Chelsea manager Frank Lampard says he believes has been judged differently in comparison to other managers and revealed people close to him questioned his decision to take the job at Stamford Bridge.
After one season as the manager at Derby County, Lampard was hired by Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to lead the team in 2019.
With a transfer ban hanging over the club, Lampard put his faith in the academy and provided a pathway to the first-team for players such as Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Callum Hudson-Odoi.
And Lampard's trust was rewarded as the Blues qualified for the Champions League and reached the FA Cup final.
Lampard is the only English manager among the top six which brings its own pressure and expectation.
Speaking ahead of Chelsea's Champions League clash with Krasnodar on Wednesday, Lampard was asked if he felt he is judged differently from other managers and said: "I think possibly, yes; I think when I got this job a lot of people were questioning me getting the job.
"A lot of people told me 'are you sure you want to take it' because of maybe opinion. And I think when sometimes people can be very quick to form opinions straight away, for whatever reason, and being a young English manager with one year at Derby some of that I understood.
"But at the same time I think sometimes we just have to judge people on face value, like we do judge any manager; it doesn't matter where you're from, I think all managers should be judged the same.
"I was pretty proud of what we managed to achieve last season in terms of coming in the top four, in fact I thought we could have actually done even better than that for different reasons. But I was happy with that.
"I can't get swung on opinion though, because if you do that managing a Premier League team if you look at opinion and read and listen to everything, it will affect you every day.
"So I just have to do the job as well as I can. And hopefully, the opinions will speak for themselves.
"I'm certainly very pleased I took the job. I'm very proud to manage this club every day."
