Totally Frank: The Autobiography of Frank Lampard. Frank Lampard

– and talk through what had happened, what I had done well, where I might improve. Afterwards, he would come in and talk to Mum and Dad about how I was progressing. He had a way about him which was caring and which made me feel that Arsenal was a place where they wanted you to do well. He scouted me to start with and spent a lot of time with me. But it wasn’t just me. He did it with a lot of other kids as well and that is why he has had such a successful career at Arsenal.

      All of this was in stark contrast to my experience at West Ham and I started wondering if I was getting the support I needed there. In a way, it didn’t take much to work out why great players like Tony Adams and Ray Parlour had ended up at Arsenal. Both of them were local boys from Essex. Ray is a Romford lad just like me. They were West Ham fans as were their families and both had played youth football for the club. Neither signed.

      John Terry was a couple of years below me and lived and breathed West Ham the same as the rest of his family and friends. Dad remembers him playing and training at the club until he was 14 and then he went to Chelsea. There have been others. Some stay, some get away. That’s a fact of life. I can’t help thinking that it could have been different if the club’s attitude had been less arrogant.

      At the time, Billy Bonds was the manager, Uncle Harry was a coach and Dad was a part-time scout. None were directly involved in the youth team and when the time came and I had to decide who to sign for, I was in a dilemma.

      I had serious thoughts about playing for Tottenham. The coaching was of a higher quality, they were the first team to scout me and I had links there through Jamie – even though in the end he went back to Bournemouth to do his apprenticeship because he was homesick. I had seen a lot of good players from my area go to Spurs. And they had a new training ground. I confess, I was very tempted. They even offered me more money. In fact, Arsenal offered a better contract as well though the difference between them and West Ham financially wasn’t huge.

      The real bottom line was that money would never be the most important factor. I was a fan and had supported the team all my life. Dad sensed my indecision and asked Jimmy Neighbour to come and talk to me. Jimmy was in charge of schoolboys at West Ham and had served the club well as a skilful winger. He arrived at the house and was brought in to talk to me. At the time, I had no idea that he was there at the request of Dad. He told me that the club knew I was in demand and that he wasn’t surprised; that I was a promising young player who had the potential to become a very good professional.

      It was nice to hear. Even if it had taken awhile, better late than never and in my case, just in time. Only now can I really see that I signed for West Ham out of emotion rather than good sense, or even football sense. Dad had a lot to do with it. He put pressure on me even though he tried to let me make my own decision as much as possible. He was funny that way. He would insist that it was my life, my career and I should do what I felt was right for me. And then, if he sensed I was straying from what he thought was the right thing he would intervene, like asking Jimmy Neighbour to have a chat with me. Typical really. He made the point that I would get into the first team earlier at West Ham because the standard wasn’t as high there and there were all sorts of other emotional reasons why I should sign – all of which I felt the weight of.

      The first YTS contract I signed paid me £30 a week with another £50 which went to Mum for my digs. At that time I was just starting to go out and so all my money could be gone in a single night. Thankfully Mum would slip me some of the other money back though it was still tight. She was good that way. That deal was signed with the proviso that if I did well then I would turn pro at 17. The difference was substantial. My first professional contract with West Ham was £500 a week which rose to £550 the next year and then £600 the following year. But for me, money didn’t come into it. A few of the lads I had played youth football with had also signed forms: Lee Hodges, Danny Ship, and a couple of others. I was among friends and I felt at home.

      Fortunately for West Ham, when Dad and Harry took over from Billy Bonds they knew where things had been going wrong in terms of recruiting young players and turned the whole thing round. Things were organized properly and they saw that the whole operation needed to have a more personal touch, one that had been missing. They are both good with people and caring is in their nature.

      Almost immediately they went to see Joe Cole and his family to discuss his future. Joe was widely regarded as the most promising kid of his age in the area and was known to just about every club in the country. Unlike me, Joe is a not a West Ham boy – he’s from Camden which has no real tie to the club – and Dad and Harry recognized that they could not depend on tribal ties with him even as a starting point. They were perceptive that way, and persuasive. West Ham was hardly the most glamorous of Joe’s options but they made the right noises when they spoke to him and his parents about where he should sign up. They knew what it was to have their own sons coming through and the decisions which parents had to help their kids make when it was time to choose. Again, it was the little things. Joe was invited to travel to an away game on the first team coach. He was made part of the squad for a day which was a huge thing for a young kid but hardly a massive gesture by the club. It didn’t matter. The signals were right and that was the most important thing.

      They sold West Ham properly and brought in Tony Carr as youth team coach. A couple of years after I signed it was pointed out that myself and Rio were knocking on the door of the first team. At last, they could deliver on the promise that this was a club which cared about the next generation. They gave youth a chance. They returned West Ham to its roots and once again made it a family club. Somewhere along the line that had been lost. It may seem strange to those who see Upton Park as the breeding ground for some of the best young talent in the country but for a long time they didn’t bring through any players. Under Dad and Harry all of that changed. Apart from myself, Rio, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, Jermain Defoe, and later Glen Johnson, all came through the ranks and helped make West Ham a fantastic team.

      Of that batch Rio and Joe were the two most naturally talented. Rio had the edge though because he also had the physique needed to succeed quickly. Joe had to work hard on that and has continued to do so. Carrick was probably the most technically gifted of the group while Defoe was a pure goalscorer. Rio and I were talking about this while on England duty and it made me wonder where I came. I guess it was somewhere in between. I had a bit of talent, some skill and I could score a few goals. Rio agreed and I suppose that has come to be the case given how my game has developed since then. For West Ham, it was a great position to be in, to have such a talented crop coming through, though later they would also benefit considerably from selling players who had cost them nothing. That, however, is another story.

      Having signed my contract I could not have been happier. I was finally living the life which I had aimed for ever since I could remember. After years of eating, drinking, and sleeping football I was also being paid to do it. It was the best feeling I could imagine. First year youth is about as much fun as football gets. You have your own little community of team-mates and you are still way under the surface of the cut-throat world of the first team and making it as a real professional. It was a period where school met work and there were elements of both environments about it. We trained knowing that this was part of our job and our education. There were a lot of chores to do as well but I didn’t care. I was a footballer now, a West Ham player, though that sense of awe and privilege was soon knocked out of me in my first pre-season.

      Billy Bonds was always very good with the young players. He knew your name, how you were getting on and would often have a joke with you. Unfortunately, he was also a very good long-distance runner. Actually, he was better than anyone else at the club. Running? He was the best and he liked to show it.

      Every player accepts that plodding endless mile upon mile is the painful and tedious part of pre-season, consequently it’s also the part that most of us hate. I was a decent runner at school and never minded that much though I know some lads who would rather clean the stadium toilets after matchday than go on one of Billy’s marathons. We would plough our way through Hainault Forest, up hills, down hills, through streams. Then we would start on Epping Forest and all the time Billy would pick up the pace at the front and then run to the back of the pack and give them some ‘encouragement’. He was remarkable – like Steve Ovett in football boots.

      I would finish the thing