Harry Redknapp quote. He says that during his career, he never met anyone that trained as hard as Frank. He would be out there on a winter's day practicing shooting for hours, left foot, right foot, etc, etc. That fear of failure, though, I can see how it becomes a driving force and makes you stay out there on a winter's day, left foot, right foot and leaving no stone unturned. But with all these things, there comes a more, a cost on the other side of the coin, right? And you talked about the paddleboard thing,

which is that like kind of, if I don't do it, then I won't fail. But one of the things that I was assuming is it will also make you quite a chronic overthinker. Yeah. Because I think people that have that fear of failure, they try and think their way through a situation before it happens.

Yeah. Typically. What is the cost of being that having that fear of failure um well the overthinking thing is maybe a cost and i think that can be a positive too but i think it can be quite taxing uh on yourself you know for anyone who thinks like that and you know sometimes i would i've tried to make myself you know not an overthinker however you do that I don't know because I've not found a solution to that one because um I think that's when you are that it's in you so um

probably the the the negative or downsides have been probably a bit taxing to myself but I think you learn to live with that too and I think you understand it I think it's um something that i'll never master and um it can probably cause you into over complicating situations like you're saying about i don't want to get into that but if you do get into something and you're really overthinking you have to get into something i now try and step back and simplify it and say stop overthinking it simplify it because for me anything in life if you can simplify the basics you probably get quicker to the solution so um that one's just a struggle that i put up with but as i say i think it's just part of my makeup anything in life if you can simplify the basics you probably get quicker to the solution so um that one's just a struggle that i put up with but as i say i think it's just part of my makeup if i

wasn't an overthinker if i didn't have that sort of obsessive sort of perfectionist training drive i wouldn't have got to where i got to because i was not leonel messi who has got this god-given talent that's there like wherever my talent was on the spectrum I needed to push it and I constantly tried to how do you enjoy the process if you're overthinking I weirdly like I've really grown to like the stress of what it brings and that's and that that's you might start thinking I'm a strange person I don't know but I loved stressful training you know to put on a physical side for instance I loved like that feeling of like almost feeling sick on a pre-season run or you know really intense training sessions I really enjoyed that maybe not always in the moment but you know when you get to the end of it you go I

got through that and it was so intense and hard and maybe in life sometimes I set myself challenges and maybe I make it more complicated than I should but I don't mind that stuff and that's probably when I started off talking about like relax when you're with your children I think I'm still um juggling that one and I think probably a lot of people are I don't know I think you know being overthink is not something unique to me it's completely everywhere um but I don't know what else to say and that's what I am that that enjoying the the pain like the pre-season run if you feel sick then you feel good about yourself yeah why i don't know i mean i went to the gym this morning and i really didn't want to go and i bought the dog and the time limit's getting shorter i'm gonna go and i don't want

to go i'm gonna go in so i know the buzz that i'll get off afterwards and that's kind of my drug and it always has been and you know it probably starts from all those early days of you know you must work hard you must push yourself you must be as fit as you can be and it probably just stuck and it's probably a bit of a lifer for me um but i do i do thankfully i i i i enjoy the stress of hard work and physical but less now i've finished you know now it's more to not get too unhealthy and unfit whereas Whereas when I was training and playing, even when I finished playing for a couple of years, if I went for a 5K, I need to beat my 5K PB. I have to try and beat it.

Now, when I do a 5K, I'm just going to complete it. Do you know what I mean? I'm completing it in like 20 or 30 seconds less. So I've dropped that one slightly and maybe I transfer it into other parts of my life, I guess. When you finished your footballing career, you know, there's many options you had. Punditry.

I mean, I'm just talking about the typical paths that footballers, sometimes they just go into business. A few of them go into coaching and stay in football, but you made the decision to stay in football. Why? And was there anything else that was tempting you? Well, I did punditry for a year. So I spent a year working mainly on BT and doing some different things bbc i did a few bits and and i really enjoyed it it

was great i was working a lot with rio ferdinand steven gerrard um jake humphrey he had them recently and just really good people and and it was like a step in the game and a step i've retired so i can do other stuff that you know the life of a pundit is you know much easier than the manager we all know that. So I kind of put my eggs in both baskets at that point. I did that and I did my coaching badges. And I wanted to kind of see how I felt a little bit. And I didn't want to be a manager in my 20s.

When I got to my 30s, I was like, that's interesting. People, managers, what are they dealing with? I just thought about myself in my 20s more. And then when I finished, I did my coaching badges. I started to quite like it. And then I got an offer out of the blue to go and manage Derby, Derby County. 20s more um and then when i finished i did my coaching badges i started to quite like it and then i got an offer out of the blue to go and manage derby derby county the owner mel morris kind of went out on a bit of a limb he was speaking to harry redknapp who's my uncle um

harry said speak to frank we sat for two hours in chelsea in a hotel and he offered me the job and it was like um christine has a saying and it's like jump and the net will appear and we sat in my front room and i was like you know i'm doing my coaching badges but this is a proper job i go to derby they've got some problems and it's going to be a difficult job or whatever as all jobs are and i jumped why um that inner probably drive that i have that inner desire you know it wasn't something that i i am an overthinker so that probably drive that I have that inner desire you know it wasn't something that I I am an overthinker so that probably made that process of those couple of days where I had to make a decision really intense but at the same time I like a challenge I love a challenge and as much

as I enjoy punditry it was you know it's it's challenging you want to do it well you want to do it like you know the top boys do you have to put everything into it and do it really well um but i i was when i wanted more i wanted to to get on the grass i wanted to work with players i wanted to try and improve players i wanted to see if i could do it it's probably more if i'm on it's probably can i do it and can i you know do something and i was probably naive at the time because the minute i walked into derby i was like wow this is different you know i've got holding i am now holding the meeting rather than one of the 25 players sitting listening and as much as you can think I'll do that the minute you walk in and you see those 25 faces and then you walk to to say hello to Jeanette who's your secretary and this one and the player

liaison I'm like oh shit have I got to manage all this as well and you do you have to sort of you know the building is yours to kind of set the tone. So that first year, some of it was good. You know what I think sometimes in management, a great manager said to me this, and he was old, he was old. And he said to me, I think I was a better manager when I was young

in many, many ways. He said, because as I got older, I started to really sort of overthink things and become a little bit more cynical. And, you know, you kind of go over these things. And when when I was young I just make decisions and I was kind of free to do it now I think there's a balance to that experience is obviously a clear can clearly help as you go along you learn from mistakes but I understood I understood his point when he said that because I walked into Derby fresh and I made a lot of mistakes because you always will but I also had

a freshness and a bounce and a feeling inside me that was kind of i want to take this on and even though those moments of fear you know that kind of when you feel like a bit of imposter syndrome should i be doing this and you got hired it like i remember having the whistle for the first day in front of in the training pitch going i'm going to blow this at the end of training and i've been used to hearing that coach this sounds so stupid i've been used to hearing coaches go end of the session stop I was a bit like what kind of whistle I didn't want to do like a little

and I remember going you know like let alone I've got to pick a team and set the tactics and set the tone I was about all those little things

and I think every if they're honest I think you know people in business yourself have all had those the most simple things where you're sitting there going wow that little basic thing

that I didn't consider is now in my head so I had a lot of those and it was you know we got to the playoff final we got to Wembley simple things where you're sitting there going, wow, that little basic thing I didn't consider is now in my head. So I had a lot of those. And it was, you know, we got to the playoff final. We got to Wembley. We lost a final against Aston Villa to get to the Premier League. And I was so disappointed for the club at Derby and the owner had given me, you know, put everything into me. And we'd had a really good year and got there and we lost it. But in terms of that first year of management, yeah, my drive took me into it. And it was just a huge learning curve and it was a really enjoyable year imposter syndrome that i mean that's somewhat

linked to i guess your fear of failure have you how does we talk a lot about imposter syndrome on this podcast because it's it's a it's a two it's a double-sided thing on one hand you have that feeling of um which i can recall when i became a dragon on dragon's den and i'm sat next to peter jones and deborah meaden peter jones has been there for 21 seasons since the beginning that feeling of, which I can recall when I became a dragon on Dragon's Den and I'm sat next to Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden. Peter Jones has been there for 21 seasons since the beginning. Deborah Meaden's been there for 17. And I feel like I've just walked into the TV. Like your little whistle thing was me like, how do I say I'm out?

Exactly. But being at peace with that, like how have you dealt with that in your career? Because you went from being a pundit to managing a club that was trying to get promotion to then Chelsea. These are huge leaps forward. Yeah. Huge leaps forward. I think I probably managed to get coping mechanisms along the way that have put that to the side. And in simple sense, I've become much more confident in myself.

Away from work, actually, at home, much more confident in myself, away from work actually, at home, much more content in myself. Again, it probably comes back to being really settled in a relationship. I'm 45 now, just turned. But in the workplace as well, that first year I remember feeling it a lot. And when I moved to Chelsea,

like it should be a huge move, it's a huge jump to the Champions League club. Even though I knew the club very well, it was a huge jump to deal with players of a different stature etc but I found that imposter syndrome thing much less and I had just had coping mechanisms where I could kind of just go okay you're nervous taking this meeting because you're a bit out of your comfort zone you've got to be critical of a player so you're going to go in on someone you're going to show a video of the game the other day and it's like that's that's not a comfortable thing to do always.

And I just probably have found mechanisms to be able to go, right, you almost go into the character. I don't want to sound like an actor too much, but you go, no, I'm just going to go into it. And the more I think you do that, the better you can be at coping with that thing. And then you just kind of also have to get a realization that, you know, you can feel a bit like that. You can feel a little bit like, oh, I'm out of my comfort zone. You can make mistakes. I think showing that you can make a mistake in front of a group of players is not the worst thing.

You know, they're there to, players will get it. You made the smallest mistake. One of those 25 at least is going to go, what about when he said that? You know, but I think you've got to come to peace with that. And you can even joke about it after the event because you'll keep making them. So I'll probably come to terms with being able to deal with that side of it i think i am i i was thinking then as you're speaking actually about my experience being a dragon and when um one of the things i've always wondered about players when they go from being a player to a manager

and especially when they've been managed under a legend of a manager so like i was thinking about ollie um ollie going to solskjaer and silex ferguson yeah how hard is it to like be yourself versus be the successful manager that you saw win like because even when i became a dragon i think for the first two years for sure i was trying to be a dragon yeah not being steve yeah yeah and that's a that's a journey but do you understand the question i completely get it i get asked a lot and a lot. And not in exactly the way you get asked, but I get asked it by football journalists who say, so what did you take out of all your managers you play and all this stuff?

