Lamp burning bright

FRANK SHINES IN HOT SEAT

- MIKE WALTERS

FRANK LAMPARD is back where he started in management - as standard bearer for England's golden generation.

Wayne Rooney's parting of the ways with Plymouth, and Steven Gerrard's desert adventures in Saudi Arabia exhausting the remaining grains of sand in the hourglass, leaves Lampard as last-man-standing in the dugout among a lost dynasty.

Where former Three Lions team-mates Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Rio Ferdinand have found sanctuary on the TV pundits' sofa, Frank is back on the coconut shy with Coventry City.

Good on him. After winning 106 England caps and every conceivable trophy with Chelsea as a player, Lampard doesn't need to validate his greatness in an industry where the average shelf life is barely 12 months.