Superblue

Not great, lots of things to work on...but at this stage of the season it's all about the 3 points and the ability and experience of grinding wins out when under pressure will put us in good stead for the future.

They do for my fantasy team...that's what matters!

Mount has been excellent. Such a great mentality for a young player, prepared to take the responsibility on his shoulders to create openings.

That goal was all about Mount's pass into Barkley breaking the lines, not enough of that has been happening.

I don't think this is a case of Lampard trying to shoe-horn Kante into the side otherwise he would have been playing as one of the two in front of the deepest midfielder. Lampard has obviously analysed things during lockdown, and determined that there is something he doesn't like and is trying to address it. The problem I have with that is it is very risky to make such a big change to our structure at this stage of the season. I'm not against moving to a 4-3-3 with a holder and two number 8's moving forward. But the number 8's have to effect the game much more than what Mount and Barkley do. Neither offer the ability to control a game like Kovacic can, so they need to be providing goals and assists. Mount's industry to a degree is effective in other ways and he links the game well but we need goals from that area and they don't come enough.

Absolutely no margin for error tonight.

There will always be the odd stupid corner given away like the one Rudiger did but we're actually very good at minimising corners. We're second to Man City who average around 2.8 corners a game, with 3.4 ourselves. I believe the next best after this is Wolves with 4, and the average is pushing 5.5.

I struggle to see either Arsenal or Spurs prepared to offer him 3 years on big wages. I still think he'll end up signing a new contract for 2 more years.

Lampard has to find a solution to it. I feel like we've looked susceptible the last couple of years to set pieces but I think it's really come to the fore this season. A lot of the time though is the failure to deal with the second ball. That's players not having the right mentality and concentration to anticipate the danger around them. When our centre backs are amongst the worst culprits for ball watching and a lack of anticipation (and that's not even just reserved for set piece defending), we're in big trouble.

The problem is Tammy isn't very good in the air considering his size and height, and ball watches (you can tell that by how many times he's caught offside). He would be easy to lose as an attacker with a little movement. Rudiger similarly seems to struggle with marking on set pieces and anticipate danger and I'd trust Azpi to be more committed and stronger than Christensen in an aerial dual. I actually think for West Ham's goal Azpi did pretty well. The header was weak and should have been dealt with by one of Kepa or Tammy. Back in 2010 we were much better suited to man marking with the players we had who were both strong in the air and kept the right levels of concentration and anticipation to mark players properly. We have absolutely no one at present organising that defence on the pitch and taking the responsibility to do so.

Did you bother reading the article, or watch any of the games? We've changed how we defend set pieces already this season so I see no reason why Lampard wouldn't look to make changes again. I actually think how he originally set us up was better than we are now. Our players cannot be trusted to carry out man marking successfully.

Interesting article and I think City's tactic would suit us also. Even when we deal with the initial corner, we seem to struggle to clear our lines so having more players in the box may help with this. It's hardly like it'll affect Kepa who struggles to come out for anything anyway, and maybe that's then a way to tell him to stay on his line and just deal with his area, passing on responsibility then to the defenders to deal with anything outside the 3 or 4 yards in front of the keeper. The organisation at the back with regards to marking, ball watching, etc has been abysmal. I think stacking the best and more dominant players aerially on our 6 yard line and given instruction to attack the ball without worrying necessarily about tracking a runner is worth trying. I wouldn't be too worried about not having anybody higher up the pitch. We have good pace in our forward areas that if they stay alert we could potentially break and push out very quickly. The pace and threat we'd have to counter would be enough to ensure most teams in the league wouldn't be prepared to over-commit themselves. I think Lampard needs to try something different now. We literally look like conceding from every set play at the moment.

Realistically if we were to try and do deals with Zouma and Barkley involved to buy Digne and Rice, how much extra money do people think we would need to pay on those deals? I'm thinking that a Digne/Zouma swap wouldn't be massively different, especially when Everton were reportedly prepared to spend quite a bit on Zouma last summer and obviously still hold him in high regard. More would probably be needed on the Rice deal, It would be sensible if we were able to sell Emerson and any funds for him cover these two deals. I wouldn't be against that at all because I think the two players we'd be getting would be intelligent upgrades to areas we need to sort out.

Yeah but United are still paying a massive portion of his wages. I'm not sure, the way the club operates, it'll be prepared to suck up a large chunk of his transfer fee and wages to allow him to be loaned out. At best I think we may be able to command £5m for a loan fee and someone pay £75-100k per week of his salary. There would definitely be suitors as he's still well regarded in Spain and an international for their country but it will be teams outside the top 3 looking at him who won't usually spend big money.