And, you know, just to jump to one would be Jose Mourinho. It's a good one to jump to because he had a huge effect on my career, as many did. But he came and probably elevated me in my playing career to a different level. And what I learned from Jose, and as I then went on to managers after that, was the thing that impressed me about Jose,

there was a real authentic nature to him. Like when he was self-confident, overconfident, kind of brash Jose, that's him. You know, that was him. And, you know, maybe he's playing up a bit now and again, but I saw him behind the scenes. And then when I've worked with other managers that maybe were probably striving to be something like that,

and I think after Jose, there were a generation of managers that were a bit like, okay, I'm going to wear this scarf and I'm going to tie it up and wear it, or act a bit kind of, say those things he used to say or does say. And I didn't buy it as such. And even from outside when you're watching managers, you know, you have that impression. So I think probably you go, okay, can I take things from all these managers? For my journalist question, yeah, I did from some

and not from others, blah, blah, blah. But when you come to it, you have to be yourself because you'll get found out. And you're probably right, in my early days, I also did that. I did my first meeting at Derby again was like, right, I'm an ex-player. So anyone who wants to knock on my door,

come and see me and I'll tell you the truth and we'll have it out or I'll give you the answer that you want. And I remember like the first three weeks, they kept knocking on the door. I was like, I had to do another meeting. So lads, if you're going to knock on my door, come to me with like facts of why you should play.

You know, how's your training? You know, come with something. I don't want you just like, I didn't play on Saturday, on Monday morning, there's like five on the door knocking. And you know, open policy in a door is good but at the same time it was like those are like learning curves for me like i probably said that that phrase because i thought i needed

to say it right you know i mean because there's a place it's a really it's a really cool thing to play i want the manager to be able to speak to me all the time and when i said it i was like saying what i thought i should say and then you know you learn a little lesson you know my door hopefully is still open now, but at the same time I was probably playing the part of a manager. And then you kind of go, what's real to me here? You know, like, well, do I have to say that? Is there another way of saying it or whatever?

And that kind of brings me to a question, which is wouldn't it therefore have been great for you to go and learn those lessons when the stakes weren't so high? Because even the stakes are super high at Derby because you're figuring out Frank, the manager there. And sometimes you don't want to be at the poker table playing with real money. But that's my life. I know what you're saying.

And I think as a, I think I can say this. I think as an English ex-player, Stephen Gerrard, others that have played at a high level, you know, played 100 times for our country, et cetera. I think the culture

in this country is to sort of say, right, now you're a manager. Go and earn your stripes there because being a player of that level doesn't mean you're

going to be a manager. So I think that could have been a route where you can kind of get a lot of play. Fair play, he went down to, you know,

Division 2 and he's showing what he's doing and there's a process. The reality is that path wasn't for me, you know mel morris asked me to do to take the derby job it was a question yeah challenge yes please i'll take the challenge you know when i won you there and chelsea came to me it was a difficult time at a transfer ban you know ed and haz i was leaving it was a real transition young players what's going to be there next year i think probably

some big managers have turned it down I know that so it was like yeah you know what challenge I'll take it so you know I don't want to try and recreate the past

I think why didn't I do that because you know I've managed in four years of management I've had some experience and for all the you know you'll always get criticism

you know you leave Chelsea people will criticise you you go to Everton you stay up you get relegated people will criticise you but at the same time, I am resilient enough

to deal with all that stuff now. That's been probably the beauty of having a long career in football. And so my thing is I can manage Derby, I can go and manage Chelsea and do it to a good level as well because I've had successes as well as when it hasn't gone so well. I mean, that's the modern day manager. So I think I probably crammed in a lot of work in four years and and working at a high end level with players that will test you and question you because champions league players question you so it's just my path the um i mean

that's it so champions league players questioning you you don't ever assume that happens i mean i don't know a ton about what goes on in the room but yeah no I think when I say that I think in the modern day player particularly I think in previous series it probably would have been more vocal and you know but now the modern day player

have a good understanding of the game a lot of them have been coached in academies very very well to a high level when they get to the top they also when you are setting out tactics, they will have questions for you and you have to buy into that because,

you know, the reality is what you want is them to understand what you want or sometimes they say something and you go, okay, we might change that,

you know, or whatever it might be and I think when you get to the top level in football, you have to understand that that's there. Now, there's a,

they have to understand you're the boss and you have to make that very clear but at the same time, will be a lot of suppliers that would challenge you what do you mean by that boss come to you what but what about if that happens you know and you get a lot more of that and you i remember reading pep guardiola once said that even if you don't know the answer pretend that you know the answer and you know so you there is a version of that because you know when you're getting things thrown at you sometimes it's like, you know,

football is an active game. And I think sometimes in the modern day we look at, you know, on Monday night football you see after the event, you know, they should have done this or people are imagining what, you know, Pep Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp or fantastic coaches are doing and it must be this amazing complicated thing. For sure, they're amazing coaches. But it's an active game.

So if you can give a good message, then the rest is down to the players at the same time. So you just it's an active game so if you can give a good message then the rest is down to the players at the same time so you just have to prep them as well as you can but they will they will challenge you that got me thinking about when i sat with jamie carragher and he was telling me about all the managers he had had um above him when he was playing at liverpool and then hearing from all the united players nanny and ever and gary and rio about what sir alex was like and and then reading through all of United players, Nani and Ever and Gary and Rio, about what Sir Alex was like. And then reading through all of the managers that you've worked under. I mean, there's so many of them from Jose to Angelotti.

So many of them. I mean, there was one period where the managers were being sacked every six months, it feels like, at Chelsea. And the thing I garnered from all of them is that there is actually not a successful blueprint to being a successful manager. There's not like a blueprint. There's not a way to being a successful manager. There's not like a blueprint. There's not a way to be a successful manager. Some of them are tacticians.

Some of them are man managers. Is that accurate? It's very accurate. I agree with that. And Chelsea is a bit of a unique example because in my time there, they changed manager a lot, as you say. And I don't think that's the most productive way to to run a business in an idle way in terms of football because in an idle way you kind of go we trust in this manager let's work with it here's the idea we're going to go with it and of course it's the prerogative of

the owners to change that what we did have at the time was a fantastic unit within the dressing room of high talent high personality that led the dressing room so we had a great team and a great squad and when I say that we had a spine of players, of John Turrey, myself, Peter Cech, Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole, I could go on. And there were personalities that sometimes would clash, but we knew our place. We knew we could rely on him.

I knew that I would run for him and he'd run for me. And we also had high talent of a player that Didier Drogba would score in every final pretty much. So I think we kind of like bridged that gap of changing changing managers and so I think when you come back to the the question of you know great managers I think sometimes it's it's a case of compromising with what you're working with you have to get the people skills right and that's the first thing I learned as a manager the difference from playing is that you have to deal with people you've got to try and inspire every player within that group and inspire the collective so every player will have a different motivation it might

be money for one it might be I want to be the best striker in the world it might be I want to be in front of him because I don't like him whatever that is you try and tap into and I think the greatest of managers my opinion and I played under as you say a lot and I'm trying to be one is that they give you something that you believe in, that you can strive for, and you all buy into. And sometimes it's a messy process. You know, you watch Man City lift that treble just now, and you lift the Champions League.

There will be so many things that we don't know behind the scenes. This player's unhappy, Pep had to do this, all these things that come together and give you that amazing moment. And I had that as Chelsea's a player and so for you to say go on tell me what a great manager

is and me to go here's an answer for you in one minute it's like impossible to say man management that's what all the United players

said about Sir Alex it's the only thing that they all completely agree on they would say he was the best man manager and an inconsistent

leader which is an interesting concept and what I mean by inconsistent leader is he would treat Gary in a different way to nanny to evra and they all told me this stories and rio as well told me about when um sir alex brought that bottle of whiskey to his ill grandfather's bedside and rio doesn't know how he knew the favorite brand of whiskey and how he knew his granddad was ill yeah gary told me he used to tap him on the shoulder and say think about your fart your grandfather's shrapnel,

which is still in his shoulder when you go out there today. That kind of bespoke, tailored approach to leadership, which seems to be Sir Alex Ferguson's highest accolade. Sure. And I think that runs into the modern day that we get very caught up in tactics. And rightly so, the game's moved on

from those days tactically, but those people, and you'll know yourself, you know, inspiring people. And as you say, to be bespoke and kind of individualize it and look within the group and have moments. Because, you know, if you ask me about my career, you go like, Frank, what do you remember out of those 20 years? Like, do you remember the meeting where Jose,

you know, played you a bit higher up? I wouldn't. You say, do you remember the time that Jose said those words to you that inspired you? And it could be like one sentence. I go, yeah, I remember yeah I remember that do you know I mean like things that stick with me that I remember that made me go I'm gonna I'm gonna run for this man he's gonna make me better you know and I had that and I think so what you just said there about Sir Alex Ferguson I think the great managers have you look at and they have it in different styles Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp

everyone will have a different style of that and that's a huge part to their success I think what do you like as a manager if you had to do like a self-assessment I think you got you got somebody else I don't know um I know I try and be uh close to the players as I say my open door thing but at the same time I think I I try and find a balance I I think the important thing for me was when I became a manager was to not expect anybody, any player to see it how I saw it or train how I trained or whatever, you know, for good or for bad.

And you have to, that's I think a bit of a skill which, you know, Sir Alex probably had perfectly. So I try and be as close to the players. I try and learn all the time. I'm a coach. I want to coach on the pitch.

I think my biggest pleasure is coaching and improving players and particularly young players. And I've had the, you know, the fortune to work with some really good young players at Derby. I had Mason Mount, Harry Wilson, Fakaya Tomori, and then at Chelsea, obviously, Tammy Abraham, Extra Ones, and Anthony Gordon, et cetera.

