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WHY ABRAMOVICH SACKED LAMPARD

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Daily Mail of Britain has revealed that Frank Lampard reportedly clashed with Chelsea  transfer chief, Marina Granovskaia over Kepa Arrizabalaga’s treatment and his insistence on signing Declan Rice before he was sacked by the club.   

The 42-year-old was axed on Monday afternoon following a woeful run of results which has seen Chelsea slip down to ninth in the Premier League table. 

According to The Athletic, one of the reasons for Lampard’s dismissal was due to his relationship with influential director Granovskaia becoming fractured after several disagreements.

Tensions behind the scenes first emerged 12 months ago when Lampard publicly implied criticism of the hierarchy for their reluctance to recruit in the January window.

However, the same report claims the real bone of contention was when the manager began to drop the club’s £72million record-signing Kepa towards the backend of last season after he had made a number of high-profile errors.

At the end of the last campaign, Lampard requested funds to sign a new keeper despite Chelsea chiefs reportedly telling him he should put his arm around Kepa and try to rebuild his confidence. 

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Kepa was unhappy with how Lampard dealt with the situation and is said to have felt that he did not provide sufficient support – and the Chelsea boss eventually got his way, replacing him as the club’s No 1 by signing Edouard Mendy from Rennes.

Last summer’s transfer window threw up more issues as Lampard tried to offload defender Antonio Rudiger despite the player being highly regarded by the Chelsea hierarchy.

Matters deteriorated further when Lampard continued to push to sign Declan Rice from West Ham at the annoyance of his bosses. A number of key figures at the club had reservations about the England international while the same report claim the club were ‘wary’ of the potential embarrassment of buying back a player who they had released as a teenager in a deal worth in excess of £70million. 

Lampard was determined to acquire Rice and also Burnley’s James Tarkowski and continually tried to persuade the club to broker a deal, but Granovskaia was not keen on either player and in the end neither joined. 

In the dressing room, there was also a growing discontent at Lampard’s handling of Chelsea’s recent run of poor results with players said to be ‘hurt’ by some of his public criticism. 

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The final nail in the coffin for Lampard came last week when Chelsea were beaten 2-0 at Leicester. 

Lampard led Chelsea to a 3-1 win over Luton Town in the FA Cup on Sunday but it was too little, too late.

The club are looking to replace Lampard as quickly as possible and have already opened up talks with former Paris Saint-Germain boss Thomas Tuchel about taking the position.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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