Chelsea legend Frank Lampard - Extended Podcast | High Performance Podcast

let's get going then and welcome a man who won everything he could as a player 11 major titles in 13 years with chelsea he's a club legend he remains their top scorer and for the past year he's managed the club he loves as well as well as that he's traveled he's written books he's experienced heartache and loss he's been celebrated he's been criticized he's a husband he's a father yet through it all without high performance nothing would have been the same for him so welcome to the podcast frank lampard frank nice to have you with us thank you good to be here so what is high performance oh um hard work i i think anything that you in anything you do in life was fortunate enough to be brought up in um pretty comfortable circumstances looking back and um but given a huge work ethic and probably a message that anything i wanted to do or achieve in life started with hard work and i think that rings true in everything i've done and i see it around me in how i work um on top of that i would say well of course talent which is always pretty um subjective objective i got called a i'm not very talented well i saw a player that made the most of my talents which is like a backhanded compliment if ever you hear one but i get that too even when i would look at myself and then i think that the last one which is for me which i think was a big factor is intelligence and i don't mean to say i'm intelligent that would just sound stupid to say that way but i mean in terms of how you approach your goals and how you want to get to them for instance in football i would say it's how you train smart how you think smart how you prioritize what the things you need to do to get to as high up as you can be and i think that's certainly something i feel very mirrored in my playing career to my management career and how i see it well let's start there then i'm really interested to know where that intelligence came from because there'll be people listening to this podcast who want to be successful they want to make the most of their talents they want to live their dreams and achieve their ambitions and to do that they need the intelligence to know what to do where did that come from for you um i think when i go back to the beginning and and i talked about the comfortable circumstances i think i was fortunate in terms of when my career went because i had a father who was a football player so as i grew up he was a coach at that point and then a mother who was incredibly supportive in her and how she uh brought me up and almost gave me the the nicer touches and my dad gave me the the harder touches but i think i my dad when it came to football was very open to making me aware of what my shortcomings were at the time uh pace body shape um left foot heading whatever and um so i feel like as i grew up i had i was always listening to that and and i carried that through my career even when i was playing probably at the top of my game or as much as close to the top as i got i still had a lot of complexes is the wrong word but i was aware of what i felt with deficiencies and i just attacked them in the only way i could which was how i trained how i thought about them so that's when i say intelligence again i don't mean it as in you know getting top marks or anything it's just how i tried to approach things because i felt like i was always open to to self-criticism and then okay how do i not just look at what i'm not good at but how do i make it better so can i ask you about your mum and dad then because reading about your background it seems like a bit of a ying and yang of your parents your dad was very driven and focused in his own career and he passed on those attributes to you and yet your mum does seem to have been more nurturing and developed the softer side of you so one of the things that i've read a quote you'd said the piece of advice your mom had passed on was you needed to learn to be kinder to yourself yeah i mean the yin and yang's perfect because my dad came from a very we had a he had a tough upbringing much tougher than mine he lost his father when he was very young and had to fight to get to become a professional footballer and he kind of carried that demeanor very old school very very strong would tell you you know i remember driving home from sunday morning games and i've said this before but he would be sort of shouting at me in the car looking back i was like i don't understand how you can be shouting i mean i'm like 12 13 years of age and then i'd get home and i'd be crying and my mum would be the one that would bring me my lunch or a cake or something that's probably why i was a chubby kid but she would be the the one that would settle me down and um so i think i'd like to think that i took both of those sort of sides of it in my in my professional career um got driven by my dad in that tough way but had my mum giving me those little moments and i remember as i got older my mum would always be the one because i'm quite reactive if you know if i take criticism when i was playing i'd want to say something back a bit like that in life and my mum was always the one to say to me just rise above it i remember saying all the time rise above rise above and when i was younger i couldn't quite understand it as much as i probably think about it now and i still don't always rise above it don't get me wrong i'm reactive still but when you have those moments sometimes you think about mum's words and probably my dad's actions were probably what kind of uh moulded me in a footballing sense for sure but in a life way as well yeah one of the things that we we talk about on this podcast is resilience and giving your children resilience to deal with the challenges that are in front of them at the time it sounds like it was quite difficult and painful to be shouted at by your dad and to be given some home truths do you think on reflection that was him instilling the resilience in you so when you got to the challenges of professional football you were able to draw on the experiences of sitting in the back of that car as a 12 year old and and cope with what came your way i think he would claim that that was the plan do you not think so no i i actually think it was just him right and if there was a nice fallout from it for me as i got older it did probably make me a bit tougher and i had some tougher experiences as i got on the football ladder at west ham but with my dad i think he generally reacted how how he saw fit at the time he i felt like and i looked back that he was not reliving his football career through me but he'd done it he'd fought to be this you know west ham left back for 15 20 years um and he himself used to talk about his deficiencies that he'd had when he was younger and he used to use running spikes and all these great old stories that your dad sort of tells you um and i think he took me as a bit of a project um as a son to try and see if he could make me into a professional footballer and i felt all the way up to my mouth i didn't really cut loose from that feeling with my dad until my mid-20s really of our must impress dad when it comes to football i used to remember looking up in the stands at west ham or in my early chelsea days and kind of think what he would have thought and uh i needed to really grow out of that by that by that point so yeah i don't know how he planned it i think it was just how he was so what led you to make that to cut those ties that you stopped trying to impress him i think it was just my development and i think um as i see it i i turned from being a bit of a boy to a man i think it was a bit like uh i really i rely on that because my dad was quite dominant of me in a footballing sense and actually in life to be honest um i became a little bit reliant on that you know i it was like follow his word and his lead and then when i moved across to chelsea started playing for england started probably gaining some success i kind of thought actually no no what when i thought everything that dad said was right was when i was 12 and actually some things i don't agree with something that don't see the same as he sees them maybe that started to you know just look at my mom's side then or different things in life and i actually started to get my own be my own person really and i probably um moved moved away and i'm going to make it sound like a big breakup it's not but um in my professional life i started to feel differently do you know when you were getting criticism when you were breaking into the west ham team and there was that those sort of um accusations of nepotism because your uncle was the manager and there's that famous scene isn't there a fan's forum harry kind of defends your honor against a fan that's that's criticizing you don't you think that you would have seen all that and been aware of all that at a really young age did your dad's criticism at an even younger age not help you in that situation because you think well i've seen all this before i've had it on a much more personal level from from my dad so i can deal with this or i'm just interested to know where the ability to cope with that came from because so many people cannot cope with external criticism it maybe did i think it possibly did in that sense um it felt very different at the time yeah in fact it made my dad my relationship with my dad slightly different at the time because it was the first time he kind of flipped and realized i was getting a lot of uh stick pressure from outside and he became softer to it and and defended me my mum played a huge role at that point because i was 17 18 and you know i'm just sort of moving out of uh home i think got my own flat but at times i'll be really really down about warming up and getting helps from west ham fans you know i i'm much more reflective on it now in karma i wrote a book when i was much my mid-20s and um i wanted to react and i wanted to put the story straight and all that stuff i wish i'd never done it now because it was definitely something that shaped me but um and that period at west ham definitely helped me as i went through football and the the the trials of playing for chelsea and the good and the bad and the england which is obviously brings bad when you don't make it through world cup finals and stuff like that those early days of west ham days definitely shaped me i'm thankful for them now and uh and i'm also thankful for the support i did get as i say particularly for my mum at that point but that book that you described i mean i think that you give some really quite powerful examples about of how visceral and vile some of the abuse you were getting is and i think you recount some of those instances of um there was a guy in the director's box behind your mum and your auntie that would make a point of abusing you for their benefit and when i was reading that book it it shook me that you were almost an early pioneer of what a lot of people get now on social media the abuse there but you were getting it before social