Holding Lamps up to the light

FRANK LAMPARD’S reaction to scoring four goals and taking his tally to 21 for the season betrayed a mixture of prickliness and defiance.

“It’s not bad for having an average or bad season – as some people say,” said the midfielder.

He might as well have screamed ‘I told you so’.

Lampard has a point. Looked at simply in terms of goals his contribution has been outstanding, confirming once again that he possesses a special talent that hasn’t always been appreciated.

Saturday’s haul means he has now scored 17 goals in 30 Premier League appearances, a strike rate that would satisfy any striker, and, of course, this campaign is no one off. His fourth goal against Villa was Lampard’s 151st for his club, making him the third highest scorer in the club’s history and it’s certainly not hard to imagine him passing Bobby Tambling’s record of 202 goals sometime over the next three seasons. Chelsea assistant manager Ray Wilkins – standing in for Carlo Ancelotti at the post-match media briefing because “Carlo’s had to sit down, he’s having a nice glass of red” – insisted Lampard is “world class” and it would be almost impossible to find a respected figure in the game who would disagree.

Taken individually, none of the midfielder’s four goals against Villa would set the pulse racing, unusual for a player who specialises in eye-catching drives from outside the area.

These were simply four well taken goals, including two nerveless penalties, that summed up the crucial role that Lampard fills in Ancelotti’s side and demonstrated why Chelsea appear such a formidable unit when the midfielder is on song.

Given the opportunity to press forward, the midfielder has a knack of finding space in forward areas behind the main striker, timing his movements superbly to arrive in and around the penalty box when it matters most.

So it was that Lampard appeared at the far post when Florent Malouda’s low cross appeared to have eluded everyone to slide home for his first goal. Similarly in the final minute when he found the opening that allowed him to cap an outstanding display with his final goal, his side’s seventh.

In between, the player had worked tirelessly and effectively, enjoying the kind of day most players can only dream about.

“I’m pleased today because everything went right for me and sometimes you have those days,” he said.

On this kind of form, Lampard is unstoppable. That, though, hasn’t been the case throughout the season, no matter how quick the player is to suggest otherwise, and his form has fluctuated in much the same way as Chelsea’s has during a curiously fractured campaign that could still end with a league and cup double.

The midfielder hasn’t always flourished in Chelsea’s narrower formation under Ancelotti and it was no coincidence that he shone against Villa when the Italian employed more width, with Malouda and Joe Cole posted on the flanks.

“We played with the two wider players today which gave Frank and Deco and little bit more space alongside their two midfield players so it as a change of tactics and it came off,” admitted Wilkins.

Whether Ancelotti will be quite so bold when he takes his side to face Manchester United at Old Trafford next Saturday is a different matter altogether. Then, Lampard’s contribution will be measured more by hard graft than by goals but will be crucial, nonetheless.

Lampard and Wilkins were both keen to point out that the shock of exiting the Champions League at the hands of Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan is now in the past, and sights are now firmly set on the remaining weeks of the season that will determine whether Ancelotti’s first year at Stamford Bridge ends in success or failure.

“It’s not easy, we have had some bad experiences in the Champions League, been very unfortunate once or twice, particularly last year, and this year we deserved to get knocked out,” added Lampard. “We didn’t play well in the home game, and it’s not easy to take because we are all desperate for success in that competition.

“But hopefully now it’s in the past. We have to forget that now and wipe the slate clean.”

If Lampard’s team-mates can match the midfielder’s resilience, they could win both and the midfielder will be entitled to say ‘I told you so’ as often as he likes.