So I think they are the real sponges that are a real pleasure to work with. And I love that part of it, being able to speak to them. And you do find, and it's a reality, and I remember being an older player, you're a bit more cynical. When you're a younger player, they're like a blank canvas and you can push them and try and push them and that. So I'm probably quite intense with the younger players. I try and be, as I say, inclusive and I'm always trying to learn

and just trying to be me it's it's a hard answer that one I think you have to ask you know maybe a member of staff or a player I pick the right player because you probably

get different answers because when you work with I worked at Chelsea recently with 30 players I pick you pick 11 for a game and like eight subs and the subs

eight outfield subs the subs don't really like you because they're not starting let alone the other 10 you know so it's a really hard balance for the modern squad to get there

but you have to try and make it inclusive because if you're going to get anywhere you've got to go all together and that was one of the problems probably in Chelsea this season

30 players it's not possible to manage that maybe this is an even more difficult question what are you trying to work on then what are the areas

as a leader as a manager you're trying to work on because I can think for myself i can think of a number of areas where i go do you know what that is still somewhere where i have a recurring when i reflect in hindsight i go fuck i need to get better here what is that for you quite a few things i would say because um the overthinker thing comes in again i'm a bit of a perfectionist so you know I always want to try and improve um you know my tactical and the personal touch and those things but I think when I came away from Chelsea I realized I needed to delegate time better that was something I was certainly not great at I've got you have your staff for a reason they're there to support you and at times they'll

be better than you at certain things so give them it you know and give them that you obviously oversee that thing and I probably spent a lot of time um trying to be across everything whereas really i probably could have come back from that and save my own energy so i think i certainly try and improve that side i did between chelsea and everton for sure to try and save that i can um be pretty over reactive sometimes if i see things I don't like in terms of, and when I say that, it's always effort or standards. And I think that's one of the things I'm biggest on, is that if you are going to make a mistake in a game,

I've got no problem with that. If you are going to not run for your teammate, if you're not going to train through the week with an idea that when I train on Monday, that's got a direct relation to what Saturday is going to look like. If that feeling isn't there, then I probably can either get upset with a player or maybe kind of distance the player. And I think when you're working with a group, you have to be careful of that one

because not every player has your mentality. So you have to either try and bring them up to the party or if not, then they're going to have to not be there if you're going to have success as far as I see it. And that sounds really harsh, but it's one of those things where you go, if you can work in a team and you're going to take it to exactly where you want it to be out of that squad of 25 if you've got that kind of I remember managers would say this you have

you know like there's your six or seven you know we're going to get every day we're going to train they're going to come in they're going to be so active every day you're going to have the middle group or somewhere in the middle you had the ones that maybe i'm just coming to training you know or you know i'm a bit sore today you know that sounds simplistic to say but you have to try and work if you want to work in a forward direction and go okay those six are with me right you try and garner them those are the ones that can kind of pass the message those ones in the middle okay can we keep pushing and working between me and the staff to try and improve them and And then the ones that are there, come on, can we help them?

Can they come with us? If not, you have to speak to the club and that's where a club has to be aligned to go, okay, if you want to go in that direction and we're with you, okay, we'll work that out. And that becomes a recruitment or players leaving the club. I mean, that's, you know,

that's the reality of how it has to be. And that's the reality of business as well. I've just finished writing this book and it talks about these three lines and basically says, if everybody in, think about a person in your team and if everybody in the team

represented their cultural values, right? Which is what you're talking about with your six disciples there. If everybody represented the cultural values, would the bar, would the overall bar be raised or lowered? And you'll have some people who would, imagine if everyone was like them,

like a Frank, you know, a Frank Lampard or a John Terry, how high that the cultural values would be raised. And and you'll have some people who would imagine if everyone was like them like a frank you know frank lampard or a john terry how high that the cultural values would be raised and then you have other people where if everyone was like them you'd be relegated yeah and and what to do with those three cohorts of bar raisers maintainers and bar lowerers and that's kind of what i that's a good way of putting it i mean i and i think the i think the bar raisers can take some time to raise the bar but the bar laras can get you very quickly yeah yeah that's kind of my experience because that kind of when that kind of that consistency or whatever it is you know like this why are we doing this training why do we have to do or whatever that kind of negativity which can slip

in can be really contagious and then in a winning sport and as much as we're talking here about great managers winning is is everything you know and that's obviously relative to if you're a man city can be really contagious. And in a winning sport, and as much as we're talking here about great managers, winning is everything, you know. And that's obviously relative to if you're a Man City or an Everton. Everton will win kind of 35, 40% of games at best at the moment. And you know that. So you know that they're going to be

65 or so percent of weeks, whereas not that great. The bar lowers can go and they lower it quickly. Whereas, you know, if you can get the raisers to take control, then I think generally you can kind of get there. So it's a really important thing.

That's probably one of the interesting things that, as I say, the transition from player to manager, trying to get that. Because whether you were one of the bar raisers or you're in the middle group or the lower group, when you become a manager, it doesn't matter what you were. You've got to kind of get there, get the script of what it is and kind of just push. So that's something that I think we're trying to improve on everything all the time and coming away sometimes gives you nice time to to have

perspective and just kind of go i'm gonna put it in line a little bit and it looks a bit different to what i thought before that experience yeah this is i mean i guess this is why some of the the greatest managers of all time they hold on on to their Gary Neville's and their, you know, their disciples. Yeah. And I've spoken to Gary about this. Gary said to me,

in fact, when we were filming Dragon's Den recently, he said for those last two years, Sir Alex kept me there because of my impact on the dressing room. Not my impact on the pitch, but on the dressing room. I could keep, keep the standard high.

In the modern world, I was reading the stats, managers are getting fired quicker than ever. Sure. And it almost, it must be so difficult, managers are getting fired quicker than ever. And it almost, it must be so difficult to establish authority when the player's aware that the manager is going to be the one to be taken out if things don't go well. In business, it's not like that as a CEO, because I own the company and I am the manager. So if there's behavior underneath me that's toxic and contagious i can act yeah the

center of authority is with me yeah whereas it seems like in a club the center of authority is really like the chairman the owner yeah um sometimes the manager manages manages to get there but in the modern world we don't let managers last long enough to build that authority no and that's the tough world that it is and i think you know you probably have to earn the right as a manager to get to a club maybe when you look at the perfect models right at the think you know you probably have to earn the right as a manager to get to a club maybe when you look at the perfect models right at the top you know Manchester City is a good one to talk about now I work with the City group I had one year playing there and I could see when I was there they hadn't arrived at that point but I could see with the stability from above and how

it run and the vision it was like we're going to get they were going to get somewhere because they had a great structure and it wasn't like it was going to get pulled and pushed and pulled for you know a small period of time as we're going to get there and then they hired pep you know they had a not difficult first year but the first year was kind of him finding his way i need this i need this and then he's fantastic coach and they have great players but if you don't have that aligned thing where as you said the most important person at the club in the modern day in my opinion is the owner and it is the structure at the top because they really they set the tone maybe it's financially maybe it's with the sporting directors and recruitment because you will be as good as the players you recruit a great manager again i don't want to sit here and drop names it said to me it was when we finished it um my first season everton

we just stayed up skin of our teeth and he was like rang me to say congratulations he went frank don't rest 80 of your work for next season will be done in the next month so it's recruitment so like 20 will be what you do next and now the 80 is like bringing the right players so i think you know like that that alignment as i keep saying there is something that you know if you can get um an owner and there are great owners and there are great sporting directors and recruitment and the manager and the manager is so you know critical to it but when you look at last season 13 managers left their club i think it's 13 out of 20 clubs and you're talking about you know antonio conti and you're talking about thomas tucco you know managers had huge successes it shows you that

the landscape's changed to the point where the manager will be culpable and i think you have to come you have to be at peace with that but you have to try and changed to the point where the manager will be culpable. And I think you have to come, you have to be at peace with that. But you have to try and get to the point very quickly where you have success. And that's tough because winning is, and the modern world of social media and reaction is like, get him out, you know, get the next one in. You know, sometimes maybe they're right. Maybe the manager is culpable. But other times there are, there are many things. And to come back to your original point about players and those stalwarts and the Gary Neville's

and the James Milner at Liverpool in the last whatever years you know people on the outside I think it's very easy to look at the superstars and Mo Salah's and that

I can guarantee you and I know this first hand from speaking to people people like James Milner and Jordan Henderson have absolutely set the tone of that club for the last whatever years

during great success and if you don't have that kind of those drivers have absolutely set the tone of that club for the last whatever years during great success. And if you don't have that kind of those drivers within that top six or eight, I think it's very hard to sustain success or get success. And again, back to my Chelsea days, we had that naturally. And we were actually quite diverse. So it was like John Terry was like the real captain, like heart on his sleeve.

You could see it in him every day. I was probably like more quiet, but like a trainer and standards and myself and trying to hope that that would bring people with us. Didier was this sort of charismatic from the Ivory Coast and kind of brought in, you know, that section of the dressing room. And he took a pet check, spoke five languages. Ashley Cole was such a nice lad and this best left back the country's probably ever seen.

So we had this amazing group. And like, if others aren't going to follow that then very quickly it was like you're not going to make it regardless of the manager change it's like you won't you won't survive the dressing room and that's kind of how it was it reminded me of a quote that i've said on this podcast before which is when the culture is strong the new people become the culture and when the culture is weak the culture becomes the new people right because when you have those that core disciples someone coming in they'll they'll stand out so much yeah if they don't fit in with you didier frank etc yeah that they'll instantly be expelled yeah but when the culture is weak someone will

come in and they'll actually influence yeah the dynamics and that's when you really from my experience in business is when you're really really screwed no that's interesting because i think in football as well because it's topical, there's so much conversation around it. You know, I managed Chelsea for seven weeks, I think I did. And I spoke a lot about standards and I was a bit, am I saying standards too much? I saw you say it in every post-match.

Yeah, I know. And it wasn't like, I'm not trying to be clever and go, I'm just going, this is my line now, standards. But it was like, it was very evident to me when I walked in because, you know,

having worked at Chelsea as a coach before and as a player, I do know the standards. I do know that. And this is not a direct criticism of the players either because when I look

at the players' situations where they were and I understood how it had been a long year, I walked in with 10 games to go. They'd been there for the whole season

and a lot of players were not playing. They were probably going to leave, which we're seeing now. Whether they were going to leave or the club wanted them to leave or they hadn't been playing with the previous managers. And I could see in training that the level wasn't enough.

It wasn't enough to go and get a result at, you know, whoever you might want to say, at Brentford at home or let alone Real Madrid. It wasn't enough. And I can say this now because I said this to the players. And again, it's not an individual criticism of the players because I also, when you're trying again it's not an individual criticism of the players because I also when you're trying to say

you want to be a manager you have to have a personal understanding of like human nature if I'm a player that's not been playing for the last seven months and I think I'm leaving

in four weeks time I'm probably going to struggle to motivate that player you know I'm not I haven't got a magic wand to motivate that player so I think it was that probably

my biggest learning out of Chelsea was when you talk about standards and culture I think people go he talks about biggest learning out of Chelsea was when you talk about standards and culture I think people go he talks about his standards you know he talks about his culture

and I maybe had to catch myself on and not say it every interview but at the same time it was if you don't have a building block of standards then that winning culture

that everyone goes what's winning culture you go well let me I'll try and explain it to you but it has to start with a basic standard and which for me

is always like train to a level where you're going to push your team mate he's going to push you and then we're going to be as competitive as it can be I'll try and explain it to you, but it has to start with a basic standard. And which for me is always like train to a level where you're going to push your teammate, he's going to push you, and then we're going to be as competitive as it can be. We don't have to win.

