It is beginning to feel like a Marvel re-make at Stamford Bridge, rounding up all the superheroes of the past to see if any of their old powers might be reconfigured into something useful in the current day. It is a list that grows all the time: Petr Cech, Didier Drogba, maybe even Claude Makelele or Ashley Cole. Has anyone got a mobile number that works for Asier Del Horno?

There is only one man that matters in all this and what Frank Lampard thinks is what should happen. If he is able to reach an agreement with Marina Granovskaia and become the club’s first English manager in 23 years then it does not mean he also needs his 2007 FA Cup winning team-mates, or the lads from Munich 2012. He needs those whom he trusts and values which does not always mean the biggest names from his career, or those who might have ambitions of managing the club themselves.

The theory that successful former players of yesteryear carry within them some kind of secret knowledge of their club that can help restore the glory days is a seductive notion, and one that is overwhelmingly popular with successful former players of yesteryear. Rio Ferdinand, a contender to do whatever role it is that Ed Woodward keeps interviewing former players for at Manchester United, spoke this week about formulating “an ideology” at the club. It sounds great but when it comes down to it, Chelsea need a manager to pick the team and prepare for that weekend’s opposition’s set-pieces and those thousand little details that go into winning football matches.

No-one expected Lampard to be in this position one year into his management career but a good first season at Derby County and the unusual circumstances in which the club find themselves have presented an opportunity. Of course, his playing career at Chelsea has contributed to it but just because there is one – finger-quotes – legend coming back, it does not mean that the club need the full reunion.

His assistants Jody Morris and Chris Jones, another former Chelsea fitness coach whom Lampard took with him to Derby, are the core of it. Lampard should be able to choose who it is he wants to work with. His career was such an epic adventure, full of memorable games and famous characters that it is easy to imagine him and those names saddling up once more for the sequel. The reality is that management is a different show altogether.

Lampard will hope to bring his assistants Jody Morris and Chris Jones with him to Stamford Bridge credit: PA

There is a comfort in the achievements of the past, and those players who were part of it. But only if those involved are any good at coaching or scouting or analysis or any of the other disciplines that go into successful management. There is no innate capability that predisposes one individual to success because of a past association, this dismal trope of a “DNA” that needs wrestling off the corporate culture experts and given back to the genome scientists. There are just those who are useful and those who are not.

The dream seems to be pursuing the Ajax model of the heroes of the past coming back - and doubtless that has worked at times there, and at Bayern Munich. But it is no guarantee. Marc Overmars and Edwin Van der Sar sacked Dennis Bergkamp at Ajax over what was delicately described as “a difference of opinion about the technical policy”. Same difference of opinion over at Bayern, where new managers are sometimes described as the appointment that chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and president Uli Hoeness can agree on, rather than the one either wants.

It is still unclear what Cech’s role will be, although we can safely say that no technical director will ever take precedence over the all-powerful Granovskaia. Drogba will not be on the coaching staff. Claude Makelele could handle the loan players. Cole might do something in the academy. A return for John Terry is problematic. It then becomes the Lampard and Terry show, which worked when they were players but is not sustainable within a conventional management hierarchy.

It remains unclear what Petr Cech's role within the Chelsea hierarchy will be credit: GETTY IMAGES

And what a job awaits Lampard. In the aftermath of Eden Hazard’s departure the greatest concern will be where the goals come from next season, with no recourse – as things stand – to the transfer market. The club do not see a future for Gonzalo Higuain, who will return to Juventus with Maurizio Sarri. That leaves them with Olivier Giroud, Michy Batshuayi - who would have been sold in any other circumstances, after three loans in 18 months - and Tammy Abraham.

Giroud and Batshuayi scored seven Premier League goals between them last season, with the latter playing half the campaign at Valencia, where he managed just one league goal. Abraham scored 26 on loan at Aston Villa in the Championship including one in the play-offs but he would not have been guaranteed a return to the Chelsea first team if the ban was not looming. Hazard was Chelsea’s top goalscorer in the league with 16. Even with Hazard, Chelsea’s 63 goals last season was the lowest total in the top six and 32 fewer than champions Manchester City.

These are serious issues for Lampard to fix, in what is shaping up to be an unprecedented season for Chelsea. It already feels like a firefighting campaign, of the kind Arsene Wenger was obliged to prosecute around the time his team was being stripped away from him in the heart of the Emirates Stadium financing years. Having already appointed and sacked just about every alternative, Chelsea have made a brave decision in selecting Lampard as their first choice. Anyone can see what a hard job it is likely to be, and once they do reach agreement they simply have to let him get on with it as he sees fit.