Lampard sows hope and belief with brilliant debut win

I'm made up with the manager and more so with his support team.

Great players don't become great managers, in fact very rarely.

In my view! Cruyff, was as close as it gets.

But Frank Lampard was an exceptional and proven footballer.

Let's hope his belief and with his Team, they can turn the corner.
For Everton – UTFT!

I can't really grade him on transfers yet, and will hopefully get a better idea of who needs to go and who needs to come in during the summer.

Hopefully Godfrey's injury isn't as bad as it looked, and we can continue the momentum on into Tuesday against Newcastle.

Howard Kendall – great player and great manager.

Frank is a good appointment and the players will love playing for him as he will get them playing some good football. I saw some good patterns of play today and some good play in the middle of the field.

The young players at the club will all bust a gut to play for Lampard, I think he will be a good man-manager as well and be close to the players. Paul Clement is also a good coach and Ashley Cole brings a winning mentality as well.

Pep, Carlo, Kendall, Cruyff, Del Bosque, unfortunately Dalglish. All great players.

How Zidane isn't seen as a great manager after 3 back-to-back Champions Leagues with a team that wasn't great.

Miguel Munoz won the European cup 5 times as a player and manager and La Liga something stupid like 14 times.

Even Trapatoni has 3 European Cups across his career.

You could add Beckenbauer, Capello, Mancini in there. All won multiple major titles as a manager and player.

I'd say maybe even Conte, Simone and Lampard will be in there by the time their careers are over.

We still have issues at the back with decision making and organisation. In the build-up to their penalty you could see perfectly the limited time that Lampard has had to work with the team. Michael Keane was bellowing to his fellow defenders to get the line higher, a degree of leadership and confidence that he has been particularly lacking lately. All the defenders responded apart from Mykolenko who played Toney onside. Organisation can fix that but the will to get forward rather than sink deeper was refreshing.

We also still have problems with defensive transition in the midfield. Allan, who struggles at time with possession, is still excellent at recovering ground when a player gets behind him. Andre Gomes less so thankfully the compactness yesterday limited these occurrences but it's still worrying against better opposition.

Nevertheless, the positivity alone is fantastic. Newcastle is the real test now.

I agree with Ben (2) Frank wasn't my first choice either but I think he has played an absolute blinder so far. He is saying the right things, clearly communicating what he wants and what he appreciates. The players and fans are going to love him, for now anyway. I am not getting carried away with one win but I can't help but wonder what might have been if we had the right type of manager in at the beginning of Mosh's reign with a team of top coaches and a forward thinking and completely autonomous DOF.

Frank got them playing forward, wonderful running and intent from Gray and Gordon (I like him more and more each game, he could become a top player). Gomes and Allan were very good, special praise for my boy Andrè who is often hung out to dry on here (sometimes for good reason, sometimes because he is one of the whipping boys on TW), credit where it's due.

We now have a bloated squad again but DVDB will go and I doubt will be coming back (we can't afford him but possibly a second loan?) Delph, Tosun, Sigi, Kenny and a few others will leave, freeing up money for FFP. I personally don't think we need much, I would look to try and offload Gbamin (unlikely but maybe a loan?) Davies (needs a new start elsewhere to reinvigorate him) and Rondon. I think we will also sell Yerry and Richy in the summer. I am loathe to lose either of them but it makes sound business sense to sell now. We can use SOME of that money (some should go to balancing the books) to buy Gilmour, a young CB (whilst developing Brainthwaite into a regular starter), back up striker and of course Richy's replacement.

Early days, but it's great to be looking forward again.

COYFB. (F for Frankie).

Yeah, of course, Villa were a completely different proposition with their really aggressive high press, but this is the way to play and Brentford (a team who let you out far more easily) are definitely the type of side we should be practising on in readiness for the big teams. I didn't get to yesterday's game so I can't comment on the atmosphere, but it certainly sounded as though the faithful are behind Lampard.

I listened to an interview where Lampard said he had concentrated on trying to make the players braver in possession and movement.

Of course there are tougher battles to come, but we are through to the next round and we played some very decent football to build the confidence.