Not every team can win. You know, this Manchester City pretty much win the league every year at the minute. So what's success for everybody else? For Brighton, it's come in sixth or whatever. For Newcastle, it's like, wow, Champions League,

that's huge success. So everyone has a version, but my guess is those teams that have over performed outperformed they've got something there which is a basic standard that they just build on and you know to be fair to Chelsea they're in a position now where that's needs to be worked on again it's a transitional time that brings me to the quote you said after your Newcastle game which was the standards collectively have dropped I can be honest now um because it's your last game I

might not see them for some time anymore. But low standards are a symptom of something further upstream that's happened. And we saw this at Manchester United. I'm a big Man United fan. I've seen a decade, five years of just like chaos where we've got these amazing players, but one plus one equals 1.5. We call it diseconomies of scale. In great culture, one plus one equals three you

know where you can make great average players together play yeah amazing the football of their lives the furthest upstream thing where did the standard start to slip what is the thing that happens in a club like chelsea in your experience when you went back there that had caused that dropping of standards which we now saw on the pitch with your sort of 10 games there well i think um when i was tongue-in-cheek, by the way, when I said I'm not going to see them again, because it was a bit like, as I say, I wouldn't say I hadn't said it to them,

and I've said it a few times, but the position of it was that, and I think the biggest thing about the standards thing was the size of the squad. It was the motivation of players that you're going to not play or you're out of the champions league squad or these things like it's it's like asking you know one of you i don't know you maybe love doing this this is like one of your great moments i want to sit and you want to speak to all these fantastic people that you speak to go thanks for your prep steve and now peter jones is going to do

it cheers you know how long are you going to go with that? And I think in football, that's a challenge with 20 or so players, which is the modern squad. But with Chelsea, it's got very big to the point where, this is how I felt, where I can say, you know, I'm not criticising that player

for dropping standards. I want to try and get something out of him because I had a short period. I want to try and get something out of him. So I would try. But then when you actually look at it, you kind of go, yeah, but he's had this for a long time where he's not

playing so he's not now being competitive with that player who is playing so that player's pretty comfortable too because he's not pushing him so you kind of get this thing where you're like you know we probably took it for granted in some of my better days at Chelsea when we were successful of like this kind of thing that works you know it wasn't even a thing you said you know you didn't have to sort of have a meeting every day and go you know one of those standards culture you know nice pie chart and that's what that is it was almost like this is what we do and at the minute sometimes for whatever reason there's a transition of maybe new ownership you know not everything was perfect before the new ownership I was there before the new ownership as well like to find

consistency as Chelsea would really want of winning Premier League titles and challenging has been a good few years now so I think that getting the squad right um being able probably a fresh voice as a manager coming in now who's obviously a fantastic manager with a great record to come in and go no this is the way and now the squad looks compact you're going to compete with each other and try and create a great environment everyone needs a great environment to have success you know you cannot have a success without team spirit and togetherness. So when I got there, I could just see that the spirit and the togetherness was not there. And it was nothing bad.

You know, like it was not bad to go through the week. I could just see like you have to train elite to be elite. You have to. And that's not, you know, in the modern day, players play every few days sometimes. When I say that, it's not like show me how many sprints you can do every day. It's like, okay, if we're doing prep tomorrow, give me that intensity of thought

about what this is for you. And let me see it in your face. But in a Chelsea, when you did that, you had to go, right, if I want to really focus on the 10 or 11 for tomorrow, that means I've got to have like 18 players over there. And you kind of saw the body language as they walked off some of them,

that they were like, again, because they've been having it all season, some of so I on a human level I completely understood and in the end it was like I came back here because obviously this was an opportunity to come to my club you know Chelsea a club close to my heart but as soon as I got in I realized that probably I thought you know what 30 players I can motivate in six seven weeks because it's not like a long-term thing I can come in and be fresh but in terms of what, 30 players, I can motivate in six, seven weeks because it's not like a long-term thing. I can come in and be fresh. But in terms of when I came in, I noticed very quickly that some players are probably thinking about this season's going to peter out and what's the future going to look like.

And that was a difficult situation. It never crossed my mind that the size of the squad has such a big impact, but it makes perfect sense because you need that sort of healthy competition. And I believe your first team impact, but it makes perfect sense because you need that sort of healthy competition. And I believe your first team was, was it 32 players? Yeah. Which is more than you're allowed to register for the Premier League or Champions League.

So you had this kind of surplus of... A lot of players. A few are always injured probably, so that comes down a bit, but it's a surplus and it's a surplus of... The makeup of the squad is international players generally because if there were a couple of young players but when you try and build a squad it would be like this

is you know this is my core kind of 15 or 16 and then you go and maybe these these two experienced players that might need to play everywhere and then we've got these kids that are waiting and they're like just happy to be there they want to play they're going to be training and if you give them an opportunity they'll be like but when you have like international players in a big number then of course you know you're telling internationals you've got to stay at home it's not it's not easy and you know to to have the conversation every friday with them and get them lined up coming in is also not easy for your own energy you know i mean so i that's not easy i don't care how what kind of a man manager you are like it's like next you're not playing okay next you're not playing you know like whatever however you try and box that up to a player

eventually they'll probably go i know i'm not playing you know like stop telling me this shit do you know what i mean so i think you know that that was an interesting learning curve for me like an interim job is is what it is um and i kept getting asked you know people it was kind of frustrating me at times like are you finding this so hard? Are you finding this so hard? I was like, you know what? I'm back home in a club

that I love, you know, a fantastic training ground. I'm doing everything I can in this job to try and improve it. But there were, I knew behind the scenes

there were a lot of things, you know, myself and my staff, we want to improve. We want to coach. We want to sort of, when you lack those basics and as I say,

I think there's an understanding in the club that it has to change now. I think it has to change. Then if you lack those basics, then it's really hard to get where you want to get to. How does that happen though? So there's these 32 players and then Chelsea spends more money than I think anyone's ever spent in a window, in that sort of January window.

You bring in all of these players on these long contracts, which I've never heard before. I think it was like eight year contracts and they're all like class amazing individual players um is that a is that because the the new owner doesn't understand those dynamics of football because that's what it seemed like for me I thought either this is a genius or an idiot yeah Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't want to criticize anyone like on a personal level, but as a fan looking and I go signing these players on eight year contracts,

they're great players spending all this money, the impact on culture when you just throw stars in at such quantity. Yeah. It looked, it looked like inexperience and naivety. I think that's, that's understood now in terms of what it's meant with those 30 players. And I think that's understood now in terms of what it's meant

with those 30 players. And I think you've seen that now and already I think six, seven, eight players have left. So I think the intentions are certainly good. I know that because I work, the owners gave me an opportunity

to go in there and I had a good relationship with them. Their intentions to do a good job at Chelsea are amazing. They want to take the club and be the best. You know, they have great intentions. So now I think those younger players,

now with a new voice, a new manager, the squad coming tighter, I think they'll have a greater chance to show what they've got anyway. And they're talented players. And, you know, I remember being in Chelsea when Eden Hazard arrived. In pre-season, it was like,

is this kid, he was a bit lazy looking, you know, he was a bit kind of strolling around. Is this kid definitely alright? And then that first season, it was like is this kid he was a bit lazy looking you know he was a bit kind of strolling around is this kid definitely and then that first season it was like I know he's really good and then on the second and third season

he's like no this kid's one of the best players the Premier League's seen or whatever Thierry Henry Didier Drogba you can go through all these players

who are like absolute legends now if you're asking you know those five, six, seven players to come in and hit a ground running in a difficult moment

for the club it's understandable so I think as a Chelsea fan you know you look at it and kind of go right those five, six, seven players to come in and hit the ground running in a difficult moment for the club. It's understandable. So I think as a Chelsea fan, you look at it and kind of go, right, okay, that is positive. There's talent there. It needs to be worked with. Now I'm sure that you can see the squad's getting trimmed.

And as I can say, hand on heart, the intentions of the owners is absolutely, they've spent that money because they want to do well. Now, if they're going to address the situation a bit, that's their strategy going forward but i do think you know you'll see players like enzo fernandez mudrick and these players uh maduiki young players they're going to develop and they're going to be big players for the club they do they they you have to get the structure right and strategy right going forward what's a my thing is that adding like i don't know six or seven of these players all at once, pretty much halfway through the season in a squad that's already struggling to figure out who it is

under Graham Potter, it begs the question, like who's doing the recruitment here? Because at other clubs, it's a much more strategic, it seems like a much more strategic and intentional and football driven approach to recruitment. Whereas from what i saw at chelsea and i have actually spoken to some people at chelsea who are involved in recruitment it seemed like chaos yeah i mean i wasn't there for that period right so that was in i got there in

april and like january was the last window and obviously they spent last summer but i think the the change of ownership and then obviously some people moved on who were in the hierarchy of the club and so there was changes. So there was a big change of structure. So I think you have to give some time and some leeway for the process. And there certainly now are sporting directors and recruitment people in there having worked with them who are very talented, very hungry, you know, good to go. And I think now it will be up to them to take the club forward.

They haven't signed bad players. I think maybe the strategy of bringing them all in at that time, you know, looks a bit excitable at the minute as in terms of there's a lot of players for success. But I think probably there's a long game and I think there's a plan. And I think probably most huge clubs like Chelsea have had a version of what this period is Manchester United you mentioned their Arsenal for quite a long time Liverpool for periods you know so I think um we have to give definitely I think to to over judge now when I think they have signed some good players would be to to be over critical I think

at the moment I think that the proof will be now how these players develop. Once now, it feels a bit more settled going forward. I think that's all true. I think, what's the optimal way for player recruitment to happen in your opinion? Because you often hear about these stories of where an owner will take charge of a club and then they'll just decide who they want, which is probably what I'd be like if I was an owner.

I think I would, like football manager, I think I just buy who I want to buy, who I think looks good. Manchester United suffered with that. It felt like our decisions were commercial decisions as opposed to

footballing decisions. Then when Eric Tenhag's come in, it feels a bit more like it's football decisions. In your opinion, and then I did speak to some people at Chelsea because I actually went to,

I was invited to sit with Richard Arnold and a couple of the Manchester United executives when we played Chelsea at Old Trafford I was in the director's box okay so I sat with the like sport the new sporting director at Chelsea yeah um and he said there's now two sporting directors I believe yeah um so it's interesting to talk to them um but what is the about the optimal way for recruitment to

happen in your opinion well I think um with a with think you have to understand what you want the philosophy and the identity of the club to be. So for instance, I think Manchester City are quite firm in the idea when Pep Guardiola has come in and the sporting directors have worked at Barcelona previously with him, that this is how we want to play.

