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Pacman to the point

Lampard is the most overrated player in the Premiership

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Jamie "The Pacman" Pacheco tells us why Lampard is not half the player he is made out to be, and it has nothing to do with his weight...

It was late summer in 2000 as I sat on the rented sofa of my rented student house in Selly Oak. Birmingham, watching athletics on TV with my housemate. Everything within the living room was arranged in a way that promoted the most sacred values of intertia and energy retention: the mini-fridge located to the left of the sofa, the gardening instrument that allowed you to reach for the remote control without anyone having to get up and the wad of take-away menus pinned to the side of the sofa. Energy retention for what? We were bloody students, not alley cats preparing for a winter of searching for heat and unwanted morsels of food.

"In Lane 3, double 100m world champion, current 100m Olympic champion and current world 100m record-holder Maurice Greene" said the voice of the stadium announcer through the TV set.

"Overrated", was the dead-pan response of my housemate.

I pointed out that given the achievements the announcer had just pointed out, Greene had won everything it was possible to win within his sport and that as the world-record holder he was by definition the fastest man on earth... ever. But it was useless - since I'd known him he identified the following people as overrated: William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, every member of England's 1966 team bar Bobby Moore, Richard Branson, Monty Python (and in particular John Cleese), Bob Dylan, Elvis, Barbara Streisand, Mahatma Ghandi, Sylvia Plath, Woody Allen, Sir Laurence Olivier, Graham Greene, Pele, Ian Botham and above all Katherine Hepburn.

The one person we agreed on back then as being overrated and who we agree on to this day is Frank Lampard. If you ever read the excellent book "Sexy Football" by Peter Gilmour, you will come across a chapter where the author argues that football highlights should be banned from being shown on TV on the basis that they do not paint an accurate reflection of what really happened in the game and of the all-round contributions of any particular player. This argument could be made solely for Frank Lampard. Watch a highlights package of Chelsea playing and you will see Lampard involved in everything. He's the guy taking the corners that lead to John Terry and Drogba's headed goals, the man stepping up to slot home a penalty that Drogba or Joe Cole has won and the guy taking the free-kick from just outside the box that is tipped over the bar to rapturous applause.

Over the course of the last three or four years, Chelsea have been the best and most successful side in the Premiership. Not surprising then that the man in charge of taking set pieces for a side that creates so many chances looks great on highlights. Check your Fantasy Football points every week for Chelsea's number 8 and you'll see him get plenty of points. The stats will tell you that over the last four seasons his goal tally for Chelsea has been as follows: 22, 23, 22 and 20. Yeah, great stuff but scratch beneath the surface a little more and there's another pretty good explanation for this return.

Chelsea had in Makelele arguably the greatest ball-winner in the English game and in Michael Essien one of the best all-round midfielders in the world. John Obi Mikel has now taken over Makelele's mantra and the result is the same: Lampard has zero defensive responsibilities and therefore the freedom to roam forward as much as he likes. Compare him to a Scholes or a Gerrard who get plenty of goals (Scholes admittedly less so these days) whilst doing the ball-winning, tackling, tracking back and play-making that Lampard is rarely seen doing or even asked to do.

Lampard is [7.6] to be Top English goalscorer in the Premiership by the way, if you fancy it.

An obvious flaw in my argument is that Jose Mourinho who knows a thing or two about football considered Lampard to be one of his "untouchables" and very rarely rested him (god forbid, drop him) for any match at all. Could the "Special One" have been wrong?

The "Can Gerrard and Lampard play together?" debate is one to be analysed to death on another day. All I'll say on the subject is that playing both means Gerrard is asked to do the defensive work which is a waste of his talents and playing neither as a holding midfielder leaves an unbalanced midfield. My suggested option: yes, you've guessed it. Drop Lampard. Maybe Joey Barton was right after all...

If you want to nominate someone else as the most overrated player in the Premiership (or any other league) please let me know your thoughts.