media was a thing yeah do you think that that helps you now as a manager of this next generation that the that you can empathize with them a little bit more yeah yeah it certainly does i i do empathize with them and i'll be very quick to to speak on that level because when you've experienced something like that it looks different as you say in the modern day um but when you've experienced it it all feels the same and unfortunately now every player will get it um to whatever period of your career it may be and when you're a young player you can look bulletproof or give off the impression of being bulletproof but nobody is nobody is um when when you're in a uh the ire that these players are under um so yeah i'm very quick to try and support players on that it's difficult i'm very pleased on my career timed this run early and i didn't hit the real heights of social media because if you see it um you have to deal with it and it can be very detrimental for sure so there's a i mean there's a lovely story that you tell about that period where there was a he described a young 14 year old lad that used to abuse you on the bench and then he went into a bank and his mum um told you she was a big west ham fan and then you met her outside the ground and it was the 14 year old lad that abused you regularly and there's a lovely bit where where you speak about that phrase you said that your mum had taught you that you rose above it like it made me laugh when i read that he said that you you considered telling her that some smoked and yeah and getting him into trouble then he said but i remember that i had to rise above it yeah so so would you explain about that process of where you learned that emotional control because you say you're reactive but you obviously weren't in every situation yeah i know that was classic of that period because i remember going in the bank all the time and the woman didn't really divulge much to me and in this one time she did and she said i'm going to bring my boys mad and west ham i expected this you know young sort of really nice kid coming in with west ham show i don't know sign and it turned out to be this kid that sat stressed behind the duggar and absolutely ruined me and it literally been the week before it ruined me and swore at me finger went up everything and uh so it was like uh i suppose you know like the more you experience that thing a lot of that stuff i think can feel worse when you hear it from a distance i remember my sisters used to come to games and say things to me that they'd heard and that really hurt me and then maybe when you actually see it face up and then you realize the fact that this is just a 14 year old kid and um it's just a mum who works in a bank who's been really nice all the time and this is the panda mom that is football you kind of actually managed to distinguish what's important what's not and i suppose those little experiences and it's not just me i don't want to sound like i'm sort of crying here too much about it because i think as i say in not just football in life everyone has these little knocks that you must get over and they feel really painful to you at first then you go through it again and then you realize and then i started to play better i got my foot in the first team um started to believe in myself a little bit more and those little digs became just things that spurred me on um i didn't really feel that until i left and went to chelsea right because that's when i felt like hang on i'm on a different path here i knew i needed to get away from west ham because my time there was tainted i don't have nice memories of it and i'm not saying that as a a tribal dig a fellow london club because now i'm a chelsea man i just don't have nice memories of it but i still that's not to say i don't realize how much it shaped me and how much the opportunity i've got given at the club that is that is the key thing i think is that even if something's painful it doesn't mean it isn't valuable yeah you know there's a phrase after news which is it's never been harder to be ourselves these days because it's never been easier for other people to criticize us in those days it was a kid in the stands or an adult understands now it's all over social media and i think that that is the key message for a lot of people listening to this is that at the time things can feel really painful but sometimes you've got to understand that to go through that painful stuff is almost it's almost necessary you know and that's exactly what your experience is it feels like yeah it's just how you you react and sometimes it's a long game that's the tough thing sometimes i think because in those moments you don't see the the light at the end of the tunnel all you see is that you know all i wanted to do was grab and play for west ham i love tony cutie i love frank mcinvenny and that was my dream and then when you get the dream and you're on the touchline and you're getting some fella who's much older than you and quite dangerous looking and shouting at you and swearing it yeah you go what is this dream about so at that point i could not see the the light at the end of the tunnel but you know day by day a bit of a better performance maybe not so good felt a bit stronger people around me helping me all these things they absolutely came together and not to say it certainly would have gone that way i mean i was very fortunate in different parts of my career of timing of of things that happen but i do i'm a big believer in making your own luck i'm a big believer if you train extra if you try and hold your dignity in moments where you could easily lose it and you know i've lost mine at different times in my career but if you try and do the right thing you may get your little things that go in your favor and and i probably had them you know coming back to get the chelsea job my timing was impeccable now transfer ban at derby and all the styles almost aligned and people would like to tell me that but i don't believe in those things happening without reason or for what you put in to get there we took often on this podcast about 100 responsibility and i think it can be a difficult mindset for some people but it basically is even things that are not your fault there's no point not taking responsibility for them because then you can't control them what are your thoughts on that 100 percent responsibility i'm i'm absolutely a massive fan of it because one thing i think i've seen in football um from being a young man trying to make it from playing through now managing is blame and any kind of blame culture or it's not me it's them it's that i hear it a lot by the way even if it is them yeah yeah exactly exactly and i think that i i think i'm lucky in a way but i think part of the way i am is that i i i never want to look at really and that maybe at times it's easy said i blame the the backfield useless today you know something i would blame my blame strikers because they didn't finish my and really generally though i always inside always looking at myself i was always my biggest critic my own biggest critic on the pitch and hopefully off the pitch and of course made loads of mistakes um but you have to take responsibility if you if you want to get better you have to take responsibility no matter for good or bad i suppose and how important is 100 responsibility in the culture you're now trying to create as a manager yeah it's it's of utmost importance and it's a message that you really have to drill home because i think uh it's very easy when you're a coach or a manager and you've been there and had your career and you know you made a million mistakes but when you sit at the top of the tree or you know in my office at chelsea not to think not to think like the 21 year old who's making those mistakes you made and just think you're above it and i see it all when it's you have to get on the level of these players and they all have different thoughts they all have different reasons something at home on the training pitch how they see things and so i can't think that my morals and my values just transmit to everybody and then everyone will be a great trainer like i was and make the most of my talent because i didn't i made mistakes sometimes i went out when i shouldn't have done so i have to be very open to that so for the players to try and take responsibility is a daily chip away at trying to create something that feels that way and we're in that process at chelsea i'm not going to lie we've not we've not um won that battle yet because it takes it definitely takes time particularly with a younger squad which we have a lot of young players in there but one of the great stories that i like about your early career frank was the fact that you speak about coming in and doing sprint sessions on days off or you'd often stay behind and and and and do extra training so when we had rio ferdinand on the podcast he spoke about how he he would see you doing it and he copied you because he wanted to get better how do you cope with young players that are coming into your club though that don't have that desire that do have a different view in the world in terms of think that talent is going to be enough to uh to forge a successful career yeah that's a good question you can never assume i've just spoken about my upbringing and i think i was drilled with it as a young man but you can never assume that another player has that young player so all you have to do is try and show them why it will benefit them explain it to them you can't just say you must go out and do 100 sprints and then expect them to get on with it and everything will be fine you have to say here's the reason why you know put the detail in it behind it to try and go individually through that group and explain to them what extras will do for them what that will then do for the team what that one will do for their home life and where their career might go and all these things and try and be and that's communication you can't lay down laws of you must all directors and then just stand back and watch it from the other side of the pitch you have to speak to the players change it ask why what do they think about it and get close to them so i try and do that and the reality is if you don't get any uplift after a while with that and you've tried and tried and tried then there might be time where you have to say well you're not going to reach the level because if you don't have that attitude no matter what the talent is and it's a real age-old argument i'm really interested in his sort of nature and nurture and how how much it is talent and can you just get by by just having pure talent you know i watched neymar recently and i'm going wow this guy is incredibly talented player um but he will have his own version of the hard work and what it takes behind the scenes as well like mine like everyone else is an outrageously talented boy but um a lot of us don't have that outrageous talent and a lot of us have to put in lots of different types of work around it and if you're talking