This is a manager that's going to deliver that style. So here's how we recruit for that style. Chelsea has always been a bit different for me the beautiful game that the tick attack as you call it Man City has not been Chelsea style it's been more of a winning machine in a different kind of way you know that in my day was more of a powerful team that was probably were good on the eye but we were not that kind of you know pass pass pass we were like powerful and effective so I think you have to understand what you want to be and once you get to that point you probably the first thing is to recruit a coach that you know works within that and you know that's the kind of coach you want because this is what to

be those conversations are an interview process and then once you get to that point i think the recruitment has to be joined up depending on how active the owner wants to be and i i i respect and appreciate active owners, it's their clubs, their prerogative. And then the sporting directors and the manager. And then obviously recruitment, which brings all the data analysis into the picture. And it has to be joined up

and you have to be all very confident by the time you want to bring in a player that you're going, yeah, this is the player we want to bring in. There are always one or two or three options because you may not get target number one. But I think you have to be able to recruit for the style that you want to bring in there are always one or two or three options because you may not get target number one but i think you have to be able to recruit for the style that you want to be so the coach really has to have a big buy-in to that as well but you as a coach in the modern day you

understand the process i appreciate being aligned and having other people not just responsible for who you're bringing in but also like giving me something that i don't know i'm not there siphon through the data you know they have to show you that data and here's the reasons why the videos people that watched them and also the personality of the player because you're not not to say you're going to sign you know 10 James Milner's because their character is amazing and their professionalism but you need to know that they're going to come in and the dressing room is going to they're going to be good for the dressing room and they're going to help in terms of how you drive forward in terms of their personality one of the one of the key questions i want to answer and i wanted to ask you today is like how would you have what would have had to happen to avoid

the situation where you had that unhealthy culture at chelsea behind the scenes and those when you came back in as the interim what would have what could you have done to avoid that happening say you're in the you know know, if you were, if you could in hindsight have a wand and correct things that were done, I get the first point, which was about smaller squad size. What else? What else avoids that? Mate, from my, from my first day in there.

You're, you're, you're a, a genie. And you can, knowing what you know about what you inherited there, what would have had to be done previously to avoid you inheriting that? Smaller squad is the first thing that I got. Yeah, smaller squad. I mean, some things are just a bit, you know, like there are phases, you know, and I think Chelsea, they won the Champions League. I left, they won the Champions League like three or four months after I left.

And at that point you kind of go okay where's the next move and you kind of go how was recruitment then what things worked then and maybe some players left

during that period maybe in terms of recruitment you wanted to bring in maybe some people would be like the future in terms of when I was at Chelsea

before I wanted to bring in Declan Rice I was like this kid's going to be the captain of Chelsea for the next, you know, 10 years. It didn't happen, but anyway. But I think in terms of those things,

it's hard for me to sit here and kind of dissect, you know, other people's work in that period in between. You know, like I would have maybe had an idea. It wasn't my idea because I'd already left the club. So maybe like when I came in, it's not, it's really hard for me to kind of dissect all those moves you know i came into what i came into so you know that's i think it'd probably be a little bit casual for me to kind of go they should have done this you know like yeah it's a hindsight

one that's yeah it's kind of me wondering just because i've been a man united fan and i've seen that happen and i saw obviously sir alex ferguson leave and then we just had these 10 years of what i describe as like confused chaos and i'm trying to figure out almost like how in a Sir Alex Ferguson situation how he we could have avoided that if at all possible yeah I mean it's such a big figure that's difficult isn't it I agree I don't know enough about Manchester United but I do I can understand why after Sir Alex leaving and also some pivotal players will probably come into the end of their time at the same time as him leaving to replace

that and keep moving forward. There might have been mistakes and it's not my thing but I can understand why. It feels like a

long period for a club the size of Manchester United but it just shows you that I think how cutthroat and fast moving this Premier League is

because if you come off the gas in terms of recruitment or whatever or you have a bad time climbing back up there people think oh yeah you know Chelsea will be in the Champions League terms of recruitment or whatever or you have a bad time climbing back up there people think oh yeah

Chelsea will be in the Champions League again next year or Arsenal you'll be there like Arsenal had to work a long time to come back

and challenge for the league last year with a lot of work and you know people were criticising Mike Michalateta in the beginning and now you know

they've worked together and stuck together and recruited really well and now they're ready to go so I mean it's not I don't think we should expect, even you being a Manchester United fan or me having a Chelsea head on that, next year it's going to be great.

Like it's, everyone else is moving forward too. You know? When you get that call, the interim call, you've just left Everton. Yeah. You're out of work. Graham Potter's been released from his responsibilities. What's going through your head when they say,

we want you to come back in and take an interim manager role? If I was a fly on the wall when that phone call happens. You nearly were. Yeah, I was. We were going to do this. So, yeah, I mean. I wasn't going to tell the story, no i could tell it for you i was coming to meet you and i rang you to say sorry i'm going to become chelsea manager that that meeting they

you know people arrived at my house that afternoon so well just to be clear you didn't tell me that exactly you said i can't come and i can't tell you why then i told you after yeah but i'm not an idiot so i kind of inferred maybe. Okay. So anyway, I mean, no, I think probably that it's normal that I consider everything. And, you know, I probably considered it as in, firstly, it's a club very close to my heart, as I said before. A challenge of working. And it was like we had two games against Real Madrid and we had the season to pan out. It was a difficult run and so I was fully aware of that. And I don't know,

maybe like, you know, I do love a challenge. If that challenge had been probably any other club other than Chelsea, I probably would have said no. I was very happy to be at home as such in that period. I wasn't fighting to get a job at that period. So it was probably a bit of head and heart.

I'm not sure what probably, heart probably was a bit more substantial in this one than the head because I suppose if you look back again, we're in that hindsight position, but what were my positive outcomes? What were my negative ones? The minute we didn't get through against Real Madrid,

which probably a lot of people would have bet on, you're kind of into that zone of end of season and what are you playing for as a club like Chelsea? And that's not the norm at Chelsea. You should be playing for something. And in the end, we played for not so much. And of course, another reason why motivation come down. So I probably could have been a bit more ahead of the game in that,

whether that would have changed my mind. I don't have a regret about doing it. I went back there. If people from the outside want to, you know, criticise or have a view on it from the outside for six or seven weeks work. I've got no problem with that. I worked at Chelsea before. I worked at other clubs.

And, you know, it's another experience. It wasn't my most favourite experience in my footballing career. I won't lie, but it's an experience. And I have learnt out of it. Not so much, but I've mentioned a few of the things. Not your favourite experience. Did you enjoy it, to be honest? I enjoyed the first few weeks i felt like i was back at cobham i know so many people there i was

like into the challenge in the middle bit i probably started to understand more that there's there's a lack of you know what we've spoken about um and then in the last week we had man city away ventures united away in newcastle at home as i run in and i was like okay let's get through this week spoken about and then in the last week we had Man City away Manchester United away and Newcastle at home as they were running and I was like okay let's get through this week

because I could see that the players were ready for the season to finish you know again some of it I got on a human level Does that not hurt you

to some degree because you love this club so much and you're a winner and if you see these players have checked out you know it's not just they're

checking out on you as a manager but they're checking out on the club that you love yeah as a general as a general it didn't hurt me because having worked in football for a period having been a player a long time i've seen a lot of these instances and i'm not holding the players to my standard as such and and a lot of them i did know the backstory and the side stories i could get that they were moving on. So, you know, if a player's moving on,

they might just not, you know, they might not be ready for those last few games. They might have a bit of an issue or something. But there's no way that you can accept that.

No, but, well, put it this way. I don't want to come here and shout too much because in a short period, it's hard for me to make too many statements. What I will say is that

I think I understood the role of being interim and I understood that probably there was not much, there's certainly not much to gain from me saying, oh, that was so bad or that was so bad now. Because when I look back, I'll probably just try and take my own thing out of it. And I don't want to go there. I didn't work long enough with the players to be there the one going,

and I can't believe that happened at the end of the season you know I walked into a position where some of them were a bit disenchanted or whatever and I'm not going to tell that player that you

shouldn't feel like this I'll try and drive them and drive them amongst the group but it's not for me to go because a lot of players a couple of players sat with me and said

listen I'm going to be leaving in the summer I'm finding it a bit difficult I'm like okay I get that I'm not going to change that in four weeks or whatever so

so what was the objective then in the four weeks when in four weeks or whatever so no so what was the objective then in the in the four weeks when you're thinking about when you realize that what was the sort of behind the scenes context do your objective shifts and shifts slightly and go okay success here looks now looks like this for me yeah in reality and i didn't get that because it would be results you know because everyone would um would judge me on results so in terms of me it would be success here would to have got better results in that period of time and come through there working at a high level club again you know it's it's extreme pressures it's the media it's the players it's everything is trying to get results

in games and in some games we competed against Real Madrid we competed against Manchester City we competed but you know that wasn't to be but that was my version of success but you know football is not that simple you know so many journalists ask you after if you you kind of like regret taking the job and your answer has always been like no because I've learned a lot it's your club it's Chelsea um however had you known the context and this is only something we can know in hindsight we can't know it in foresight if there was some magic genie that could have shown you the context the behind the scenes the dynamics the 32 players the culture honestly do you think you would have made a different decision because i think i would have

yeah but we don't have hindsight obviously we it's a magical thing that yeah but i think probably and you and you, and you might think I'm wrong for saying this, but you, you would probably be taking some emotion out of it from my point. And also just how I am about the challenge of going into that. So if you say, all right,

all the context is here, Frank, but you're not going to know what the results are yet, but here's all the context. You know, this player is disenchanted. I kind of knew that. This is how it's working.

I'm not, I would be like, okay, this is what I've got to work with can i get results and whether i was um misguided in my own thoughts i probably would have gone yeah i would do that if i've got to be honest it's too easy for me to say i wouldn't have done it for that and and nobody gave me that what you said i mean if you had that in an ideal world i understand what you're saying and again that's why people might look at i don't i generally don't have a problem with you know someone how i would possibly have a view from the outside and someone

doing what i did i don't think it's like changed the world i think my i played for 13 years at chelsea i coached them before in the champions league for two years on the truck like i don't think that whether people want to review me i don't worry about that i went back for that challenge of that period and you know we didn't get the results I wanted I know a lot of the reasons why I'll take the responsibility for my reasons why and that was it

you know I don't have a big issue with it it's like because it's Chelsea it's so topical you manage Chelsea it's one of the biggest

clubs in the world and it's one of the clubs that takes so much especially in the Roman Abramovich so much interest because there's a turnover you know

lose one or two games and it's like ooh what's happening here so you know it's I'm big enough and here so you know it's uh i'm big enough and strong enough to handle that stuff so you would have having seen the context you would have backed yourself regardless i don't know regardless that sounds like i'm thinking i'm

some superman that turned out not to be superman you know i mean i don't i don't i don't know you're asking me so hypothetical the so hypothetical. The season ends eventually. Relief? Relieved in any way? How do you feel it ends? The last, as I said, the last couple of weeks were quite tough because it was seeing out a season. That's not, for someone like me

and for a club like Chelsea, it's not a nice place to be. I want to challenge the things and that's not nice. So relief probably, yeah, because I knew it would end and it ended and it wasn't that nice a time. Time to have holidays that I'd planned before, yeah, for sure.

