Isaac Price has acknowledged that if Frank Lampard hadn’t been fired, he might still be at Everton.
Price expressed credit to the previous Toffees boss who gave him his senior debut in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph.
The Yorkshire-born midfielder climbed through the youth ranks of Everton’s academy, joining at the age of seven, before being given a chance with the first squad last year.
In an FA Cup match against Boreham Wood, Price made his professional debut one month after Lampard was named Everton’s manager. The last day of the 2021/22 season saw him make his league debut in a 5-1 loss to Arsenal.
Before Lampard was fired shortly after, Price made his last appearance for Everton against Brighton in January 2023. It was then decided by the 20-year-old to move on from Goodison Park and begin a new chapter with Standard Liege.
Although Price has had a good start to life in Belgium, he has acknowledged that if Lampard had remained on Merseyside, he could have been persuaded to stay.
For me, he (Lampard) was enormous, Price said to the Belfast Telegraph.
While he was there, I learned a great deal. After making my debut at the end of one of Arsenal’s seasons, I’ve felt that he’s given me a lot of valuable lessons.
He was enormous. He gave me my big break and showed some faith in me. I was learning a lot from them because I was exercising with them on a regular basis. Maybe I would still be there if things had gone differently at Everton and he had the players he needed to produce the desired outcomes.
“I talked to him regularly and he gave me some information I still use now. He had a very good coaching staff – Ashley Cole, Joe Edwards, and Paul Clement – who had all been around it for so long and worked with top players. When you talk to him you pick up bits of information. If you just watch Lampard on YouTube for 10 minutes you realise how good a player he was so you learn so much about the game.”
Frank Lampard’s one and only asset
Although he performed a good job of keeping Everton in the title game, Frank Lampard was not a very good manager at Goodison Park overall. He also didn’t quite live up to the hype at Chelsea
We can all agree that the former midfielder is excellent at identifying talent and nurturing young players, even though he is unfit to be the manager of another Premier League team.
Lampard gave Anthony Gordon his big opportunity at Derby County and helped launch the careers of Fikayo Tomori and Mason Mount.
Although it seems unlikely that Isaac Price would have succeeded on Merseyside, it would not have been worth the risk to cling onto Lampard.
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