asking me yeah i would try and push it but if players aren't going to do that i think it has to be done at the top of the game and then you would move on from that one so how much so to go back to that nature nurture argument then if we relate it to you as a player and then talk expand it out what would you say the percentage was oh i i could wake up one day and two percentage and think differently the next because i like to read about these sort of things and and just to look at people and experiences you have with sports people athletes actually maybe in life and i i think i can't give you that percentage i can't i know that i didn't have the the talent of neymar i also know that i did have talents in terms of um i could finish i i think one of my biggest talents which i touched on earlier was being aware of the things i needed to do you know i was never the quickest so i knew i had to get going earlier i knew i had to read when i was on the blind side of a midfielder to make the run and the more i did it and the older i got i got better at doing that so i would probably say i'm quite heavy on the the nurture but i don't know exactly what the percentage is but haven't we just talked about 100 responsibility so what's the point in your mind of thinking well it's all about nature because if you consider that all my success is down to nature not nurture or not down to me then you're kind of given up controller and it's a difficult one because even if your players have not had the upbringing that you've had and maybe they're not born with the same talents that you've that you were born with you still have to find a way to get them to buy into this 100 responsibility you're not responsible for whether mason mount has a successful chelsea career or not mason mount is successful for that and every other young player there yeah but well they are of course but then i i i disagree with you my my view on that now as a manager is that i am responsible and the only way i think you can create an environment which looks like you're asking for everyone to be 100 responsible is by them seeing that from yourself so i don't think it's a problem to show weakness i don't think it's a problem to for me to try and prepare a team for a week and work on a shape and then you come up and it doesn't work at the weekend to almost be a bit open with the players and say maybe a few individual moments or that i don't i don't mind that because the and i did my pro license last year and i like to read i like to listen to coaches even if it was a coach that had a completely different philosophy to mine you know long ball bracket long go on stats completely or whatever whatever way it might be i can gain and from if i can gain one nugget from that argument or that idea that means i'm developing you know and i need i know i need to develop for a young coach to come in and go no no i know the game of football i know what it is don't worry i don't need to listen to that view and also if my players don't produce that's because they're not good enough i'll need better players i mean that kind of lazy argument is never going to get you anywhere it's one of my sort of things i really try and do is to look at myself every day what could i have done there i can't blame the players for that performance i can't you know and at moments you'll sit down with reflection and of course you look at how the squad looks but i must make myself 100 percent comfortable for mason man as well yeah and would you admit that to them after a game would you would you as i just had they're obviously going to listen to me well they might do yeah but would you ever stand up in a dressing room and say lads i got i got that wrong because i sometimes think that you're only in very early stages of your management career if you're arsene wenger or sir alex ferguson you might be far more comfortable going you know what i've had 20 years of being a manager i got that wrong today it feels like um a braver maybe more dangerous thing for a really young manager to do because there was that constant battle early on to convince certain people that you're okay to be a manager i haven't done it in that way but what i have done with individuals is for instance i know this year i'm not playing players and i've wrestled with a the selection problem decided not to play a player we've not gone so well and i've said to the player that was a mistake i made a mistake not playing you there and little things like that but that's quite powerful actually well i like to think so because i kind of think what would i want to hear is a as a player and i think that to have an a a good friend of mine recently told me we were talking about communication um and he was saying if you don't communicate and it's probably i'd never heard this before but it was about how negativity or the wrong understanding will just contaminate that space of not communicating so if i drop that player don't say a word feel like it went wrong myself don't mention that to him and pick him more don't pick him next week i've got no idea of control about how we're going to take that where at least if i can go and say okay yeah you know what i made a mistake there i feel that and i i feel you'll get something back there whether you get a blank face an angry face or whatever those difficult conversations unfortunately apart for the course for me in the job i do but if i don't and take the easy out which i have taken at times last year derby when i first got in it was like these difficult conversations i'm going to put that one off and maybe sometimes you still do but generally you've got to try and hit them as much as you can so what would you say has been the single biggest thing that you've that you've learned in the couple of years that you've been a head coach now then for all um well there are so many things tactically so i won't kind of touch on that because i think there is a big part of that but probably that one of personal relationships with the the players and the group relationship you have with them trying to strike that right balance because for me a high performing group or our team say it has to be a balance between being really positive but being slightly on edge so it's like how positive can i be i don't want to sound like i'm you know just trying to be a cheerleader here and not not see that we've lost two games on the bounce or something you know i can't just keep them positive and when we're winning and it's great how can i keep them on edge to say they don't think yeah we're gonna win every game because i've seen that one before many times and then you lose the next so i think i try to um to create that kind of balance and i'm still striving for that i still think a lot about that and go over it myself and go have i've been pos have i spoken to that player enough did he get what i felt there you know and how can i help each individual and i think you do have to keep analyzing that one because it's always different but i think that's the thing i've learned that you can't neglect that side of it and think i'm just gonna be the master coach because i'm not i'm not the master coach and i'm not the great psychologist but i'll do my best to do what i can see in front of me and hopefully we'll get success we're getting gone we well it sounds very much like we go back to that ying and yank of the way you were parents said the hard message as well as the nurturing support and encouragement yeah but which leads us to there's a really interesting area that i want to explore with you this idea of family and how important family bonds are to you so when you speak about the west ham experience it sounds that a large part of your emotion came from the fact that you felt betrayed you'd grown up in the in east end family it was seen as a family club and yeah they rejected you so how do you think it's possible to create a family atmosphere at a club where you have those bonds where you can be hard at times but you still have that relationship where people know that you've got their best interests at heart yeah i mean that's what i'm striving for i mean i i agree the fact you're right and the family thing with my nan lived around the corner from west ham and i felt like what i was a crazy young west ham fan and then when it went the other way on me i kind of questioned not the club i questioned people but you know but then as you get older you realize that you'll end up questioning people all your life about what you do because you know everyone's different and different circumstances so i think probably to to answer the question about now is that just tackle what you've got in front of you and trying you try and be there for your players you try and be open with the players you try and create togetherness between them as a group and that's hard that's hard because we play at the top of elite sport i've got 25 players say whatever our squad is any time and i can pick 11 and the other ones generally probably don't like you on saturday afternoon or whenever it is so it's not as cut and dried as and it's the easiest the easy one after a win and not coming out and speak afterwards or other players and go yeah you've got a great team spirit here and then when you lose you kind of go you know all of a sudden you have to go up there's a team spirit not so good this week because you lost so it's not like a simple one to say we've got we've created a great family atmosphere that can only come at the right and when you've probably won or feel like you've achieved such great success and then people put it together the building blocks for that are huge because it's a really easy thing to say um but to have the family feel in a really um competitive high performance sport is tough and takes a lot of work and it doesn't look like the the ideal family it doesn't look like sure you know but what would you say are the building blocks of doing that then well communication for sure um making the message clear to the players of what you want from them on the training pitch having um an idea with the players that i want you to i want us to be a group of good people as well as good players and a good team i think you have to have respect amongst each other and um and you definitely at the top of the club set that time like that is definitely on me i am 100 100 responsible for that one um and you try and promote that regularly in how you train how you act and um if you see things that you don't like within the group you have to act upon them to try and make sure that you you're going to i don't want a beautiful family i want players that can rely on each other when they go out on the pitch they're going to be tough and back each other up at the right moments and that as i say that doesn't look like the beautiful family and that's life you know there are you know lots of things in my family without going into detail that are not perfection that's life but you just try and do your best and how do you get the balance between having a close relationship with a player