And time to reflect. And I haven't got a huge amount of reflections on it. You know, a lot of people have, but I haven't. I've got more reflections on the year at Everton and 18 months at Chelsea before and Derby. This period was so abstract in a way for me. That interim role was so different that I can't put it into a context of like i wish i'd gone on a meeting on day one if i'd have done a meeting about culture i think

they would it would have changed like i don't know it wouldn't have changed you know if my tactics were slightly different in that game i don't believe it would have changed and me overthink i would definitely think that if it was there so you know i might be right or wrong but so i don't so relief and a feeling of like i wish that had gone better you know like that's human nature you know I wanted it to be better because I'm Chelsea person you know the Chelsea fans are fantastic with me in this modern world I'm not saying flick online you'll find everyone fantastic but in terms of Stamford Bridge I think there's an understanding at the moment the club's not where it wants to be and Chelsea fans actually pretty good with that there's some other clubs that would be like we lost at home to Brentford 2-0 and like there'll be some clubs that would be fans that would be a bit more vocal they were actually pretty good with that. There's some other clubs that would be like, we lost at home to Brentford 2-0 and there'll be some clubs that would be fans

that would be a bit more vocal. They were actually pretty good. I think they're waiting to see something better this year, but they've also, Chelsea fans watch the team in the second division in the 80s and seen some struggles over the years, you know, the older fan. And so I do think that the success

that they've enjoyed as a club for these 20 years or so, there's a real appreciation of it, and they don't want it to go on forever, but I do think they understand it's a difficult moment. I certainly felt that at Stamford Bridge. Yeah, they were super. They were chanting your name even at Old Trafford when I was there,

even though the scoreline wasn't great, and I actually do think that the Chelsea fans have understood that the new ownership, what you said, to their intentions are good, and I think they can respect. They've brought brought really good players there's a transitional moment but I think they they will appreciate that um all of that stuff all of that noise online Christine you family you mentioned scrolling online how does one keep those two worlds apart so that you can focus on your job without letting the outside world in too much what is

have you got a strategy which you're i don't scroll too much you don't scroll no scroll at all very very occasionally do you have the apps the social networking apps of instagram right yeah which i'm not i have an instagram page but i'm not very active on it's just not really me um so i don't really i scroll for like nosiness you know what's everyone up to and you know a few friends and stuff or whatever um but i don't actively do it because i don't have the time to do it in terms of myself it's just not something i don't know anyone else wants to show themselves you know sunbathing or in the gym like that's their prerogative i've got no problem with that i just it's for me it's just not something i do and then to that's a nice line

i'm quite a boxer in my life when i said that i mean i box off things and when i want to box off i don't want to hear that um that you know what some fan and so-and-so is going to say about me here and flick on the comments from a chelsea post i would just flick by that i try and stay aware of media because i think it's i do press conferences every four days you have to understand what the tone is of what maybe people are writing about you or you know the journalists how do you do how do how do you do that have you got like a someone that comes and briefs you in the morning yeah and they tell you what you need to know yeah uh okay yeah yes and i would i would tap into a

bit in the week whether i'm flicking on certain websites through the week and i wouldn't obviously go in as i said into the story into the comments i will kind of go into because you've got to be across things i would do that but i think it's very unhealthy to to scroll like i found that as a player my playing career missed out the social media came in towards the end and i'm so thankful that we used to just have the newspapers given us like three out of ten when we played for england and we got knocked out of the world cup right and that was hard looking at the paper to see what they gave you and that was the version of that and then the social media so i i don't envy the the modern player as a manager i think it's a bit different i'm not in a place where i scroll so i don't envy these younger players men and women now

that are coming through and have sort of household names and it's getting so much attention and so much of it's negative i think it's incredible that we've got to that stage that there's a that amount of hate for but it's so easy to be hateful um and my my my i would try and say to the young players don't look at it but the minute the game finishes they're flicking and it's it's difficult in your professional career what what has been what do you kind of count down as the hardest moment in terms of scrutiny in your professional and like your playing career and your managerial career what is what has been that the hardest moment for you playing for england really yeah 2006 the 2006 world cup i think i had broke the record for shots at goal without scoring classic wasn't there a disallowed one

that should have gone in that That was in 2010. Okay. So 2006, I think I had like 32 shots or something. I went in as England player of the year. I'd had a year or two playing for England.

So I'd got myself in there and was becoming, you know, you know, a fixture in the team. And then I went there having scored some goals in the lead up,

scoring at Chelsea and just had a tournament and it wouldn't go in for me. And then that played on my mind in games. I was like second guessing myself a little bit in the game. And probably off the back of that, there's a lot of criticism for myself,

for some others. I remember us Chelsea boys getting a lot of criticism for the next six months, every away game that we went to, it was like, you let your country down. It's the song. How does that compare to being a manager in terms of criticism? I found it harder as a a player i don't know whether it's just maturity

um because uh as a player i don't know maybe it's in my 20s um i found it harder as a manager i think it's a it's a different version of criticism and um i think as a player you i don't know why i found it harder. If I'm a fly on the wall after a bad defeat, what do I see? You probably see a bit of a face, you know, and a going over the situation kind of face. And it's different. I have certain games that they will affect you,

and it might not be the one you'd expect. You know, the Manchester United, you talked about that, we lost 4-1, was it? That one might be different because I kind of know where we're at this season's petering out you know we played some good stuff whatever and there might be another game that you know we lost and it really affected me because maybe think something i did or should have done or a substitution so on those bad ones you would see the face and you know like i would you know i kind of go into my show i was like i'm soaking in my bedroom i'm a big big boy you know um but you know, I kind of go into my show, it's not like I'm sulking in my bedroom. I'm a big boy, you know. But, you know, maybe have a glass of wine,

chew on it, don't get to bed till quite late. And then you have to go again. You know, like it's a great sort of adage that people go, you learn more from defeat. You don't feel like that straight away, but you have to be big enough to go over the game again. What's the strategy now? What's the solution to that?

What did we do wrong? And that's what it is. You can't't get too down but we're all human when you were um 29 years old um one such moment occurred in your life that really i think from your own words tested you at a much deeper level you described yourself as being a zombie for a year after the passing of your mother she died at 58 years old um while you were playing and while you were playing at the very very highest level that for me struck when i was reading through the way you described that moment in your life struck me as a real sort of destabilizing moment in terms of focus and all of those things the question that i um the question that i had is how as a player

when you're playing at the highest level and you have something like that happen how do you show up and maintain those standards and be Frank Lampard that's probably what I meant when I said zombie because it became autopilot and I think um when you talk about mental health that's the one time that I've been challenged to the extreme with it and you know a lot of people go through this and that was the really interesting thing i found because i have some perspective now these years later is that when it happens to you and it's unexpected it's very sudden for me you you've never thought about that kind of thing happening before the only thing i'll say is this i was i was a mummy's boy as i've said before so i I used to have these weird moments.

I don't know if you had them. I had them sometimes when I think about death and I kind of go, oh God, when you die, there's nothing. And I have those moments and it hits me in the stomach for about like four seconds. I'm driving along and I'm like, there's nothing. There's absolutely nothing. And then you go, oh, don't worry, you've got to go to work.

You know, and life carries on. And I used to have that with my mum. I don't know if it was probably reliance I had on her. She was like, I was so like mummy's boy, you know, growing growing up but i remember as i got a little bit older like to my teens and i was like i imagine mum wasn't there for a moment there's a panic for like 10 seconds i remember them and then because i was 29 as you say and it was very sudden i was at in a hotel um that we used to stay at pre-game we were playing wiggin on in the evening at home i got a call from my sister telling me that she'd fell ill

and then so i kind of okay let's go into hospital okay that's a bit dangerous so i went to sleep i didn't sleep supposedly would sleep i was kind of laying there a bit like tossing and i couldn't get off i'm angsty i've got another call and as we get on the bus to go to stanford bridge is like two a mile i get the call that no no she's getting much worse so I'm like right I'm in I'm in frank I'm a sportsman go and do your job mode and then I just kind of broke a bit on the coach kind of well I mean I felt myself go gray and someone said to me I said you ain't gray but I felt myself go like anyway got to the stadium said to the manager manager this is what's happening and he was like go so i was like in my tracksuit

drive over to east london mum's in hospital so when i get there mum's now in the on the verge of going into intensive care so she's got the stuff on and stuff and i walk in i'm in my tracksuit and my mum had the oxygen mask on and she hadn't been speaking she'd so she's taken really ill in a day and she lifted a mask and said to me, what are you doing here? I'm in my Chelsea tracksuit. And I didn't know what to say because I didn't want to go, you know, I'm here because this is a really bad situation. I'm just here to see you, mum, you know, and then sort of put the mask back on.

And then they kind of wheeled her in. She held my hand, which I'll never forget. And then she went in and was put into intensive care. So that was a one-week process of my mum in intensive care. So she started to get better. And then a few of the family would kind of get, not excited about it, but it was like, that's progress. You know, mum's out.

She'd been on every machine possible. And I'm still having to think about going into work. I can't remember if I trained in that period. I can't remember that week. It's like a blur. I just remember being at home a lot, you know, really, you know, in a bad way. And then we had Champions League games

coming up against Liverpool. I played one away. I came back, mum was getting a bit better. And then we got the phone call that she'd passed away. She had a brain hemorrhage. But just as she was getting better, everyone was excited. She passed away there and then. So was like the the biggest devastation i can't explain and as i say years

later i realized that this happens to so many other people and when you're a young man who hadn't really lost anyone you don't have that real feeling of what that is and i lost a person that was the closest person to me you know everything to me and i'll never forget the feeling of my stomach if i talk about i get it instantly again um and um i lost you know what was my best friend the person that had given me all that kind of emotional stuff i've spoken about the warmth and the the sudden feeling that someone's not going to be with you like it doesn't compare to anything when you're that close um so you know in terms of work after that, probably some of it, if I look back, I'll probably go, maybe I should have just come out of it.

Like life is bigger than that. But it was like my, probably a tiny coping mechanism for me. We played a game against Liverpool, the second leg, and I scored a penalty. We won the game. Now we're getting sent to the Champions League final. And I remember sitting in the dressing room afterwards and I had this almighty um like sense of fatigue and you know body and mental

fatigue uh and i went home and sort of opened a beer and i couldn't even drink it i went to bed and it was like it's like everything came out of me then of like a week or two a full blast of of this pain you know it's this complete pain and then you lose your best friend and the person that you know i've still got a number in my phone and i've still got a couple of voice note things we were never a big family for videos and stuff and i wish we were um the only thing i have is my mom's sister is sandra sandra redknapp harry redknapp's wife and every time i speak to sandra i hear my mom they look very similar they sound very similar and it's like in the first

period it was painful now it's kind of nice you know because that's a memory for me but the the you know it's the the feeling of grief you know i it catches up with me now and again many years later i think i probably had a year um i was single i was like probably drinking a little bit i was playing fantastic football a really good year of football. It was weird. And then I met Christine and thank God Christine came along around that time because I was a little bit, you know, not right in that period. So it was a really, obviously, you know, anybody who loses, someone's too close to them.

