Chelsea fan Harry Cornick’s hero growing up was Frank Lampard but the Luton striker is dreaming of scoring the winner in the FA Cup that could spell the sack for the Blues manager .
Town travel to Stamford Bridge on Sunday for a fourth round clash, with the Premier League favourites in a poor run of form that has seen the rumour mill working overtime with suggestions that their boss is on borrowed time.
Lampard is the Blues all-time top goalscorer with 211 in a trophy-laden 13 years with the west Londoners, but now in the dugout, the ex-England midfielder is expected to avoid a cup banana skin against Luton.
Arguably, a Hatters victory in their first clash with the Blues since the 1994 FA Cup semi-final – before Cornick was even born – would see the axe swing on Lampard’s Chelsea managerial spell – and Cornick would have no qualms about being the player that caused it.
“I think that sounds perfect to me,” the forward said, adding: “That’s exactly what I want to do. First and foremost, you’re playing for the team you play for. I don’t want Chelsea to win that game, no chance.
“Hopefully I can score the winner and knock them out of the cup. That’d be lovely.
“I’m going to try my best and hopefully we can turn them over and knock them out of the cup, which he wouldn’t like.”
After Chelsea’s 2-0 defeat to Leicester on Tuesday, Lampard admitted he was concerned with his side’s form, which has seen them take just eight points from the last eight games.
And asked if he believes Luton can cause an upset, Cornick said: “Massively. You’ve got to go into every game believing you can win it. I think we’ve got enough in our squad to cause them a lot of problems.
“It’s going to be a tough place to go to. It’s a shame we can’t take our fans, because it would be a great day out for them.
“We’ve got to look forward to it and think there’s going to be no fans there. Their team is going to be under a bit of pressure to get a result.
“We’ve got to take that into our own hands and use that against them.
“The FA Cup’s a magical cup. I think it’s a brilliant game. You can get drawn against anyone. That’s the beauty of the cup.
“The other thing about the FA Cup, is that there’s so many upsets, you can really write the headlines the next day, if you can pick up a result.
“If Luton go to Stamford Bridge and get a win and knock them out of the FA Cup it will be all over the news, all over the papers.
“So, we’ve got to look at it as a massive chance to get a scalp in the FA Cup and create some history for Luton Town.
“I think we’ll play our own game. We’ll go there with a lot of confidence. We’re in a bit of form at the minute, playing quite well, playing some good stuff.
“So I think, if we go there and play our best football, and defensively we’re sound and cut our mistakes to a minimum, I think we’ve got a great chance of getting a result.”
The Luton forward, who has not scored this season, admits to being “100 per cent a glory fan” and an “armchair” Chelsea supporter after he copied his older brother in supporting them as a boy growing up in Bournemouth.
“My first year was the year before (Jose) Mourinho came in when Jesper Gronkjaer scored the goal to send them to the Championship League. I’m a bit of a glory fan, to be honest.
“I started supporting them mainly when Mourinho was there when it was Terry, Lampard, Drogba, Robben, Duff, those sorts of players.”
That was at the start of the Roman Abramovich era when Chelsea began establishing themselves as a big spending force in English football.
That still continues, and Lampard has splashed out £222million this summer on top talent to try to get back to the heights of challenging for the Premier League title.
But they currently sit in eighth spot, five points off the pace of the top four and and 11 adrift of leaders Manchester United.
Cornick said: “It’s been a topsy turvy start. It’s a strange league in terms of the Premier League. A lot of teams are beating each other, that you wouldn’t expect.
“You’ve got Aston Villa beating Liverpool and last night even Burnley beat Liverpool, so there are a lot of teams beating teams that you wouldn’t expect.
“I think they’re doing OK. It’s sort of an integration year for him (Lampard), to gel all the players together. But how long you get to do that, I don’t know.
“Hopefully he can turn it around and fire them to the top four. I think that would be a good year and maybe Champions League. I’ll take that.”
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