so that when the time is right you can put your arm around them and tell them that you're there for them and other times making it clear that they are the players you are the manager and there is a big distinction there i wonder whether that's something that you've wrestled with in your particularly in your first year at chelsea and probably at derby as well yeah no i do wrestle with it a lot um i think you can do it i i think when when the the idea of being straight with a player always helps and i'm honestly the difficult one because sometimes it's really hard to be honest because you can say things that could really that hurt the player if you wanted to be you know absolutely honest but i think you can be straight and be very um and be caring in how you speak to the players i think they'll accept the good and the bad they might not at that moment they might walk off not liking you um they might go and tell someone else i don't really like him so much or whatever but i do think because i had managers that i worked for that at the time i probably i didn't i didn't like i didn't have the best relationships with in my reactive way back in the day i would have gone don't like him he didn't pick me so much now i'm older i get it i get the problems that they had trying to deal with me so i try and sometimes when you speak to the players don't just try and be the cutting manager that's making the decision give them maybe something um not historics they definitely don't want to hear my stories all day but give them an experience maybe or talk about a bigger picture maybe try and come from it from a different angle because i do think players sometimes respond when you actually you know i spoke to a player recently who was having a tough time playing and i referred to tough times i had planned and i was understanding of the fact because i had many a tough time i took my foot off the pedal sometimes just played bad in certain games took criticism at times and as i said always come so i think to try and speak to the players in a pretty grown-up way and explain that this is it means that you can sell both sides the good and the bad moments too and you spoke earlier about the way to communicate with people and and i i'm a i'm in completely agreement with that because i think if you are doing your best and it comes from the heart and you're doing it for the right reasons you can never cause an issue by communicating and it's one of my frustrations you know my other job as a football presenter you know i always want to speak to managers and particularly directors of football people who set the agenda at a club people who decide on the culture of a football club because when things go wrong they don't talk so people just jump to conclusions and assume that they either don't care or they don't know what they're doing and if they were able to come out and talk more openly and explain why a certain move or a certain player or a certain situation hasn't worked out positively i think it would help them because people would realize oh they do care they like everyone things just go wrong sometimes in life i think as long as there's a manager you've got the best intentions it's never the wrong thing to share how you truly feel with your players and i wonder if that's something that's changed you know when you were growing up managers were quite autonomous a lot of the time weren't they in those days and they yeah this is my way or the highway and i think now managers like you and jurgen klopp and maurizio pochettino it's about taking those players with you on the journey isn't it yeah i was interested when i listened to you speak with pochettino actually because i think you mentioned pretty sure was on your podcast he mentioned about um coming in with non-negotiables as a manager that's right and then realizing that he couldn't quite stick to those nonetheless and i absolutely got that because when you come into management and you can have a really firm idea i will not accept somebody being late i will not accept it if they don't i will not accept that kind of performance and then when you come and you go you've been late but you need them at the weekend you have to say you know and as a manager you get probably about i don't know how many but loads of them every day and if you come in with an iron fist and you want to say this is how i am almost to promote myself i'm a young manager but don't worry i'm really tough i think you're going to get players that go to come on like so and that's not to say i don't know don't you still need non-negotiables though they have to be certain what are your certain things that simply are not acceptable work ethic on the training pitch absolutely to to have work i think to not respect your teammate i suppose if um you know you're out of the team and you don't support the group that's absolutely like to i understand a sad face on the bench in terms of an angry face i want to play but to not be part of the group then that's almost uh the start of the end if that develops so you can't accept that um and we have as i say we have like a lot of rules there's a big thing made when we did our fine system at chelsea because it was quite chunky the numbers were big you know and and i kind of wanted to because i felt i've been told about how things have been the year before and i don't like people being late and all those things but i'm also human and i get it and there are loads of things around that that have to um you have to be leaning on you have to move on slightly because this is life we can't it can't be one certain way we all see things differently as we go through it and um i think what you try to do is lay down those rules because you want to give the players a guideline of where you want to go to and i think once they start to respect that and you feel that i think you can then move on to the next stage where you kind of go okay don't forget them lads but they're there but what's the next thing how can we get better on the pitch which is obviously clearly the most important thing and finding people for being one minute late is not necessarily going to make you better on the pitch so it's that's kind of i think those pieces are pretty movable at times so you played for a lot of different coaches over your career and you know that phrase that for people outside of football is often used of when a coach loses a dressing room what do you understand by that then yeah i mean i think i've seen it many a time and i think the communication one is a big deal like we keep coming back to it and it's interesting more you talk about it because if a player or a group of players don't feel like they have something back from you for good or for bad i think you start to lose that that space gets filled with the negativity that we talk about um i think sometimes there's a blame thing in football where maybe it's up times and i've been involved in this again where the group of players for some reason feel like the manager is the one that's letting them down and then you start to feel that relationship breakdown that way and some of it i think is an unfortunate and it's it's quite a cutting phrase and it sounds terrible if i was a manager that you have that you read that you're like oh my god that's really what i don't want that's horrible but i don't think it's as simple as that always i just think sometimes the the balance between players and management or whatever can can break down somewhere along the line so i think you don't you can't walk in fear of that i think you have to work as well as you can um try and communicate try and make the message clear because i think if you don't have a clear message on and off the pitch it's an easy excuse for players to go i didn't quite understand that so you can never assume that players expect that i come in that i want to play a different one that means switching the ball from one side of pitch to the other rather than short passes i have to hammer that daily and train that way daily and then at the end you know what if i lose a dress room when i've tried to do everything i can or lose the dressing room as that headline might say i think you can probably walk away pretty comfortable with it but i think if you lose a dressing room where you haven't addressed loads of issues with players you've made it a bit negative you're not the positive face every morning and you come in and you're upset because they're not doing what you think that they should do i think then as a manager you'd have to take that as a slant on yourself and maybe accept you're going to lose people if you're not going to work in that way and have you become comfortable with the fact that football's a bit of a crazy world and we've already touched on 100 responsibility in this podcast but you can take 100 responsibility you can do your very best job but your success or your failure is still dependent upon the performances yeah of other people have you become comfortable with with that fact or is it still one that you wrestle with a little bit it's one of the reasons i think management there's a lot of reasons it's much more stressful than playing one of them is because as a player you have much more responsibility yourself and that's it kind of thing as long as you prepare right and play as well as you can of course you want to be a team player as a manager your responsibility starts on monday finishes at the end of the game on saturday and it just restarts for the next game all the time consistently so and you know that whatever you're doing the way i've had games this year where i feel like i prepared as well as i possibly could that's great i mean i know what we're playing against the patterns weren't right the shape the team's good my selection feels right and you lose at once where it didn't feel good in the week then you win and i know that's life generally a little bit but there is a lot of businesses out there that you can actually kind of you know have markers towards getting to where you want to get to if you feel like you do the right things and then probably at the end of the year you can kind of go yeah we succeeded because look where our stock's gone up but look where that's enough football doesn't work that way so it's it's very important you reflect at the end of the season saying look at how well you thought you did but you have to understand that there's that crazy element that you talk about um you can't you can't rely on it can't be an excuse because if i keep saying i can mention earlier if i want to blame the players and i might as well forget about it because i have to take the responsibility completely but it's why football's stressful on the line because some days you feel like you've done everything right and it's not happening on match day and that's one of the unfortunate parts of the job i suppose it's also a recruitment business because every business in the world is a recruitment business whether you're running a shop running a factory or running a football club so as long as you