Frank Lampard answers 16 questions you've ALWAYS wanted to ask a Championship manager! | Unpacked

Hi, I'm Frank Lampard, and this is Unpacked. How difficult is it transitioning from being a player to a manager? I think the first thing that you have to realise is that your life's going to change in terms of responsibilities, workload. You can't be as selfish as you can be as a player, where it's more considering yourself. You have so many things you have to think about, and I think it's first understanding the lifestyle change and being prepared for that. Your responsibilities become much heavier, but you have to be ready to accept that to start with. But I think the important thing is that you embrace every challenge, realise you're starting slightly again in what you're doing and be ready to learn every day. Do you have a dress code for your assistant manager or can they wear what they want? I don't have a dress code for my assistant manager. I wouldn't say that they could also wear what they want. I think I'm fortunate here. We know how we work here as staff. And on match day, the coaching staff wear our club kit, track suits, etc. And I tend to be smart, casual. And I like to keep it that way and not go too off the wall. How different is the pressure of being a player compared to a manager? The pressure of being a manager is much more than being a player. Having lived the player's life, I understand that you have a lot of individual pressures. Good times, bad times. You have to be very resilient. But as a manager, you take immediately onto your shoulders the responsibility of the results, performance, individuals, taking care of staff and just trying to get the best out of the whole football club. So I think it can mean the highs become higher, but the lows can become lower. So you have to be around balance. But responsibility is much more as a manager. On a non-match day, what time do you arrive at the training ground and leave? On a regular training day, I would arrive between 7 and 7.30 at the training ground. We would eat breakfast as staff together at the training ground, where we knock around a few ideas, watch what's happening in the world. And then we'll have a meeting after that to plan training, which we would have generally planned the previous day. But just to lock down everything, speak with medical, find out that all the players are OK and all these things. And then we train at 11 o'clock. So there's a couple of two hours or so between that where it goes pretty quickly because we're working away with some individual meetings or preparing for training. And once we've finished training, we've finished our lunch, which we all eat together here. We have brilliantly cooked food at Coventry with amazing chefs on the team. Then we'll spend the afternoon making sure we prepare for the next day, talking about many things with the game that's coming up. But I'm a believer with us as staff and I guess I have to lead this. But once our work is done, I'm happy for people to get back to their family. So a long day could be till five, six o'clock. If our work is done, I'm very happy for people to get back and see their family. How far in advance do you plan your tactical approach for games, particularly when playing every three to four days? We would plan probably for the next match as soon as the last one finishes. But, you know, there could be a different time between games. Sometimes the turnaround is quick. It's important you get very fast and moving. If you have a longer week, sometimes you're waiting on players' fitness. You're waiting to see that you've got a player that you really need, who feels pivotal to the game plan, etc. So I think it's important that you have a clear idea as quickly as possible. I'll move very quickly on to the next opposition. And then sometimes I will leave myself, you know, a lot of wriggle room for how I felt in the week. You watch more games, you feel slightly different. So we just try and stay on top of it. The only important thing is that we do all the work. And once it's delivered to the players in terms of meeting them on pitch work, it has to be very, very clear. When you're a coach, you can study an opposition for a long time and you can see a thousand things because we have this advantage of watching with wide angle and watching teams again and again. But for the players, they need absolute clarity. And as long as you get to that point, then that's when you feel like you've done all you can in terms of preparation. As a manager, how do you come up with a philosophy or playing style? I think as a manager, and speaking for myself, having been a player for many years, I think the idea of the philosophy or playing style when you leave playing and become a manager, I think the important thing is you realise what you want your team to be and what you want it to look like. I was fortunate enough to play in many, many very good teams and play against many good teams. I think you have to be very clear and simple with the vision of how you want your team to be. I think from that point, you can work backwards in terms of what do my coaching sessions look like? What is my messaging to make it very clear to the players how we want to be as a team, whether that's in possession, whether it's the phases of the game, whether it's out of possession? I think because I think if the players can really fill your philosophy with clarity, it's the best way to try and make the team as you want. The other thing I would say in the modern game is that having worked in different football clubs now is that you have to be adaptable. So your philosophy may adapt as sometimes you have to find different ways to get the best group of players that you have. How do you choose your backroom staff? Choosing your backroom staff as a coach is a hugely important job because the manager's role or the head coach's role has you have a lot of responsibilities, but you also have to have an understanding that there are people that work with you. You want people that have different strengths to what you have, can offer you strong opinions, but can also remain, I think, in a very good friendship and bond between you. So I'm fortunate in that the staff that I work with here I've worked with predominantly for a long time. The coaches that came in with me into Coventry. We also come in and work with new coaches, and it's very important to try and open up to the new coaches and bond with them and try and actually just get the best out of everybody. So I think you try and be as selective as you can be to get the staff that work well off of you and your style. What are the main differences between managing in the Premier League compared to the Championship? The first thing as a manager, having done both, is that the scrutiny in working in the Premier League is really, really high. You know, everyone