Chelsea have confirmed the sacking of Frank Lampard.

Eighteen months after his dramatic return to Stamford Bridge, the Blues hierarchy have brought the axe down on their all-time record goalscorer on the back of a difficult winter period.

Despite a summer of spending that saw the likes of Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Thiago Silva come through the door, Chelsea's title hopes already look in tatters as they reside in ninth place.

Frank Lampard sacked

As a result, great swathes of the Stamford Bridge faithful have backed the club's decision to sack Lampard despite a strong first season in charge and all his achievements for the Blues as a player.

Nevertheless, given those exact points of merit, Chelsea were sure to show class in their statement announcing the decision, clearly taking no pleasure in severing ties with a bonafide club legend.

Roman Abramovich told Chelsea's official website: “This was a very difficult decision for the Club, not least because I have an excellent personal relationship with Frank and I have the utmost respect for him.

Chelsea's Lampard statement

“He is a man of great integrity and has the highest of work ethics. However, under current circumstances we believe it is best to change managers.

“On behalf of everyone at the Club, the Board and personally, I would like to thank Frank for his work as Head Coach and wish him every success in the future.

"He is an important icon of this great club and his status here remains undiminished. He will always be warmly welcomed back at Stamford Bridge.”

A pretty classy statement, right? Well, the sincerity of the response is even backed up by research conducted by Adam Hurrey on Twitter.

Chelsea statements compared

That's because The Athletic writer amusingly did some digging into Chelsea's track record when it comes to announcing dismissals, assessing whether from word count and to common phrases.

As a result, Hurrey discovered that Lampard was the only permanent Chelsea manager since 2004 to have received the so-called 'hat-trick' of statement tropes across his 246-word send-off.

For the record, that means that Chelsea thanked him for his effort, wished him the best for the future and welcomed him to Stamford Bridge. 

However, the same can't be said for some of the managers that came before Lampard, so be sure to check out the full research down below to get an idea of how Chelsea like to say goodbye.

Lampard's statement 'hat-trick'

'Why on earth did Maurizio Sarri get 500 words?' I hear you ask. Well, bizarrely, the Italian seemed to get a whole biography of his time at Stamford Bridge when he agreed his Juventus move.

That, and we hope that Mourinho's first 16-word dismissal statement had something to do with the time it was written as opposed to being bitter about their first Premier League-winning coach.

But those two anomalies asides, let's just say it's not surprising that Conte was given a cold goodbye, Ancelotti earned a pat on the back and Lampard warranted the kindest goodbye of all.