Chelsea are set to make a formal approach to Derby County after earmarking Frank Lampard as their preferred candidate to succeed the Juventus-bound Maurizio Sarri.

The Championship club would be due around £4m in compensation for their manager, who is one season into a three-year contract, and are understood to be planning for life without Lampard. The former England midfielder enjoyed a glittering 13-year stint as a player at Chelsea, establishing himself as the club’s record goalscorer, and although he accepts his coaching career is in its infancy, the opportunity to take over in south-west London would surely be hard to resist.

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The Europa League winners will be keen to secure a replacement for Sarri – for whom compensation potentially worth more than £5m has been agreed with Juve – well before pre-season training starts in the first week of July.

Even if there had been understandable reservations over Lampard’s lack of managerial experience – he guided Derby to the Championship play-offs in his first season as a coach – there has always been support from key members of the hierarchy to restore him to a club which, as it operates under a Fifa-imposed transfer ban, could be more reliant on younger personnel for the foreseeable future.

Players such as Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Callum Hudson-Odoi are expected to play significant roles in the senior set-up next season, when the team will return to the Champions League after a year’s absence. Lampard, who has been assisted by the former Chelsea midfielder and under‑18s’ coach Jody Morris, is seen as a figure who could coax the best from the academy graduates and returning loanees of whom two, Mount and Tomori, excelled under his management at Derby.

Chelsea enjoy a fine relationship with the Championship club whose chief executive, Stephen Pearce, left his role as a finance director at Stamford Bridge in 2013. Lampard has been preparing Derby’s pre-season, and discussions have taken place over contract extensions and transfer plans.

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The board at Stamford Bridge are aware Lampard’s appointment would constitute a risk given the basic demand of every Chelsea head coach – Champions League qualification – cannot be relaxed with the need to comply with Uefa’s financial fair play regulations. However, the hope is that his arrival would galvanise a young squad and be restorative in terms of a support horribly divided and disillusioned at times over Sarri’s brief tenure.

Just as significant has been the reality that alternative options appear to be dwindling. Massimiliano Allegri, whom Sarri is to replace at Juve, has indicated he will take a sabbatical “to recharge the batteries and take my personal life back in hand”. Erik ten Hag is apparently committed to Ajax, and Nuno Espírito Santo and Javi Gracia, who have been mentioned in dispatches, would cost considerably more in terms of compensation to extract from Wolves and Watford respectively.

Laurent Blanc is available but may be considered an uninspiring choice, not least for fans who made their frustration with Sarri all too obvious. The Italian, secured from Napoli last summer, was close to being sacked this year after results deteriorated dramatically following a promising start. Chelsea were surprised and dismayed at the breakdown in the relationship with a vocal section of the club’s support disenchanted with the lack of drive and urgency in much of the team’s football.

An upturn in results – which culminated with a third-place finish and the Europa League success – left Chelsea reluctant to dismiss Sarri, only for him to make clear his desire to return to Italy, citing family reasons. Agreement was reached with Juve late on Thursday over compensation for a head coach who had 12 months to run on his £5m-a-year contract. Chelsea had resisted the Serie A champions’ attempts to secure the 60-year-old for nothing and could end up banking more than that amount, dependent on what Sarri achieves in Turin.