get recruitment right you should be okay i'm not talking about getting the best players i'm talking about getting the right players yeah how do you judge what is a right player for you at chelsea what are the things that you look for before you decide yep he's the man for me well yeah you have to look at it in the context of the squad that you have and i had a long year to look at it as i got to chelsea because we didn't we couldn't bring anyone in so you know we had some loans that come back but they'd been they were normally pretty young and they'd come from the championship so um i had a long i've had a long look at it this year in football terms it has to be joined up you need to have the club and yourself and the scouts and people around you hopefully point in the same direction we haven't even touched on the challenge of managing up to a board or a chief exec or anything yeah so and you and you have to do it you know it's one of the most step one on the coaching badge is managing up is a huge thing that they talk about and every i think every manager in the premier league or in football will have different experiences of that managing up and so they all look different um but i think was i before players what do you need what do you look for what do i look for okay so you have to look at the balance of the squad and think well where do we need to improve that that's that's clearly a huge thing um and then um you go through the process of of looking around and what kind of profile you're looking at depending on what position it may be what do i want my team to be do i want them to be physically great do i want them to be really technically great somewhere in the middle and you're obviously going to then recruit players along the basis of those lines that's what your job is as a manager that's why most managers will come in and go can i make two or three signings on my with my vision because it will help affect this team you know because they're the type of players i want to bring in and i didn't have that in year one at chelsea now hopefully we'll see in year two that i can bring that to the team to to help it so when i can stand up and talk about my team and say yeah it is quick and pacey and lots of energy because look we work hard on the training pictures always rule number one but the players we're bringing in are taking us in that direction and they're improving us so i think that process of recruitment is is really really tough but i think it's it's pretty simple when you want to break it down like that they have to improve you they have to go along with the idea of where you want to go with the team and then they have to be good people and good information how do you judge that though you do as much as you can you do as much as you can in terms of um looking at the the you know this is not brand new from me today but the scouting systems are not just looking at players now they're actually looking at their life their social media when you say every good person what how would you define that i want i want them to be players that want to come and improve and feel like they play for chelsea feel like they want to help us and be successful and be part of a team so they'll obviously come with a selfish demeanor i don't want the perfect team mate that sounds too corny they have to be a good teammate of course but they want to come and actually be be good for themselves whatever their motive might be they might want to play for real madrid in four years time that's just life but when they come to chelsea i want them to come and be straight into the team and want to work and be hungry and come in and i want to win and not cause problems and not be not be badly selfish like it's all about me i want someone who wants to do well because they want to be part of a winning team that's it it sounds easy it's really easy to say because you never know till you actually get them through the door but you can learn quite a lot by a phone call a face-to-face meeting a talk with someone that's worked with them before you can do as you have to do as much as you can i think you're in a really interesting stage of your career uh coming into chelsea frank because you see a pattern emerging through a lot of sort of coaching careers that you get to do like the initial excitement stage where you you know where you come in and then people start doing something differently and then you hit that messy middle stage which is where in football coaching that's where most coaches get the sack and they bring somebody in to go back to the start and yet sustained success requires you to get through that messy middle to then start to make to make progress to where you are so looking at your career now you you're about to enter the messy middle stage of that of that second season yeah so what problems do you anticipate are likely to come your way um i think we yeah i agree with you and i think you have to be understanding that you're coming to the messy patch because you have to accept that and i think our messy patch probably happened actually back end of the season i think we achieved a lot this season because nobody expects us to come in a top four but we lost a cup final and then we lost to buy munich and it's a bit of taste for me i go away and i have a bad feeling about those games so i understand that those issues and problems will come again next year i just i and and we as staff have to double down we have to work harder we have to analyze why we conceded 50 goals this year and not just me say yeah it's because of him and he could have done better and he could have done better what could i have done to do better so the messy patch is always going to come and even if you're liverpool now who this year were absolutely incredible i'm sure jurgen klopp has not had his feet up for the last three weeks going okay great players we've got we're just going to kill it again next year it will be where's next so my version of that has to be how can i keep going and improving and be ready for the messy patch but at a club like chelsea where there is a big turnover of coaches that you've experienced through your time how do you manage upwards to make sure that you get that patience to know that you know that like all the the pattern is going to be turbulent at some stage but how do they how do you ensure that you get the patience to keep faith that's not easy that's not that's not an easy answer now i think you can just do your job as well as you can we come back to communicating again i certainly think communicating upwards is a good thing because when you're tough times coming and it's easy to obviously send an email make a phone call after a great win because it's the easiest call ever but after a loss if you then go quiet and you're not really explaining and i i understand that if i was an owner of a club and i'm watching and go oh okay so let's let's see what his reaction is going to be what's the team next week and all these things i think if you can communicate i think it certainly helps that relationship whether it buys you time or not i don't know um but i i can't get too far ahead of myself i can't talk about two or three year plans too much i may say to the media sometimes because i think it's a good thing to kind of like lay out there but at the same time i'm very aware of a club like chelsea that even though we had a transfer ban even though the year was difficult expectation's going to go up hugely next year and i just have to accept that as part of the job and try and go about my job as well as i can and if i am having relationships which mean managing up or managing around me i have to be as good as i can with those because they're all important because the tough time will come and i'll rely on those all those little ones and that might not just be managing up that might be managing the kit man or you know a member of staff around you because i've seen how the the dominoes can fall very quickly and i think if you isolate yourself as a manager or you don't want to open yourself up to to all those relationships along the way i think they they fall much quicker yeah it comes back to understanding doesn't it and it's a hard one because as the manager you're kind of the scratching post at that football club for everyone with an issue from you know someone like the kit man right up to roman abramovich at the top but you know particularly when it comes to managing up and lots of business people listen to this podcast to get decent takeaways for their own business life and a lot of them will manage up as well you need to understand don't you what marina is going through what roman is going through not just from a chelsea perspective but from their personal lives and their their own challenges that they have on a daily basis as well and what frank lampard wants is not to be on an end all of chelsea football club always yeah i mean it's one of the biggest things i i noticed about going from derby which is a big club championship club and going to chelsea which is a champions league club it's bigger the network is huge you know where the training ground is huge i walk from my office down to the canteen there's four five six offices with people doing different work more numbers more people and it's it's when when i realized that derby actually was pretty easy for relationships because there weren't so many people and now when you walk into chelsea i think i can walk in with an idea and okay i think this is how in my opinion how medical should work how the loan department should work how recruitment should work and all these things and if i walk in and think i can actually make everyone think the same as i think i don't think i'm going to do that in two seconds and i think that's coming back to that sort of non-negotiable thing i have to go in and even if i don't quite agree or don't quite like it i have to work with people i don't have to like them don't have to like me that much but they have to respect me in the workplace so i noticed that chelsea was was huge and on a bad day it's easy to go in and kind of ignore some of those offices because we've lost and kind of you know you you have to open up all those conversations so it's not just managing up it's understanding how the analyst feels maybe we've got a great analysis team in that how they feel if we have a loss and they might feel a little bit responsibility unless you go and speak to them about that and take on responsibility yourself then you you have a little bridge burn there and i think those things i think will probably probably i'm lucky that i've been in football something i love doing but i'm guessing in lots of industries that will be a similar thing you cannot go anything i know everything and i'm because i'm the manager you will all play to my tune and i'm very open to understanding trying to understand what doesn't mean i have to agree but i try and understand i've learned that a lot this year to be honest jay from the difference of being at derby who coaches you frank um i