Frank Lampard's Secret: Why 203 Was Inevitable

Frank Lampard, Chelsea’s midfield maestro, recently took over Sir Bobby Tambling’s mantle of the highest scorer for the club with a season-defining brace against favorite whipping boys Aston Villa. The vice-captain, first drafted into the Blues’ side for a paltry A?11million from West Ham way back in 2001, has lived up to his uncle Harry Redknapp’s bold prediction at an Upton Park fan’s forum. “He’ll go right to the top”, Rednkapp insisted in the face of smirks, and accusations of nepotism. Even he couldn’t have predicted the enormity of Lampard’s achievements.

Frank Lampard may wave off the plaudits with an embarrassed shrug and insist he didn’t believe he had a shot at scoring 50 career goals for Chelsea, much less topple Tambling, but that’s just his characteristic modesty at work. The fact of the matter is, Lampard was not only destined to be one of Chelsea’s elite, it was perhaps almost inevitable that he would go on to best this long-standing record.

To understand what Lampard is capable of, to understand what makes him tick, and to gauge his strengths – you must first look in the unlikeliest of places. At his Achilles heel, his weaknesses, his failings and his fears.

At the age of 18, having seen his father and uncle banished from Upton Park, after a disappointing season, and having to deal with the burden that at least part of their predicament stemmed from their willingness to stick up for him, couldn’t have been easy. The questions inside his mind, about whether he’d be able to make it big in a side without the supportive shoulder of a family member, must have weighed heavily on his mind. And that’s why, even to this day, Frank Lampard remains vocally grateful to Claudio Ranieri – Chelsea’s first managerial casualty under the Roman era – for showing enough faith to purchase him from a none-too-grateful West Ham for it seemed like a bit of a gamble.

If Lampard got a kick out of that statement of support, he was in for an even bigger treat. Mourinho who replaced Ranieri, and came in to Stamford Bridge in a flash of glory, really made a giant of the young midfielder.

In his first season in charge, Mourinho walked into the showering area and told Lampard that he was the best player in the world, and that he needed to live up to that billing to win titles. Lampard writes about that incident, noting he left the shower feeling 10 feet tall. For an exceptionally bright young man – 12 GCSEs, an A in Latin, and an IQ level above 150 – Lampard needed the light that Ranieri’s and Mourinho’s faith brought into the darkest recesses of his mind.

Lampard, as even an occasional watcher of the game will tell you, is not the most athletically gifted player either. In a club like Chelsea that was, prior to this season, the one with arguably the most physically imposing squad, Lampard’s 6-foot frame was understandably considered middling at best. With behemoths like Drogba, Alex, Ivanovic, Ballack and Terry for company, the midfielder was not exactly Chelsea’s battering ram. It would seem then, being a central/attacking midfielder was not only Lampard’s calling, it was possibly his only option.

As for pace, Lampard has seemingly next to none. In contrast to the Thierry Henrys and the Cristiano Ronaldos, Frank Lampard is barely ever considered by stopwatch statisticians.

Nor is he even a great tackler or dribbler of the ball. Lampard has been without blame in a defensive midfielder’s role. Makalele, Yaya Youre and Xabi Alonso are all higher-rated in terms of defensive midfield responsibilities.

Lampard’s success doesn’t stem from his ability to get the ball out of a tight spot like Mata, Hazard or even Zola could. When faced with two or more players bearing down on him, Lampard is quite often left with little time to work his way out. You’d be forgiven for imagining him almost pleading for more time on the ball.

So why, then, of all the players that have come and gone through the hallowed halls of Chelsea FC, would it have been Lampard who was destined to break Bobby Tambling’s record? Why, in a club that has boasted some of the best attacking talent in the game, would the honor have fallen to a midfielder like Frank Lampard – and not an even a conventional attacking midfielder at that?

Because Lampard is not a midfielder. He never was.

He’s a striker.