But she was so big in my life and was such a balance in my life. And then, you know that sudden thing is just terrible did you process that because it sounds like because you had football commitments back to back to back that there wasn't really an opportunity to like sit and yeah i don't know i mean i've been through the experience and um that zombie thing i talk about is like i i couldn't comprehend it I felt empty and weak but I had a job to do and the job was so second I certainly wasn't trying to be a hero I just didn't know what if I think if I'd have laid around all day I would have really taken more of a hit it was

almost like getting up and going to work in that period and having something to aim for was just almost like that's what I should do and then I definitely took the hit later on for that I definitely took a kind of deferred moments of grief and I talk about them like I say there it could be anything that would be um a couple of glasses of wine and something said at a dinner table a moment of someone else and I feel bad about this talking about their mother or something you know and they're talking glowingly about their mother and and and you kind of get hit you know um or another parent's birthday like crazy things i've

got no right to be upset about if you know i mean but it just hits me and you kind of and i that sort of get on with it like hard nose get on with son, kind of feel, which has stuck with me. That was the one time I remember being absolutely broken and tested on that because I had no, and I got some anger as well. I remember having road rage a couple of times, literally the few days after I pulled out of my drive. And it was a Chelsea game. So I wasn't playing it because of what had happened,

but I was at home and I was driving to go and see my sister or something. Someone sort of drove across me and I got out of the car and I went for them and it was a Chelsea fan. He went, Frank, calm down. I was like, yeah, sorry. And I had these moments of anger in a period afterwards. It would just come out of me out of nowhere. I wouldn't say that they've stuck with me from now, but it definitely changed me as a person.

I don't know how to explain it, but it definitely made me have a different take on things and be a bit more, I don't know if ruthless is the word, but more, you know that thing about kind of like cutting out some people that were in your life that you maybe would have got on with i just kind of took a little bit more of a direct approach in my life after that amongst some serious moments of grief within it you know it's uh it was just it's a tough time the the only benefit it sounds really whooped i said this to someone the other. The only benefit, it sounds really warped.

I said this to someone the other day. The only benefit is that now, you know, I don't have to go through that again. That sounds really strange. It was such a tough period for me that the only thing now and I see, you know,

Christine's family are there and other people around me have friends and family and I miss my mum so much, like every day. And as time goes by, of course, things balance out. But I can't envisage ever going through that pain again about what I did because my mum so much, like every day. And as time goes by, of course, things balance out.

But I can't envisage ever going through that pain again about what I did because my mum was the only person. Now Christine is obviously that person in my life and my children, of course. But in terms of what she meant to me at that time, the only thing is I can go, that is so painful. I really couldn't go through that again now. It's a weird way of looking at it. And I hope that doesn't sound strange.

It's just processing it was too difficult. And it's almost like, it was almost like a dream. My life was never supposed to be like that in my head. You know, my mum was 58 and I felt like she was quite old. And now I start doing the maths and I'm 44. You know, like, and you kind of go, it wasn't old. You know, like I was 29 and mum felt a bit older at a point. Now it's like, she should be mid seventies now. And, you know you know as i said the sudden nature of it meant you couldn't speak to her

as well which was like as i've got older i've realized that my mum would have known exactly how i felt about her but at the time it was like i want to say something more you know i couldn't you want to say something more just like thank you do you know i mean like thanks to um for being the balance for being the one um who you know in those tough moments when my dad was being harsh or something there for being the one that would when i was crying in the bath after a game and coming and knocking on the door it's like for making me food you know things a great mother does she just was that you know my mum was there to sort of it might be sound old school now but she was a hairdresser by trade who then became a house wife and a mother and you know for everything that has gone on in my family life and lots of

things have she was always the one that was like the real stand-up one I look back now I understand it even more that she had the ethics and everything about her and And then I would love to just be able to say that. You know, it's like those, you know, an emotional song can get you going. It's like, can I speak to her one more time to say, here's a monologue for you, you know, like just to hear it. But with time, I definitely have got more strength in the fact that she knew that.

And that's it. And when everyone I speak to says that you are that class act you are the you're kind you're empathetic and all of that now i know where that's come that comes from now no i don't know listen i i knew you were going to ask me this because i've seen you you know it wouldn't you know it's part of my story and i didn't want to cry i'm surprised i haven't um but because i've cried probably enough at different times um but it's um it's almost something like it is strangely therapeutic to speak about it and this is very public and that's not normally how i am i'm very private our lives christian are very private it's how we like to live and sometimes when those moments where i

say they're really grief-stricken moments over a glass of wine i kind of feel better after them because that's probably why i held in when i was like hitting that penalty and and people giving you huge plot i remember you scored that penalty when your mama just died as if it was like a hero moment it wasn't it was me just kind of going i gotta try and do this and and and do my job and then these moments now sometimes are quite therapeutic if i'm honest but it's uh know, especially for other people that have gone through that and much worse, you know, a lot of worse things can happen in different ways. But until you feel that loss, you know, I actually remember thinking when I lost mum, it was like a couple of my friends lost their parents

when they were younger. And I remember then thinking, I've never really broached that subject with them. You know, a couple of my friends are like 14 and lost. I met at school at that age who had already lost their parent or were in the process. And I never really kind of went. And they were like 14. I was 29.

And I'd never even thought about it. But, you know, you kind of go, oh, sorry, mate. And then you move on. And you go, imagine what's, you know, all the things. And I had to process it at 29. It's slightly different. But those things, so, you know, life kicks you sometimes. And that was the biggest kick I think I've had to this it at 29, it's slightly different. But those things, so life kicks you sometimes. And that was the biggest kick I think I've had to this point,

and hopefully for a long time. Do you talk about your emotions with Christine? Yeah, I do. I do. I think I'm quite good about that. She will say to me sometimes I'm quite closed to that stuff. And then that kind of kicks me into talking about it because yeah my girlfriend's really good at that yeah annoyingly good yeah no they're really good

and i don't mind she sees me going into the zone kind of thing sometimes and she's like what's bothering you i go well it's this you know it's probably something that's irrelevant or something but is that the first answer you'll give because mine's usually nothing yeah i'll do that no i definitely do that too. Because no one opens the box. No, no, it's true. But it's good. I think it's,

I definitely want to come across as this, you know, like I said, like this get on with it thing. It's certainly not me. I look at myself as being, you know, the balance again of my mother was that when she gave me that kind of empathy. I associate all the empathy with my mother that I had because that's how she was always with me.

So when I, you know, it's just I also have a mechanism that kind of keeps it there. But it's definitely inside. And, you know, maybe children also help with that. Because when you see your child and their smiles and their sort of innocent nature and how they are, I think that also helps you become a little bit more emotional because you start to care about that more than pretty much anything else, which has also been a beautiful thing what's the future like for you frank what do you think i don't know i'm much i'm very it's hard to know a lot of people can say to me oh you should you know get into punditry it's easy put your feet up do what you know that that's

and it's certainly i i get my um enjoyment i get my my gets my blood flowing is working and being a coach. So that's what I want to do. And I'm in no immediate rush to do it. The reality is off the back of Everton and Chelsea, it's probably time for me to take my time anyway, because of what opportunity there might be out there. There may be no opportunity. There may be something that comes up that I want to look at and say,

does that work for me on all purposes? Because I get your point with the Chelsea one. one it's like did you really need to take that and the the jobs i've taken have been quite challenging and a lot are i'm not saying i'm going to be given this like here you go this is going to be great so i would point try and choose well without sounding too picky because you know i want to work um and in the meantime do the things that make me happy which is being around my family i like to travel it's like the one thing that i um really like to spend my money on but you know is when i travel i want to go better than home and if i don't go better than home i'll stay at home and i've got a nice house

you know so i we we love that so i you know, use the time to travel a bit, be with the family and my children, spend more time. My elder daughters are doing A-levels and GCSEs now and be around that. And that's nice. And sometimes, you know, I think that's good for me because I am so driven.

It's like, I feel like I should work, I should work. And actually sometimes you go, actually I'm 45 and I've done all right in my life. Maybe I don't need to work. And that's not a bad place to be. I'm fortunate. I don't, I have gratitude for for that so at the moment it's the gratitude of that enjoy and then try and work again and what will be what will be your sort of decision making framework when people call and they say what about this job or what about this what's the how would you decide whether it's worth taking the well it's hard to say but from my

experience i would want to make sure i would want to have conversations to find out what the the job is and i can't i can't sit here feel this way and talk to you about being aligned and they need to feel the way that i'll be the coach and they're going to do this and work together and probably take another job where it doesn't feel aligned you know i i shouldn't um do that so i'd want to have a conversation and be like what what can i do for you i have to sell myself clearly that's the point but what can how will it work together and maybe get something that feels a bit like and i don't mind i'll work you know in in the uk anywhere i would travel if an opportunity came up i would

certainly prioritize a bit of family to make sure that it's something that works for my family, ideally. I don't know. I don't know about that one. Everyone seems to be going there. They do. I mean, I would prefer to stay in the UK for sure. And I don't mind.

I went and lived in Everton for a year, lived in Derby for a year. I miss my family a lot, but you have to make those big decisions. We're fortunate in ways. But I'll see. I'll see what comes up. It's hard to call before it comes. If we sit here in 10 years time in this chapter this next sort of 10 years this next decade has been a success what does that look like what would have had to have happened for it to have been a success this next decade well 55 year old frank and me 55

well i'm here so that's good at 55 i think my you know obviously the family to be well and healthy you understand that more when you hit, for me, it was hitting probably 40 health and understanding. Maybe you check yourself more on those things and lifestyle. And then to be, hopefully, have managed and had success coaching. You know, that's what I want to do. I can't see what that looks like, but I would love to be able to show myself consistently in a job

what I can do. I haven't had that opportunity yet for whether that was me or whatever the circumstances have been to do that. So I'm very determined to do it. I'm good like that. I'm determined and I like to work. Anyone who knows me will know that. Regardless of what my career has been,

if you put it in front of me, I'll tackle it head on. And then I'm always trying to improve so hopefully in 10 years i can show you that there's got to be a part of you that wants to go back to chelsea someday knowing if i know you how the way i know you there's got to be a part of you inside you that's like you know one day i'll i'll go back it's funny you know like you talk about should you have taken that job i reckon if you'd have asked me that before going back i might have said no, as in, not like I don't want to go back to Chelsea,

but I would have certainly seen myself, no, no, like that chapter's done as a coach. But now I've been back, I would think about it even more. And it's strange. And I think, you know, the fact that the ownership has changed at Chelsea and it's gone in a different direction, I think it can be a really positive thing for the club.