think well the the my staff definitely in terms of i'm very open with with the staff that i have and i like to throw things out there i don't like to come in some days i'll come in and say i've thought about last night this is how i wanted to train today but blast for their ideas and their opinions and so sometimes you get things back that help you become a better coach clearly because you trust in them um i always try and uh listen i don't go searching for conversations don't you know i always get asked this did you speak to jose mourinho do you speak to harry redknapp do you speak to like i had those conversations if i had respectfully but i don't go searching for that i feel like i'm taking responsibility by just trying to learn day by day so if i can become a better coach i think it's it's up to me it's up to me to be open and take in things what about at home with your wife christine because she's not working for she definitely coaches she's not well there you go because i don't think you have to just come from a football background to be able to give advice because your entire life as soon as you arrive at coppermore at stanford bridge is only about personal relationships it doesn't matter what walk of life you're from if you know how to deal with those and i'm sure she does yeah i'm very fortunate on that one jake and you know i i might give you a great headline out of this podcast if one of the papers nicknames but because i do throw a lot of things off christine and this she's not like picking what fallback we're going to apply to the weekend but at the same time if i have certain issues which are lifey issues or and actually football issues sometimes i can i can definitely go home i'm fortunate to have that because i think she's obviously had a she's very work orientated she's had you know a really good career in what she does and i really sort of i obviously love her very much but i really respect her for how she she's got on in her career and works and and how diligent she's like when we're at home and she's been working recently doing a tv program early morning one and we're sitting and i'm doing my patterns at night we've got a young baby there and she's doing her notes at night i think i've said it to you recently but it's sitting there for two hours yeah and we kind of look at each other and go we really expect to be in this position like is this really we haven't spoken for a while because we're working away but don't get me wrong we have lots of downtime but i i love the fact that i have somebody there that gets working environments and i love to bounce because it's a different view yeah it's a different opinion i can get bogged down i spend so much time in cobham i almost live in my chelsea tracksuit sometimes i have to take off when i get home because i was like i'm looking at the chelsea badge i've been at cobham all day i'm in an environment and my staff all the time it's great sometimes i go christian what do you think about this probably i've got a player here and you know he didn't turn up for training yesterday but he's still probably need him at the weekend what do you think she might go either is he got a girlfriend wife it's a problem have you spoken to them maybe you should speak to them and i'm like yeah you know like so she's not my like life coach as such but i'm very fortunate to have someone to to bounce things off at home and please don't take this the wrong way take it in the spirit in which it's intended right okay you're only a football manager right whereas she looks at this without all the baggage you carry of football being this huge business in this great world and the the happiness of thousands of people is reliant upon you doing a good job right the fact that she isn't in that yeah probably makes her a better person to give you advice than going to jody morris who i know is a brilliant assistant for you it's sometimes it's better maybe for christine who's not in that world to give you the advice it's definitely it absolutely simplified well simplify might not be the right word but it's a different view like i said but you're right i've got great stuff jodie morris joe edwards chris jones who my close staff it's more rounded from her and yeah it's more and it and i and i again i appreciate you can become not bogged down but it's the same message and we sit for hours at work talking obviously planning and discussing things but to come on that round like kristin has a bit of a joke you know with me at home when we're watching football constantly all the time and she's like it's almost fed up and you know i'm talking football and the conversation probably comes with boring and she she does reflect on the fact that it's only kicking a ball and it's only like a game and she's not criticizing on that point she's almost i think samwell i think you're trying to get that she's almost like you're becoming really really you know inten intense about this and maybe you're not seeing a bit of clarity in this instance when you really you've got to look at it and it's a game and you're dealing with people yeah and that's kind of the most important thing really it's very simple there's a lot more to it of course but come back to that maybe it makes you realize what it is see but that surprises me that you described that you can be quite myopic because again like if we go back to your early childhood you went to a school that was preaching more about being a rounded individual you know again reading in your books you say that you take a real interest in politics and and life outside of football do you feel that football management is sort of making you that way more myopic order is it that's the nature of the job or it's you that's there no i think i think well i think i'm changing anyway but it's definitely changed me i mean simple things like my interest in politics i the year i worked in the media spent a lot of time with jake and i used to like read certain newspapers read articles read different kind of books i don't i don't i just started watching a couple of netflix recently but i haven't watched netflix and i like interesting things like that i can watch you give me and i came away from that a lot and i and i just watched football and i sit and do patterns and plan training and talk football and i think you had for your own health actually and for sometimes a bit of um balance certainly in your life lockdown actually brought that back to me a little bit it was really nice to not go game game game game game for a period and reflect and think and talk about different things so i think you'll be careful that you do have to be obsessive you do have to work pretty much everybody hour you can to do yeah yeah you do you do because i think otherwise everybody would be like pep guardiola like it's not like that he's the best and the european club are the best possible team have great success because of the input from them themselves i can't sit here and say what is high performance and say or hard work and then come away from that it has to be there in a huge sense but i'm just talking about more balance there but i'd say like when you read about someone like guardiola that one of his best friends is a is a poet and a playwright you know like he's got he does seem to have a rounded friendship group that he isn't just all about football with him and i'm i'm just interested that yeah you know like again reading that you say you've got friends at work in the city your friends do a variety of jobs they can drink about ten points i'm surprised that you think you have to be an obsessive about it but but i think you get to be successful i think you can be both i think you can be both i i read i've read a few books on pep guardiola and his time in uh bayern munich and he became obsessive about the system he was struggling in the beginning to get it and it was you know stories of him sitting up through the night through the night and all these things and this was pre-management for me when i read this and i was like wow that's like that's intense and i understand why this fella is as good as he is because without that detail you can't get to where you want to be not in the modern day i mean the the the the old days of um saying that you know what the great liverpool team that is and i hear pundits say this sometimes oh it's great we should have of size every day we used to move the ball so quick we were a great team that cannot be done anymore it cannot be done on that level you need to be absolutely on point in terms of detail because otherwise someone else will be and the adage of you can't blame your players will be a very true one yes of course you need good players absolutely you need good players but if you don't have that detail and everyone will have their probably their ways of you know my friends a poet you know i read about pep guardiola um speaking with people who play chess and loving people for that kind of different angle and those sort of things i really respect i do search for those kind of things but when it comes back down to it i do feel it's the input of how much you want to work around your team to be better that is going to define your management well do does burnout concern you then um yes i think i can i can see it i can see it i read jurgen klopp the other day talking about he may take time off and luckily enough he can probably absolutely choose and that is rightly so and he may enjoy that and may not come back and i get that thought process so i get burnt out from the idea of the manager i get it maybe from the idea of the message from the players up to the manager you hear about great managers and teams that have like a three or four year cycle i understand that from both sides and i think this job we're in is so intense and there's so much expectation and pressure that i think you burnout can be and i think you need to take every moment you can to recharge within the year and i understand managers that want to take time away from it why do it then um because i like i do love it um and when i had my year off it was the most beautiful thing to do because i was very intense as a player on myself for a long time and i needed to break away from that but then i had a burning desire to get back in and i had a burning desire to to try and be i have a burning dive to try and be the best i can be at what i do and i'm lucky i do love football and i want to be the best i can be in it so if you took it away from me tomorrow and that's always possible in this game i'd miss it i know that for sure i love doing it i would just want to finish by taking it back to your mum and the quote that we both read in the book where you said a great bit of advice from her was just be kinder to yourself how are you getting on with that uh yeah i'm i'm okay with it i'm okay with it because um i tried to i mean when you mentioned christine i've got a fantastic supportive wife i've got three daughters you know um one relatively young and my elder two we've all just been away for a few days in in the break