A striker with allegedly no pace, no dribbling ability, no poaching instinct, no brute strength, no twinkling toes and no magical feet. Ordinarily, that would doom a striker to an early retirement. But for everything Lampard supposedly lacks, he more than makes up for in intelligence, and a certain je ne sais quoi.

Lampard’s long been derided as being a deflector of goals, as opposed to being a creator of them. But, contrary to the jibes of his detractors, being a serial ‘deflector’ of goals, takes loads of intelligence. It’s not like Super Frankie stands rooted to the ground in the centre of the pitch, while everyone else around plays pinball hoping the ball eventually careens off of him into the opposing goal. Instead, Lampard’s right there in the thick of the action. His talent of the being in the right place, at the right time, means he’s more likely that anyone else to ‘deflect’ the ball just enough to alter the scoreline.

Whether the ball’s coming off of him last, in a melee and creeping across the line, or if his “wide” shot taken from outside the box just so happens to find a fortuitous leg on the way that caresses the ball past the goalkeeper, Lampard isn’t so much a bystander as he is the architect. To borrow a line from ‘The Matrix’ – Where others see coincidence, Lampard sees consequence.

As for the certain je ne sais quoi that Frank Lampard posesses, it might be broken down into a couple of more tangible attributes.

The first is his durability. Once seen as virtually indestructible in the way he avoided injury, Lampard then had two considerably long spells of injury-induced layoffs – both of which threw Chelsea’s season off the rails. And yet, with the writing seemingly on the wall, Lampard bounced back to reassert his primacy on the field, in the squad. At least some portion of that longevity of his must be attributed to his “striker’s” role from midfield.

Since Lampard was not fielded up front, the odds of him being hacked down in and around the penalty box, drop dramatically. Also, with the relative luxury of being positioned in midfield, Lampard’s striking instincts are given the added benefit of time and a bigger-picture view of the overall proceedings. While most strikers only have an eye for the goal and have to operate on cat-like reflexes, Lampard functions as a “striker” coming into the thick of things with a plan of action already in his head.

Second, Lampard’s striker mentality is uncluttered by the demons that plagued Schevchenko and Torres. Playing in midfield, the implicit acceptance that a midfielder’s primary role is not to score goals, is a bonus. While an official striker’s missed opportunities can be mentally draining, a midfielder can afford to go a few games without scoring without everyone clamoring to write his epitaph. A clear mind is a footballer’s greatest asset and with Lampard generally being seen as scandal-free, he has little weighing him down when he takes the field.

Lampard’s final and most telling attribute, is his ability to invent a cause and a crusade. This is a man with a mission: someone who always finds another windmill to tilt at, and an icon unwilling to rest on his laurels.

In Terry, Lampard found the perfect foil. While Terry’s battles are fought out in the public eye, Lampard the trusted lieutenant fights them in the dark. Both men derive their strengths from these episodes, but Lampard is clearly the tougher of the two.

His first battle was proving to everyone his wasn’t a case of nepotism. His second was living up to Mourinho’s trust in him. Another was fighting back after losing his mother. Yet another was playing his cards diplomatically during the player-power revolution that shook the Ancelotti era. The injuries must figure prominently too. A more recent one was his fighting Villas-Boas’ attempts at turning him obsolete. The next was holding the team together and leading them to a Champions League triumph. His latest battle entails proving to the club’s owner, he deserves a contract extension.

On the surface, Lampard seems calm, collected and reassured. But beneath that exterior, lies a man waging a constant battle against raging seas, shifting dunes and thin ice. It’s this battle-hardened warrior within that keeps Lampard ticking, not the genial and affable celebrity we know. Frank Lampard isn’t the kind of man to stick his arm out and command the raging storms to be still. He’s the quiet warrior who backs himself to stand still, while the storms rage on.

That’s why there was nobody else who could’ve lasted as long as he has, or performed consistently at the level he has, or scored as many goals as he has.

Sir Bobby Tambling may have held on to the record for this long. But it was always going to be Frank Lampard’s for the taking.

Frank Lampard’s Secret: Why 203 Was Inevitable

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