Christian Eriksen joins Brentford, Frank Lampard gets another shot at coaching

Denmark midfielder Christian Eriksen joined Premier League club Brentford on Monday, seven months after he suffered a cardiac arrest during a European Championship match.

Eriksen, who collapsed during the game against Finland in Copenhagen and was given life-saving CPR treatment in front of shocked fans and team mates, has signed for Brentford as a free agent for the rest of the season.

"I'm happy to announce I've signed for Brentford and can't wait to get started and hopefully see you all very soon," Eriksen said in a video post.

The former Tottenham Hotspur and Inter Milan player is now fitted with a special heart-starting device known as an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD).

Eriksen, 29, has not played a competitive match since his collapse, although he has been training with his former club Ajax Amsterdam to build up his fitness. 

Inter Milan terminated his contract in December because the ICD device is not permitted in Serie A.

Eriksen played 26 games for Inter as they won the Italian top-flight title in 2021 for the first time in 11 years.

He played 226 Premier League games for Tottenham whose manager Antonio Conte said this month that the "door was always open" for him at the club.

Eriksen will be re-united with Brentford manager Thomas Frank who supervised the Denmark Under-17 team he played for.

"I am looking forward to working with Christian again. It has been a while since I last coached him and a lot has happened since then," Frank said in a statement.

"... We have taken an unbelievable opportunity to bring a world class player to Brentford. He hasn't trained with a team for seven months but has done a lot of work on his own.

"He is fit but we will need to get him match fit and I am looking forward to seeing him work with the players and staff to get back towards his highest level."

Eriksen, capped 109 times by Denmark, was given the green light by doctors last month to resume his playing career and is aiming to be available for the World Cup.

"Brentford fans can rest assured that we have undertaken significant due diligence to ensure that Christian is in the best possible shape to return to competitive football," Frank said.

"Now Christian has made the decision to sign for Brentford, all parties want to focus fully on football."

Brentford have enjoyed a positive first season in the Premier League and are 14th in the table, although they have lost their last four league games and are in danger of being sucked into the relegation battle.

It is unclear whether Eriksen will be available for Brentford's next game, an FA Cup fourth-round tie against Everton at Goodison Park this weekend. 

Lampard gets another shot at coaching, but Everton won't make for easy return

Having waited almost a year for another shot at top-level management, Frank Lampard has been tasked with as tough a challenge as it gets: resurrecting an Everton side in turmoil.

It is not the best time to be a Toffees supporter, and protests outside Goodison Park have become commonplace.

Fans have called for the board to be sacked, pleaded with the club last summer not to appoint former Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez, and made clear - in graffiti as well - their opposition to the proposed hiring of Vitor Pereira over Lampard. 

The fact that the unpopular appointment of Benitez, who won the Champions League with bitter local rivals Liverpool in 2005, went so badly wrong has made the atmosphere at Goodison even more toxic.

Lampard takes over a club four points above the Premier League relegation zone, and facing the distinct possibility of finding themselves competing outside the top tier of English football for the first time in almost 70 years next season.

The problems at the club go beyond the dressing room. Marcel Brands left his position as director of football in December after making a string of signings that failed to deliver, and a successor has yet to be found.

Benitez was still able to make some signings before he was sacked in mid-January, with several names mentioned as last-minute potential arrivals before the January transfer window closes on Monday night, adding to the feeling of chaos at the club.

MUCH TO PROVE

As for Lampard, regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, the jury is still out on his capabilities as a manager.

All went well initially for Lampard as a coach, and he narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League with second-tier Derby County in his first season as a manager.

He then landed his dream role in 2019 at Chelsea, where he won three league titles and a Champions League crown as a player and remains the club's all-time top goalscorer.

His appointment drew much acclaim, especially in view of his willingness to blood youth academy players, and his young side went on to finish fourth and get to the FA Cup final in 2019-20, although they ended the season without any silverware.

A big transfer outlay in the summer of 2020 appeared to set Chelsea up for a title challenge, but with the club languishing in ninth in the standings in January last year, Lampard was relieved of his duties.

The fact that they went on to win the Champions League just months after replacing him with Thomas Tuchel shows the potential of the squad the former England midfielder had at his disposal, and why question marks hang over his managerial prowess.

"He's a lucky man," former Chelsea striker Tony Cascarino told talkSPORT last week. "He hasn't earned his stripes as in what he's achieved to be Chelsea manager or Everton manager.

"He's the manager with a silver spoon in his mouth. A lot has happened for Frank because of how good he was as a player."

A mutinous Everton will represent the ultimate test of whether Lampard can have anything like as successful a career as a coach as he did as a player.

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