‘IQ score beat my wife’s… that’s the best thing’ – Brainiac Frank Lampard on why he’s proving smart choice at Coventry
AFTER failing his last two tests at Chelsea and Everton, Lampard is gaining pass marks again.
It does not take a genius to work out why… but if it did the high-flying Coventry boss would certainly fit the bill.
After all, how many football managers qualify for Mensa with an IQ of 150 — which puts him in the top one-two per cent of Britain’s brainiacs?
Lampard, who also has a GCSE A-star in Latin, told SunSport: “It’s true, I do have an IQ of 150!
“I was tested at Chelsea in the aftermath of John Terry getting kicked in the head in the Carabao Cup final.
“Our doctor, who was Brian English at the time, made us do IQ tests to get us all a base-level IQ so we could be registered again if you had a concussion or a head injury.
“I just breezed it. Other people seem more interested in it than me.
“But I am quite proud of it. My score of 150 just beat my wife, Christine, which was the best thing about it.
“She was just below me. I don’t know the exact numbers but we were around the same.
“But I think she’s smarter than me — at least it feels that way in the house!
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“It was a strange test. I’d never done one before. For whatever reason, I came out on top of it.
“That was my one and only IQ test. I retired after taking one, just in case it was a false test!”
Lampard was also a smart cookie as a schoolboy, dreaming of following in the footsteps of his father and making it as a professional player with West Ham.
He added: “I got 11 GSCEs. Four or five A passes, the rest Bs and one C, as well as one A-star-plus for Latin!”
Lampard replaced Coventry fans’ favourite Mark Robins in November when the Sky Blues were 17th in the Championship.
Yet three months on, it is beginning to look like one of the smartest moves of the season as Lampard has lifted Robins’ relegation candidates to within one point of the play-off positions.
Coventry head to Oxford United tomorrow with the confidence of a side who have won seven out of their last eight games — their only defeat coming against leaders Leeds.
After being burned at Everton and his second stint at Chelsea, Lampard is clearly loving life again in the dugout.
Having enjoyed success as a TV pundit it would have been easy for him to take the easy option of becoming a full-time football critic.
But he admits he has been bitten by the managerial bug and believes he is young enough — and wise enough — to succeed as a top-level boss after learning some harsh lessons from his past.
He said: “I enjoyed the media when I packed up playing. I did it for a year and it was lovely to still have one foot in the game.
“When I’ve been in between jobs, sometimes you want to rest, other times you want to work a bit and the media is great for that.
“You work with great people. You see the game from the outside. You look at other teams more.
“But this is what I love doing the most. I love the day-to-day involvement of being a manager.
“I love the challenge, with all of its frustrations.
“People tell me: ‘You don’t need to do it’. But it’s not a monetary thing.
“I’m 46 years of age. I love working and I’m doing something I love to do.
“The media life is easier, that’s for sure! It’s so much easier to comment on everyone with the benefit of hindsight. Management is much tougher.
“I’ve been criticised before by former team-mates. Does it feel like betrayal? No, I’m pretty balanced about it now.
“I’ve experienced that situation, it’s not so much former team-mates, as some ex-players who don’t know what it’s like to manage.
“They’ve never worked in management so they don’t understand the rigours.
“They don’t understand the working week, don’t understand the challenges of team selection and injuries and managing players and formations.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t be in the media.
“But if you haven’t worked in management then I take what you say not with a pinch of salt — that sounds disrespectful.
“But if I sense that it’s a little bit of a loaded dig or something that’s not well backed up, then I note it and move on.”
So has Lampard ever dug up an ex-pro for his on-air comments? He replied: “I’ll answer that by not answering it… what do you think?”
Lampard was a battler on the field and he has not lost his competitive edge now he is back in the dugout and in a tracksuit on the training ground.
Management has chewed up and spat out so many of England’s so-called Golden Generation.
Wayne Rooney has become the latest casualty, following in the footsteps of Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, John Terry to a lesser extent, and Steven Gerrard, who have all experienced failure and criticism.
Lampard said: “I don’t feel like I’m the one left holding the torch for the Golden Generation. It’s a lazy generalisation.
“Anyone that goes into this job as an ex-player who’s had a highly regarded career should get a lot of credit because you understand that there’s a bigger fall for you.
“There’s a bigger level of interest. Maybe we’ll succeed but what about if we fail?
“It’s a little bit of a cultural issue. I think we’re all a bit guilty of that in our British culture.
“So I don’t listen to the Golden Generation stuff.
“It’s just a really lazy thing to say: Great players don’t make great managers.
“And then you actually start listing them. Zinedine Zidane, Carlo Ancelotti, Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola and all the other ones.
“It’s just a fallacy. It’s just picking an argument with confirmation bias.
“It’s nonsense.”