that we've had and and those are moments that are just brilliant for me and actually come away from so i try and be nice be kind to yourself maybe it sounds a bit like a false kind of motto now but i do have to have time when you've got good people around you and you look at your daughters and my wife and then those are the moments that i can be and i'm in work mode a lot i'm in work mode a lot i can't change that so when i can snap out of it christine snaps me out of it sometimes with our own personal moments i try and enjoy them and and i do enjoy them i try i do enjoy them that's why it's important i think the people around you that nourish you away from the world that you're in and you have to be quite ruthless i think sometimes rio ferdinand spoke about this i'm robin van persie about cutting away the the drains and only leaving the fountains yeah i mean i have a lot with that joke i mean i you know my phone and my messages and sometimes you get a lot of people messaging and different things and it's not all negative it's not of course it's not like i've got friends that i don't see as much as i used to and all that thing and that's not like the cut loose i heard robin van persie and was talking specific reasons i think he moved away which helped his career i i generally don't have the time uh the way i work at the moment now and i feel bad sometimes and i'll try and find a time where you have to put things on hold you have to put a lot of things on hold but the inner circle and the tight people around you yeah you have to rely on really good people because this job is extreme in terms of football and it takes a lot out of you and i'm very lucky that i can have the wife that tells me to snap out of it in a good way and we go on and have a date night and a dinner or we do something different those those things are great and then i have to not talk about football for two or three hours and um that's it that's the balance you try and strike we're going to move on to our quick fire questions in just a second but before we get to those just the final one about your your daughter patricia who's how old two years old so nearly so nearly two of all the things you've learned and all the journey you've been on how do you employ that now having this beautiful little almost two-year-old and you're such an important part of her life how do you take those lessons you've learned to give her as much as you can um i just i i i give her as much as i can i don't know how to to sort of find out why not me but i i try and be the the dad and as i did with my two elder daughters as well and obviously still try to do as they get older this obviously the relationship changes but with patricia a lockdown came obviously a difficult time for everybody in the world but for me in terms of home life and being able to devote more time to it it was the big plus of a tough time for everybody for me at home because i could give her more time and i do we talk about the relationship with my mum and dad i want to be a parent more like my mum i'll say that truthfully because she i am more aligned to that of trying to to have calm words be a smiley positive face and all those things as she grows up and i try and do that you know i'm always um dad that seems to go away to work quite a lot and probably come back in her very young years but sometimes you get that big bubbly smile and excitement because you are the one that doesn't do all the nitty-gritty jobs that christine has to do and i just come back and make her laugh and be funny it's just a great position sometimes but that's what i want to do and and bring her up with good manners you know i wanted to be a polite young girl as i tried to do with my older daughters because that's what made me proud i don't care i do care that they get their great grades when they get to the gcc's in a level time but if they're good people then that's that's all i really want from them brilliant i thought there was a really nice um comment you made that game at anfield earlier this year where you you were caught making some comments yeah and i really liked the fact that when you were interviewed you said your main concern was that your elder daughters would see you using bad language and that was the bit that you regretted not necessarily yeah i i did regret that and when that broke the next day i i clearly felt it as i was doing it but when it broke the next day and friend of mine sent it to me in the morning i was a bit embarrassed by it because i was in the moment but in the moment i was like i fell we turned up and it was the easiest day for liverpool ever won the league they went goals up early in the game and few things happened with the bench i'm not going to go into the detail but my feeling was i want to protect my club my players i don't want them to i've been and i i didn't have the problem with liverpool celebrating at all i've been lucky enough i've been there i've been with chelsea won the league quite early one year and you can sit there and everything feels great my feeling was i want to be there where they are you know out of respect and i've probably jumped the gun i definitely didn't mean any disrespect to jurgen klopp because i've got huge admiration for him but what i felt had gone on it was an impulse reaction which i would happily when i do see him i'll i'll put that one right um but also i care about my job and it came out in the wrong way and even i explained that to my daughters when i got home and i'll be brutally honest it's not the first time i've heard it from me in the wrong moment so you know i do try and um practice what i preach but i suppose in adult life that doesn't always work that way but yeah i was just not just my own daughters because you've got you know millions of chelsea fans around the world whether you're young or old it's not the way i like to carry myself but in talking about high level sport you can't take passion out of the game and um it just came out of me in one little slope right here we go then quick-fire questions the three non-negotiable behaviors that you and the people around you have to buy into um i feel like i'm going over myself again here but hard work yeah um well trying to keep it to the right knowing you may be hard work three times over kind of it kind of feels like that yeah it kind of feels like you know we've spoken about hard work a lot in this podcast yeah hard work and responsibility yeah i mean responsibilities is a good one to take responsibility like i mentioned there about the blame game and the idea that's a very easy one to get into in any form of life i think so to you know to to work hard to take responsive responsibility for yourself um be a nice person i suppose that is almost every time the third one isn't it the people go with the hard work and the relentlessness and then they're like actually you also you've got to do it you can do but you can do both you can do both what advice would you give a teenage fan just starting out oh uh can't say work hard can i uh no i think um i i think to sort of you know this is not cut an answer for you but i think to be um just to stay calm through through tough times and and be and see the big big picture because it's very easy to to react to and and good and bad in different ways um you know i felt very fortunate to have the career i had and now be manager of chelsea football club but within that there's loads of things that go on so i would almost say to him be prepared young man you know i mean be prepared for good and for bad and um and just you know keep going back to it but work as hard as you can and when you come away from that be a good person in fact before hard work be a good person and then when you work work as hard as you can and um dealing with the good and the bad leads us onto this one how did you react to your greatest failure um well which one of my failures you want to choose whichever one you think is the greatest i guess yeah i mean we look we got knocked out world cups 2006 i had something like 30 shots and didn't score and got absolutely crucified for it um how did i react to that i probably consumed a fair bit of alcohol on the evening off the game that we got knocked out and as you tend to do um and probably i'll make myself sound like the best sports whenever if i went i went away and worked hard and got better again because it's never that simple of course sometimes you take it on the chin for a while and um so but i think i probably hopefully you learn as you get older with the failures because i have had a lot of failures is that the older you get you kind of understand what they are keep your head down that when you haven't when you fail the last thing you should do is open your mouth and start shouting about what went wrong and what might have them who else maybe was involved in that it's to stay quiet and then just perform just come back and perform at a later date and i think i hopefully did that most times i've failed are you happy yes yes i'm very happy in my home life which is the most important thing of course and i'm happy in the job that i'm in and and i love doing it and of course there are lots of tough times along the way and sometimes you're portraying happiness when maybe you're thinking about training tomorrow how good we can be this season i'm always doing that but i'm very happy doing what i'm doing how important is legacy to you um four that's a good one not not that important and i'll give an example of that quickly is that if i was worried about my legacy at chelsea i wouldn't have taken a manager's job so i i'm i'm happy that it's there but you can't be that can't be your goal maybe when i'm on a really really old man hopefully if i live long enough and you sit back at the end of it you can go yeah legacy of that period or that period of that period but the minute i don't think about it i think legacy is something to think about or to for other people to talk about with you so i'm not that concerned about it and if you could give one golden rule for a high-performance life rank what would that be um i think you probably know again surely no but i mean listen high performance life career team whatever it looks different for everybody so it's really hard to give advice you know sir alex ferguson had an incredibly high performing team and career for a long long time so do other managers now they all look different and and i appreciate that so i wouldn't try and give that i spoke a lot there about working hard and having the right ethics but it looks different for everybody so i suppose do it do it as you feel it as you as what you see in front of you with absolute demands on yourself to try and be as good as you can be because the desire to improve daily is a huge thing that maybe i haven't quite picked up on enough there but you every day you wake up it's what can i do better and never settle well that's probably the one of the main things yeah brilliant thank you so much thank you cheers agreeing to be part of the now it's podcast absolutely

