CHELSEA vs MAN CITY: Should Lampard Be Given Heroic Welcome?

When Didier Drogba returned to Stamford Bridge with Galatasaray as a Champions League opponent last March he was welcomed as a hero. Presented with a commemorative silver boot on the pitch before the match for eight years of historic excellence, his name was chanted and his entrance and exit were applauded by all four sides of a stadium adorned with loving banners.

The question of whether Frank Lampard should receive similar honours on Saturday has divided Chelsea fans.


Many believe a season-long dalliance with Manchester City, even if it yields a Premier League title, should not detract from 13 years in which he wrote his name indelibly into the first page of the club’s history. Others feel his conduct and impact for City can only taint his legacy, and it is a mark of just how fraught emotions are on both sides that influential fanzine cfcuk this week publicly pleaded for Stamford Bridge to greet Lampard with respect and class.

Given the apparent lack of consensus, logic dictates that the reaction inside Stamford Bridge will be somewhere between whole-hearted adulation and cold-hearted vitriol. The sense is that most Chelsea fans are still stumbling through an emotional maze with Lampard, trying to work out exactly where they stand on an issue complicated by so many layers and peculiar circumstances.

The first pin to prick any swelling tribalism is that Chelsea let Lampard go. “I would have obviously stayed if Chelsea had offered me another year,” he told the Sun in September. “There was no reason for me to leave. The decision was made – and I don’t know who made it.” Given the manner of his departure, he would have been justified in feeling he had a point to prove, and what better way to prove it than by making a significant impact for his old club’s biggest rivals?

That decision alone wasn’t enough to turn Chelsea fans against Lampard. The die-hards who travelled up to the Etihad Stadium earlier in the season showed remarkable class in giving him a standing ovation even after he had inflicted the first dent on Jose Mourinho’s title charge with a trademark late equaliser.



The anger has bubbled up in the months since, with revelations of a loan from New York City that was never really a loan and a contractual mess that deceived football fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Lampard insists the deception wasn’t his and, given everything we know about the man, it seems unlikely that he would have pre-planned such an indirect and muddled move to Manchester. But the sour taste remains.

Chelsea have indicated that no big fuss will be made of Lampard’s return and Mourinho is already playing his games, pointedly praising Steven Gerrard’s staunch unwillingness to ever play against Liverpool last week. But setting the manager’s media barbs aside, the club’s attitude is a sensible one.

Lampard is unquestionably a Chelsea legend – arguably the greatest of them all – and will be honoured as such forever more. You only have to look down the list of former players involved in the academy set-up, or the rapturous reception the likes of Bobby Tambling and Roy Bentley have received during recent half-time appearances pitchside, to realise that they invariably look after their own at Stamford Bridge.

Yet on Saturday the returning idol won’t be addressing the crowd in a suit and tie, or returning by luck of a Champions League draw with a clearly inferior team from another country, as Drogba was. Lampard remains a clear and present danger, one of the most lethal attacking weapons brandished by the only team capable of denying Chelsea a first Premier League title in four years.

After watching Lampard apologetically take two points off his side in September, Mourinho was in no mood for sentiment. “When he decided to come to Man City, a direct competitor of Chelsea, love stories are over,” the Portuguese insisted. “He did his job as the super professional he is, and he did well.”

Chelsea’s love affair with Lampard doesn’t have an end date, and any supporter who harbours ill will towards him beyond this season would do well to re-educate themselves on the story of the Roman Abramovich era. It would be petty and self-defeating to allow one testing year to overshadow 13 glorious ones.

But now is not the time to pay tribute. Chelsea fans need the dust to settle on Lampard’s Premier League career before they can once again find unanimity of praise, and the scale of his legacy deserves nothing less.

In the meantime, both teams at Stamford Bridge on Saturday have a title to fight for.