has an opinion. You know, the Premier League is such a huge brand that, you know, every win, every loss, every draw, everything is analysed. And there are lots of opinions around it. I think you have to understand that, because a big part of doing this job is handling that and staying focused on your job. For me, that's the major difference, because after that, football is football. You prepare for your games, you analyse the opposition. You try and win football matches. You try and improve your players. And for me, that remains the same in the Premier League and the Championship. And in fact, in the Championship, you can have more challenges sometimes in terms of preparing for opposition, because there are many teams that they change their shape a lot. Games can look very different from week to week in the Championship. The Premier League, in fact, has more consistency. You understand what the best teams want to do to win a football match. The problem is they do it at a very, very high level. How many hours do you put into assessing a player before signing them? Well, it's important that we put many, many hours into assessing players. And in the modern day, that goes beyond the head coach's job to do all of that. We're fortunate here at Coventry. We have a recruitment team who work very well, very hard, and many, many hours in the process of whittling down from players that we feel we need, that work within our style, that work in the positions that we need. The team do a lot of that work. And then my role in that is to be in it at the beginning and then to come back into that process and make sure we've done all the work on the player on pitch and off pitch to hope and to feel that they're going to be the best fit to help us on the pitch and also to develop as individuals and players for Coventry City. How far in advance do you start preparing for a transfer window as a manager? I think preparing for a transfer window is a bit like preparing for a game in terms of the moment one finishes, you move on to the next. So I think a transfer window is the next one is prepared for as soon as you finish the last. Within that, there are so many variables and things that may change or ideas that may change, players that may become more apparent. But I think we we stay pretty constant with that, to always think about the next window. Possibly you jump further ahead than that, but it's very difficult to do because football moves fast. So I think it's generally you get straight on to the next once one's finished. Are you in a WhatsApp group with the players? I'm not in the players WhatsApp group. I'm the last thing they'll need. I get sometimes fallout chat about what was in the WhatsApp group the night before from players. Somehow it manages to get back to me occasionally. But the last thing they need is me. I will sometimes forward on or have my message forward on to the players, say off season, talking about preseason or end of season, keeping them in check, telling them what I'm wanting. But day to day, it's not for me. Do you talk to the players outside of training, matches and travel? I try to talk to the players outside of training, matches and travel. I mean, we spend a lot of time together. So you have a duty. It's an important part of your job to form relationships with players that are not just football based, not just about on the pitch. So I'll try and be very visible, very there for the players. And with quite a lot of players, I will have contact with them, whether it be a message now and again in the evening when I'm thinking of something at home, football related. I'll give the players a shout, personal things that happen in their lives, with people that get married, that have babies, all these things. I'll make sure I reach out at that point. And the players should always know that I'm there if they need me. What do you write down on your notepad during a game? I would write down tactical tweaks. Yes, things I observe, say in the first half of a match. And we're, you know, so many things that happen in a game. And if you make a note of it, it will help you with your halftime talk. I'll go in at halftime, I'll look at my list, I'll confer with staff. But I will do that throughout the game, because we always review and assess after a match what happened. And sometimes your notes are a good reference point to things that you've seen. And it helps you. You can go back on the video and see if everything you think in match aligned itself with when you watch the match back with reflection. How do you decide when to make a substitution? Is it prior to the game or gut instinct? The important thing is to be prepared as the coach. So I will always have some moments with myself and maybe with staff where we talk about what ifs in game, if things may happen, that may change, if we need to change shape, if we need to change a player in the same position. I'll have those noted down for clarity in my head of what I feel may be changes that we will make. Sometimes you have an idea that this player will play for this long and another one will come on for that and maybe a physical situation. But you always have to be ready to adapt and move in the game. Depending on what's happening in the game. So I try not to stick to an absolute plan. There is an element of gut instinct to make changes in match. Do you share a drink or a catch up with opposition managers after a game? We often share drinks with the opposition management staff after games. It will always be on offer when managers come to CBS, to our home. Most managers come in, some don't. I understand that too. I never judge because I sometimes go into opposition and sometimes I don't. Sometimes a certain performance or post-match responsibilities can change that for the coach. But I think it's a good thing the Championship has that more than the Premier League. The Championship has more managers that will come in. And it's a good moment at times. You know, win or lose. You can share ideas, talk about how they work, how you work. And most managers are very, very accommodating with that. And I think it's a good thing that we hopefully can hold on to. What's in your office? My office here at work, the usual things I have in there, which is very, very football related. Tactics boards, planners, all these things. The personal items, I think, are the things that mean a lot to me. We spend a lot of time in our offices in this job. So I have photos and pictures of my family and children. I have one candle, which my wife got me last Christmas, which I use now and again, not so much. I don't want to make it feel like the wrong place, but that's something that she bought me. So I think it's important when you throw yourself into work that you have those moments of reflection where it feels you can feel your family there, even when you're away working.