Channel: The High Performance Podcast

Views: 271,205

Rating: 4.9327793 out of 5

Keywords: Football, Podcast, The High Performance Podcast, Jake Humphrey, Damian Hughes, Liquid thinker, CHELSEA, frank lampard, frank lampard chelsea, west ham, high performance podcast frank lampard, lampard, malang sarr, ben chilwell, derby county, premier league, chelsea transfer, lampard press conference, frank lampard press conference, chelsea fc, timo werner chelsea, sky sports football, lampard interview, high performance habits, high performance podcast, high performance

Id: BnFnoQ87jOE

Length: 67min 11sec (4031 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/hs52]

It was great listening to Frank and understanding his mindset on several aspects in football and life in general.

Absolutely loved it.

[u/csquare4hunnid]

Loved the interview as well. “Be very positive but have an edge”. I think this quote embodies how modern day managers need to be to be successful. As if we didn’t know, Frank and his staff seem to be very in touch with the players and understand the player psyche on a professional and personal level. The interview seems to reinforce their purpose of bringing in a high character staff member like Anthony Barry who can get the most out of their players. Frank knows when to build a guy up after a good performance and when to motivate a guy to reach further and unlock their full potential after a poor one. Frank gets it.

[u/ZealousCharmer]

Fun fact: Lampard chose this church for the interview be cause he wanted to ask for divine forgiveness for how much Chelsea ruined football this summer.

[u/spawton4]

This is great. Never heard of this podcast before but Jake Humphreys and Damian Hughes were really good, thoughtful hosts. I'll be checking out other episodes now I think.

[u/soulprovidr]

Really enjoyed this.

[u/angelomirkovic]

I can't wait for mid season when we talk about actual football rather than growing expectations and increasing pressure ffs