Frank Lampard didn't want his view of the Everton players to be influenced by anything other than what he saw.
In the recent games he's watched studiously or, from Monday, when he took training for the first time, the 43-year-old only wanted to make his own mind, and not have others do it for him.
It's why, he says, he didn't call Carlo Ancelotti as he was in the process of being appointed. It's why, Lampard also confirmed, he hasn't spoken to Rafa Benitez.
It's a totally sensible way to have approached the early days of his Everton tenure but, as he says, he will put in a call to his old boss, Ancelotti, and pick his brains.
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It wouldn't be a bad idea, either, to talk to Benitez. Or to Marco Silva or to Sam Allardyce or even to Ronald Koeman. They know too well what it's like to manage in the Everton pressure-cooker and not come out in one piece.
Roberto Martinez was the first manager to be sacked by Farhad Moshiri, of course, and could provide some worthwhile perspective on being in the top job at Goodison, as well.
If Lampard talked to all six of those managers, he would be armed with plenty of useful information.
But there's a different manager who he should be aiming to speak to first, and above all of those others mention.
Frank, don't call Carlo - phone David Moyes.
The new Everton manager used his first press conference as boss, this week, to talk about how he remembered the great Blues' sides of the 80s but when asked about how he wants his team to play, it was from the modern era where he's taking his inspiration. From the days when he faced Everton as a player.
*Pick the Everton team to take on Brentford:
And the bulk of that time was up against Moyes' Blues.
Lampard said he understood that there are 'fundamentals' to the way any Everton side should play, and he knows this from having battled against them in his career. Twenty-seven of the 39 times he played against Everton, Moyes was in the dugout.
Though he didn't mention Moyes by name, the inference in what he was saying, and reading between the lines, was that Lampard wants the 'fundamentals' of those teams to be part of his Everton.
Though now rivals, if Moyes was generous enough to impart his wisdom of managing at Goodison, it could be the most useful phone call Lampard makes. In the meantime, taking all he can from Leighton Baines would be a good place to start.
Quite why his predecessors didn't speak to Moyes - or at least not that we know of - is unclear.
Silva is the only boss, in public at least, who suggested he would do so, barking back at criticism from Allardyce saying: “If it is David Moyes, maybe I would listen because he did something really important at this club."
He did do something important, Moyes gave Everton an identity, the one Lampard recognised each and every time he came up against them.
As he said this week, he remembers those Blues teams that were almost always hard to beat. The squad he has inherited are anything but, and hopefully that doesn't come as a nasty surprise to him. Either way, it's a trait Lampard wants to revive.
And while he has to do that in his own way, with his own ideas, thinking and tactics, he could do worse than to see if Moyes is prepared to talk.
