Right now, newly-sacked Frank Lampard is probably sitting on his sofa juggling a number of different emotions – sadness, frustration, anger and disappointment among them.

However, there is one thing he has little right to feel, and that is surprised.

When he took the Chelsea job 18 months ago he knew the score: this is a club that chews up managers and spits them out. Roman Abramovich simply doesn’t tolerate failure, even if it is dressed up as part of a rebuilding process.

And Lampard has had plenty of first-hand experience of how the Chelsea managerial policy operates – during his time as a player at Stamford Bridge he played under Claudio Ranieri, José Mourinho, Avram Grant, Luiz Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti, André Villa-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo, Rafa Benitez and Mourinho again.

That’s 10 managers in 13 years, most of whom had won a trophy or two. So getting sacked after a run of five defeats in eight Premier League matches can’t have come as any sort of shock.

Lampard’s problem is that he took over the club with an elongated, long-term vision of the future, when Chelsea, and they make no secret of this, only operate in the present. It is the here and now that they care about.

What didn’t help was that Lampard spent the best part of quarter of a billion pounds over the summer on the likes of Kai Havertz, Timo Werner and Ben Chilwell. And when Abramovich signs cheques of that size he expects an instant return on his investment.

The question is: should Lampard have been given more time? And, in my opinion, the overwhelming answer to that question is yes. The former England midfielder clearly had a plan that needed time to implement and, if successful, it would have given Chelsea the chance to break the managerial merry-go-round cycle once and for all.

Don’t get me wrong, not every manager deserves time to get things right. When they are clearly stumbling from one crisis to another then they need to be put out of their misery.

This is an appointment that could go either way, but will certainly do so swiftly

But there were signs that Lampard’s work would eventually bear fruit. Results earlier in the season showed what they were capable of on their day. Some of their performances were scintillating.

They were inconsistent, true, but that can be said about pretty much every top-flight team this season. Just look at Liverpool and Manchester United.

I suspect Lampard, in accepting the Chelsea job in the first place, let emotion and ambition get in the way of common sense. I said at the time that he probably didn’t have enough managerial experience (a single season with Derby County) to be thinking of jumping into the Stamford Bridge ejector seat.

But his love for the club clouded his judgement and he found the offer too tempting to turn down. Probably not the best career decision, in hindsight, but possibly understandable given his Chelsea history.

Having said all that I am pretty sure that Lampard will bounce back. Not only that, but I am almost entirely positive that at some point in the future he will once again be in charge at Stamford Bridge.

But that will only happen when he has been and done what he should have done in the first place, which is get more experience – and maybe a little tangible success – under his belt.

And what about Chelsea in the post-Lampard era? Well, I think the appointment of Thomas Tuchel was pretty inevitable really, considering his recent track record and his availability.

But I’m not entirely convinced he will be a raging success at Chelsea. Yes, he won two league titles, the French Cup and the French League Cup while at Paris Saint-Germain. But I’m reasonably confident Lampard could have matched that, considering the level of competition in France and the brilliance of the PSG squad. In fact, I might have been able to get close to those levels of success with Neymar and Kylian Mbappé in my team.

However, even if Tuchel’s managerial skills are up to the task of achieving instant success at Stamford Bridge, I can foresee other problems in this appointment.

Tuchel is, by all accounts, a control freak who wants to be in charge of every aspect of the club, all the way down to drawing up dietary plans for the players, running the scouting system and deciding on the length of the player’s beards. (Okay, I made that last one up).

Can anybody really see Abramovich and his team of directors effectively handing control of the entire club to someone else? I certainly can’t, and it is here where I see the potential for a quick breakdown of the relationship.

On the positive side, however, Tuchel is a manager who puts his players first in every respect. He once said a manager is merely there to “serve” the players.

 And that will sit well with the Chelsea squad who, rumour has it, were not enamoured with Lampard’s communication skills. Equally the German is a master tactician, another area in which it has been suggested his predecessor was a bit lacking.

In short, this is an appointment that could go either way, but will certainly do so swiftly. Possibly Tuchel’s desire to prove himself in the Premier League will drive him to instant success, in which case he will be sitting very pretty for the future. (The future being about a season and a half, in Chelsea terms).

Or he and Abramovich will have some major argument over which pies they should be selling in the club’s bars and the German will be gone by the start of next season with “irreconcilable beard length differences” scribbled on the divorce papers.

Lampard, meanwhile, will need to shuffle down the pyramid to rebuild  his managerial career.

Or he could dust his boots off and slip into the Sheffield United midfield…

email: james@quizando.com
twitter: @maltablade