I think people might not see that now, but I think it really can. But obviously I have a lot to do to be part of that ever. But like, I don't, you have to make a clear decision. When we, I played 13 years for Chelsea. I said I'd never play anywhere else. I ended up playing at Man City. Some people criticise me for that.

It's fine. I didn't expect it, but Man City was an amazing experience. I went to New York City. It was an amazing experience. When you become a manager, you can't say I'm going to be Chelsea manager. I'm't expect it, but Man City was an amazing experience. I went to New York City. It was an amazing experience. When you become a manager, you can't say, I'm going to be Chelsea manager, I'm going to be this. You have to take the journey because those are the rules for all of us.

You can be a success for a moment at Everton and everyone goes, well, then you stay up and then you're next job. What is it? And I have respect for so many big clubs. There are certain clubs I wouldn't manage. job what is it and i would i you know i've respect for so many big clubs that you know there are certain clubs i wouldn't manage i'm not going to declare them because that just sounds like cheap and but i think it's important i respect my time at chelsea's a player and what the club means to me but i don't see it as the b1 handle but as i say having been back there it did re light a fire

i left chelsea in covert as a manager. I didn't have any fans my last period. So I kind of walked out like a little bit through the back door, in a sense. And this time it felt different. And that wasn't a great period, but it is still a huge club for me. So maybe. I'm really excited to watch what happens next.

Thank you. You did a great job at Derby. Obviously, then you got Chelsea into the Champions League, I think finished fourth that season under a transfer ban. And then you kept Everton up on the last day of the season, which again, most people

had kind of counted Everton out. So obviously there was that interim period. I look, it's funny because I'm going to be honest. So when we were meant to have this podcast last time, then you called me

and said, listen, I can't come, can't tell you why. And I kind of put two and two together and figured it was the job. I looked at that and thought, I don't know chelsea 11th or 12th at the moment like what's what's the worst that can happen really what i didn't know is the the back context so if i was in your shoes uh in hindsight and we don't have hindsight in in in the moment i would have probably i would

have not taken the job if i was in that situation but in foresight i definitely would have 100 for all the reasons you said if manchester united called me now i'd take the job yeah and i have no experience so but um but i think what we're gonna i'm really excited to see what we see next from you and your sort of managerial career because i mean what you the experience you've had warts and all is worth a ton yeah you know at all different levels all different phases transitional relegation battles all of that is worth more ton yeah you know yeah all different levels all different phases transitional relegation battles all of that is worth more than a lot of successes are worth and you've had that in a short window of time so really really excited about your next chapter whenever it comes thank you um is there anything at all you would say to chelsea fans that are watching this now that are

um that would love to you know chelsea fans will be listening to this because they want to get A your opinion on what's just happened but they probably want to get your opinion on like what you think the future looks like I guess and also I think a lot of them do want to like check in on you

because since you've left we've not really heard from you in such context yeah and I've enjoyed that I've enjoyed not speaking it's been nice no I think for Chelsea fans I would say that

in terms of what do I think is next, I listened to Pochettino spoke yesterday. It was his first press conference. And he spoke very well. And he spoke about bringing a unity at the training ground and a family feel and then winning, which is Chelsea DNA. So I think they've got a really good manager in charge. And I think the players will definitely develop

with their you know as they as they develop naturally they're good players young players there has to be some patience in putting that together

because I think that's that has to be clear and the owners have a big intention so I think as things settle it may not be straight away but I think that there's a really positive future for the club

and I was in it and it was tough, but I know how quickly things can change if you get the strategy right. In terms of me, I'm absolutely fine. And I'd certainly appreciate the support I had from, as I say, a majority, a lot of fans that would contact me or be at Stamford Bridge. And for anybody that was on the other side of that,

was like, why is Frank back in the job? I think they, maybe I've explained some of my part in it today and some of the challenges I'll always take responsibility I wouldn't walk back into that challenge without sort of saying this might not go right and what's my responsibility so but Chelsea's always a huge club and as I say I never went back to Chelsea until three days before I went and took the interim job manager and I went to Liverpool game and end up having a conversation and it was a difficult period for me for some reason I left in Covid as I went and took the interim job manager and I went to the Liverpool game and ended up having a conversation. And it was a difficult period for me for some reason.

I left in COVID, as I say, and I moved on to Everton. And it reignited that kind of feeling being back at Stamford Bridge, I have to say. Not that I lost it. It just reignited it. And, you know, so to Chelsea fans, I know. I'm fine. I'm fine.

I appreciate their support, even my playing career. It's nice when you finish playing because your playing career is there and I can look back on it with a lot of pleasure for a lot of the good moments. When you're in it, it's like, what's next? And you're sort of like

always challenging yourself. When you finish, you kind of go, yeah, you know, that was good. That was all right. There's a lot of good stuff. So there were good times and I was very thankful

to be part of a great club and we'll see. You gave Mason Mount his start. Yes, I think he's a great signing. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Thank you for that. He's fantastic. Why is he leaving Chelsea?

He's born and bred, isn't he? Yeah, I think it's a complicated one. And in the end, I think he's got a year left on his contract. What I'll say about mason is all the things i spoke about there you talk about like modern players and how the game's changed he is a throwback to the attitude and the commitment and the quality the you know that was the beauty of working with mason was that he gave you so much in terms of his um effort every day anything you'd ask him to do is like yeah and he kind of got it and i think any great player has to have that kind of intelligence and that desire

about them you know like what do you need me to do yeah i've got it and i'll do it i'll repeat it and also quality so in terms of what he'll bring to manchester united it won't just be what mason brings he will bring loads of talent but he's just going to go and levels really around. Really, he's a bar raiser? Yeah, I think so. And don't get me wrong, the bar raiser's already there with Bruno Fernandes. Casemiro. But he will absolutely, yeah, Casemiro. But he will absolutely fit in with it.

If you're trying to build, which you're saying, a group mentality of a team and, you know, players that are just going to give everything and have talent, which top team they need, he fits it. So I've seen some sort of alternative reaction to that. It's like, oh yeah,

Mason Mount's a good boy. Why would you pay that for him? Mason Mount is going to be a fantastic player there, my opinion. It's really nice to know, because actually I was a bit on the fence in regards of, don't really know the character of the man,

but I have heard from inside Old Trafford that Eric Ten Hag is really ultra focused on exactly what you said, above everything else. He's focused on that like core values. So Casemiro, Bruno, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's nice to know that Mason is a bar raiser. Why is he leaving?

Do you know? Seeking a different challenge or is it? No, I don't think so. I think probably Mason would have envisaged two years ago that he'd stay at Chelsea for a lot of his career I just think circumstances his contract situation

I know he's got a big love for Chelsea but also in the modern day you know I think more than even in my day players do move and I don't think you know the challenge of

moving now it's come to that for Mason personally is a good challenge for him I would have liked to have seen him stay at Chelsea because I think he would have been central to it,

but it didn't happen. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And I have to say, this is the longest question that has ever been left for anyone else. It's quite abstract as well. So we're both going to have to kind of figure this one out.

But the question is, you're going to be surprised by this. When broken down to its roots or origin, the word enthusiasm begins with n theos which means with god for people who have not identified something which they are truly passionate about pursuing can you suggest a way to cultivate that enthusiasm so i think the real question here is just in this line here which is when people for people who haven't identified something which they are truly passionate about yeah pursuing how do they

go about that wow um thanks for that one yeah i don't know um this is a good point actually because my daughter's now my oldest daughter daughter is getting her A-level results this summer. It's talking about uni, but she doesn't really know what she wants to do. And I actually felt not bad. I went to school, obviously, but my pathway, you know, looking back was like, fortunately, it was that. I didn't have to think about much else. And so I haven't got any big answers for it. And also like from a modern woman, you know, where is the path?

What does she want to know? I ask her that question and she's not sure, which is completely understandable. So for me, I think for her, if you're flipping it there, maybe whether it's a passion or not, but my thing, and it probably goes back to my roots, is to, the work ethic thing is what I say to her, is to get out there and get in the workplace and meet people. Because I think in the modern world

with my daughters are so engrossed in social media they have a lot of answers about life you know a lot of answers and i'm like okay i don't agree with that one but i'll let that one go i don't agree with that and then i started for like a dinosaur but i do think that they kind of get caught up in that and all the answers are there and i go okay we're going to do then and they go i don't know and you kind of go okay well fine you've got all this information it's the modern world but what are you going to do go out and get a weekend job if you're going to go to uni go out and experience what the real world is like rather than this alternative world that you're slightly looking at and then i think something might ignite it

so that that was my and again that's probably as deep as i could go because i don't care where it is you could be in the coffee shops, you could be in this shop or that shop or whatever. But this is my daughter's story, obviously. So it was more about getting out and meeting people. And I guess probably, and to bring that question back to me, myself going out of my comfort zone and leaving Chelsea to go to Manchester City and then live in New York for two years

ignited a million things in me and none of them were like big hobbies or something like that it was just like wow there's a different world a different culture people who approach things with positivity and energy that i've never seen in england and it changed my approach so maybe my answer would be come out of your comfort zone and do something which is different i was fortunate to do i worked there but i was living in probably what for me is possibly the best city in the world. And it changed me as a person.

So maybe, you know, to get the passion, try something, take yourself out of the comfort zone and it might just appear for you. Makes perfect sense. And I think, yeah, exactly what I heard there is that often when we're too within familiarity, we're not going to get the inspiration of what might be our passion if we're searching for it.

But going to a New York or just getting out into the world and having experiences can lead us there. Frank, thank you so much for your time today. And thank you for doing this. Because I want to say, you are a man of your word. Because we were going to do this last time and you could have easily not done it. But you messaged me and said,

I want to get that back on because I said I would. And again, that's just another example of you just being a class act. The whole process of you cancelling last time because you got the Chelsea job and then coming back, you've just been an absolute class act. You're a man where no one can question your integrity and your principles. And then on top of that, I see a man who is incredibly keen to work and do well in whatever he applies himself to. And because of that, you've led this fantastic career, both as a professional football player and as a manager which is i think you're just halfway through and there's this whole new season as you get up to you know you 45 years time you're gonna be 90 and i'm so excited to watch that story unfold because of all the wisdom you've garnered

in the last 45 so thank you for being an inspiration to me for giving me so many great memories in football as an england player less so as a chelsea player because you guys were really fucking good through that that's that period so um but it's a real honor to get to know you and thank you yeah thank you for all your wisdom thank you very much thank you Thank you.