Which just highlights the problems this season, expecting a young player to come from a foreign country and hit the ground running. I really like Pulisic (I mentioned months ago that he looks to have that ability and hunger to attack the back post which I think could lead to big numbers for goals as he matures like Sterling, Mane, Salah, etc) but my biggest worry with him is his durability to stay fit because it's not just this season but previous years that he's missed weeks/months of the season with muscular injuries. That obviously has a massive effect if you're key attacking outlet can't be fully relied on because of fitness concerns. If he can stay fit I think he could become a real big player and rack up some big numbers for us in assists and goals but there's always that worry that niggling injuries will hinder him. The other issue this highlights is Pulisic, currently, is still well off Hazard's level when he was here but the likes of Willian and Pedro haven't 'upped' their numbers either to compensate. As the season has wore on, Hazard's loss has been felt more and more in my opinion when trying to break teams down. He's not going to be directly replaced but I think in Pulisic, Mount and Hudson Odoi there's three young players still developing, and the purchase of Werner and Ziyech that we can spread the load out across our front line which will make us more threatening than just a reliance on one player which we've had the last few years. Willian in my opinion could still be a solid, dependable squad player for another season or two. He's rarely injured, hasn't shown any decline physically and offers some experience to a young group. Similar to Giroud really. But his time as a first choice should definitely be coming to an end.

From what I've heard the backup Bilbao brought through to replace Kepa, they think is better than him.

The problem with that is the amortisation of his transfer fee is around £10m per season and he's on huge wages. No team is going to pay a sizeable loan fee and his wages in full for him. Even loaning him out is going to be a massive cost for us.

I was one that felt if the opportunity to buy Havertz was there to take it, even at the expense of improving other areas of the squad. Part of me is still trying to hold on to that opinion because I believe he could become one of the best players in the world over the next few years. But we are just so crap in defence, I think it's imperative to add a centre back and left back this summer if we can. Hopefully we can flip one of the centre backs and left backs to offset a chunk of the cost and get a couple of big additions in those areas. If we really want to push too we need to seriously consider Kepa's future. He's been dealt a bad hand this season with how poor our defending has been but that works both ways. A keeper to come and dominate the box would have a significant impact on our ability to deal with corners and wide free kicks. Neither were the best ball players, but Courtois or Cech would likely deal with at least 50% of the balls into the box that we are struggling to defend against.

I don't necessarily blame Lampard for not playing Jorginho up to now. But i think questions should definitely be asked if Kante is played as a holder again when we play Watford. There was an interview he did during lockdown where he suggested he had identified a couple of areas he might look to change and try to improve and I believe Kante has been deployed in the deep midfield position in the belief to offer more defensive solidity, and that may be the sacrifice for the rest of this season to try and get the results for top 4. The three wins before last night at least gave some credibility to that assessment. I think after yesterday however it showed that Kante in that position doesn't add enough solidity to trade off losing someone who can dictate and control the game in midfield. If Kante plays, he's to the side of the deep midfielder or played in a pivot. Defensively we're a shambles. I thought our open play defending had shown signs of improvement but the last 2 games have been poor and we look like conceding every set piece against any side. We desperately need a leader in that back 4, which I hope we address in the summer. Until then however and after last night's game, I feel if we don't make top 4 we should at least go out on our sword. Attack is our only real option at present, so Jorginho or Gilmour has to play at that base, and Kovacic should be in there too.

That's why he's zonal marking in there. Watching him, I'd worry that he would be ball watching and not track or successfully mark his man. He's played a lot of games this season and fulfilled the same role defending set pieces which to me says Lampard can't trust him to mark and defend man to man.

It would be fine if it was Giroud or Drogba but Tammy isn't very good in the air. I don't think he would have dealt well defensively against Soucek and says a lot that he's zonal marking and not one of the man markers. In my opinion Azpilicueta defended the goal pretty well given the size difference. It was hardly a bullet header and should have been comfortably dealt with by one of Kepa or Tammy.

It says a lot about the centre backs this season that in my opinion if Cahill had stayed another season he would have ended up first choice. I'm most disappointed with Rudiger. We really needed him to step up this season as the leader of the defence and senior player in that central defence. He's gone backwards. I'm still not sold on either of Zouma and Christensen as both have glaring and major weaknesses. Tomori is still very raw, although I think with a leader alongside him he's the best hope.

We've been linked with Rice to play centre back.

For me the most disappointing aspect was after how poor we played against Leicester, I fully expected that to be a wake up call but we've been poor and lethargic again. West Ham wanted it more and that's unacceptable. Defensively it's just not good enough. We need a leader at the back, both for set pieces and to organise that back line in open play.

You're father is right he was terrible. I loved the Chelsea signings back then as I used to hammer Championship Manager as a kid so seeing all these players like Zola, Desailly, Deschamps join was incredible. I can remember Sutton being so underwhelming as a signing and it just felt like it cost a fortune compared to all the foreigners we were bringing in. If I remember rightly he scored 3 goals for us. One in the Champions League qualifier we won easy, one in an FA Cup game we won easy and one at the Bridge against United (to be fair a great header) which we won 5-0. I can't remember who Sutton replaced? I'm guessing it was Vialli. Even at his age, Vialli was five times the player Sutton was. Or it may have been Casiraghi thinking about it, not sure. Thank god that we shipped him out sharpish and managed to replace him with Hasselbaink who was always one of my favourites growing up.