Asking players to be "braver in possession" and urging players to break ranks and offer themselves for the forward pass may sound basic but, after years of rigidity, it will be music to the ears of many a long-suffering Evertonian.

Good start. By looking to change attitudes and instil belief rather than focus entirely on tactics and formations, young Lampard may have already stolen the march on his predecessors.

This is going to be interesting...

Ancelotti's modesty turned out to be disingenuous and Benitez was haughty and obtuse. They both had the bad habit of blaming the paucity of the squad which was pretty rich given it finished 8th under Silva (higher than either of them had us in).

In contrast, Frank has been talking up the players so that it seems unlikely he'll be bemoaning the quality of the squad if things turn sour. That this set of players (even with the removal of a No 10 due to legal reasons and our main striker due to injury) should be so low in the table is down to the stubborn former coach who stupidly squandered possession so that we were susceptible to dropping deep and conceding set pieces we could not defend.

The age of this squad means we are perfectly set up to press high and have plenty of possession. Frank has seen that by what went on yesterday.

I am excited to see Dele because he offers a lot. Hopefully the main body of the squad will build momentum so that he can be eased in.

I have no idea about Donny van de Beek, other than he comes from the same conveyor belt as Davy Klaassen. However, it doesn't seem to be his physicality that has prevented him progressing at Man Utd but more their illogical recruitment and personnel selections. Hopefully he too will have a part to play in the coming months.

Not surprised Pickford would be jittery as he's probably been instructed to do something differently and is on his eighth coach since he joined in that heady and damaging summer of 2017.

But I wouldn't expect this to be the start of a dip for him. He's really got it together in the last year or so.

You are right about keeping it on the deck. If we can keep possession, we won't be so reliant on needing to fall back deep and having a destroyer type to hunt the ball back.

What is the view? Confidence gone after those two awful years of injury? His quadriceps was in training and his Achilles was also a training injury.

See if we can get a loan at a top club in France/Spain where the pace is less frenetic. Build up his confidence. Get a few games under his belt. And then bring back in 2023-24 or ship out depending on how well he has done.

Or is it nothing to do with confidence, just not good enough?

I think it's a complex situation. He had all the physical attributes to potentially "make it" with us. Yes, he had a bad first game, a real baptism of fire, then several horrendous career-threatening injuries.

I suspect he's lost some pace and power but also confidence, this combination has meant we just haven't seen him trusted to build back up. Can't they give him some games in the U23s? I was so excited when he came to us initially and thought we'd replaced Gueye.

I feel for him. I would try to loan him back to Mainz and see if familiarity and a slower league could build him back up. We should watch him carefully.

From all accounts, Lyndon included, Gomes played a blinder, as did the front three. This leaves me wandering how the manager is going to find a starting spot for even one of Dele Alli, Donny van de Beek, or Dominic Calvert-Lewin if he is fit.

I think that's where they modern game has differed from our traditional manager model; they are coaches. Howard Kendall was a manager. Colin Harvey was the coach. I see Lampard as more of a coach. We could do well to get someone in who looks after the broader aspects of managing the football structure of the club and allow him to do what I think he will be good at. And I say that as a self-declared on the fence person with his appointment. I'd let him focus on coaching and the first team.

A lot of the examples of those who do tend to be great players who mostly managed super clubs and inherited good players. That was often the argument with Ancelotti at Everton, which was a fair counter point of view. We didn't and don't have enough good players for those type of manager/coaches. In fairness to Carlo, he did manage lower down the spectrum before hitting the big time manager wise.

Pep; Barcelona, Bayern Munich & modern-day Manchester City. It's almost impossible to fail. Pick the team that the Sporting Director / DoF has assembled over years. Sorry, I'm simplifying that and I do not doubt his abilities whatsoever, but I hope you get my point.

Even Dalglish, who I don't mind saying is probably the best British footballer I've witnessed (Kevin Sheedy was technically Irish), inherited a team that had dominated England and Europe for 2 decades. He literally had to turn up and pick the team. Once it started going wrong, he went into meltdown. And when it required something else to revive the glory days by that standard, he wasn't even close to being able to do so.

From "Head the Ball" to "Enjoy the Ball"

Summarises it for me.