Arsenal v Chelsea: No one has covered more ground than Frank Lampard. The Chelsea midfielder is the only outfield player at any of the Premiership's top three clubs to have begun every league match this season. You have to trek back to September 30th, 2001, and a 1-1 draw with Fulham to reach the last occasion when one of his club's games went by without him.

If he could muster the strength, Lampard might bellow with laughter at the worry he expressed when employed only for the second half against Sparta Prague last September. The fear of being sidelined is a memory that a person with a less robust constitution would now think of fondly. Yesterday his manager Claudio Ranieri waved aside any concern about Lampard by referring to the 25-year-old's rapid recovery rate. The player himself would rebel against rest, particularly when tomorrow's FA Cup tie at Arsenal awaits him.

"He must be excited about facing the likes of Patrick Vieira and he knowing it could be him who's the difference between the result going one way or the other," said Trevor Brooking, the Football Association's director of football, who had a close view of Lampard at West Ham.

It is now taken for granted Chelsea's fortunes are tightly tied to the midfielder's form. Tony Cottee, whose second spell at Upton Park coincided with Lampard's emergence, was struck by the impromptu acclaim given to the player by discriminating judges at Portsmouth on Wednesday.

"It was a fantastic pass from him when Chelsea scored their second goal against Portsmouth," said Cottee. "Crespo chested the ball in after Hasselbaink had hit the bar and two or three players ran to him. The rest of the team jumped on top of Frank Lampard, including the goalkeeper Neil Sullivan. The ball he had played was absolutely superb and it's not often you see most people congratulating the supplier instead of the scorer.

" That said it all. You can't pay him a higher compliment than to say that, for all the top, foreign players at the club, he has established himself as the number one midfielder."

This regard for Lampard is becoming conventional, yet it has taken stamina to attain such a level of appreciation. For much of his career there have been insinuations he was overvalued. The cynics believed it was nepotism rather than precocity that rushed him into the West Ham first team while a teenager.

"There was a lot of interest in Frank, Michael Carrick and Joe Cole at the club because they were different types of midfielder," said Brooking. "Frank's path was probably harder because his dad was Harry Redknapp's assistant and everyone asked if that wasn't why he was being given his opportunities."

Cottee knew the team selection was not being rigged but he, like others, was not fully aware of Lampard's potential. "Having watched him at training we knew he wasn't going to be out of place in the first team," he said, "but it has surprised me how well Frank has developed since going to Chelsea."

Brooking identifies the correct time-frame when describing the way in which Lampard has crept to prominence. "Frank has made as much progress as any young English player over the past couple of years," he says, "and he's very much competing for one of the places in the national team."

It is impossible not to conclude that a maturing of Lampard's character has contributed to the ripening of his talent. Excellence erases earlier memories in the public's minds and it now feels like an exercise in historical investigation to air misdemeanours that occurred in the fairly recent past. A laddish vacation with other players in Ayia Napa four years ago resulted in a sex video that eventually made its way into the hands of newspapers.

In 2001 a boozy spree with his Chelsea team-mates John Terry, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Jody Morris led to loutish behaviour at a Heathrow hotel in front of American tourists who were desperately trying to fly home on the day after the September 11th attacks. The club punished the miscreants, with Lampard's fine reported to be £80,000. Even the serene Sven-Goran Eriksson lost patience and dropped Lampard from the squad for the critical World Cup qualifier with Greece at Old Trafford.

"If you are a professional footballer you have to behave like a professional footballer, especially if you want to play for England," he said.

It was also around that time Chelsea got by against Fulham without recourse to Lampard. Since then the player has simply gone about his work unobtrusively.

"To be fair to Frank," said Cottee, "since those incidents a few years ago you haven't really heard anything else about him. It's a sign that he's matured as a person as well as a player."

Lampard was smart enough to be self-critical and the same degree of analysis has let him review his efforts as a footballer. His versatility has disconcerted those who classified him as an overpriced (signed by Chelsea for £11 million) journeyman midfielder. When his team won at Blackburn a fortnight ago, he played behind the attack and scored twice. With 10 goals to his name he has already reached his highest total for a season in his three years with Chelsea.

As Brooking notes, though, Lampard also filled the defensive role normally occupied by Claude Makelele when Charlton were beaten last Sunday. The player may not always have looked silky but he has absorbed the Chelsea ambience.

"When you play at a certain level and do well in a number of games," said Brooking, "you get a conviction that you are good enough. You have confidence and consistency comes with that. He has an all-round game now. The top three teams like to move the ball around and choose the moments when the individual flair is allowed to come out. He's learned very well to make those decisions."

From having looked like a player who might be swept out of Stamford Bridge as the flood of Roman Abramovich's money crashed through the squad, the new concern for Lampard is to prove he can hold down a place with England and, tomorrow, get the better of Vieira.