Jase

Lampard just said James has a hamstring problem... That's like the 54095045605048567856870th muscle injury we've had under Lampard!

It's fucking beyond me how Christensen keeps getting chances to play despite his constant defensive cock-ups. Take the challenge for the Villa's equalizer as an example. He tried to make challenge but wasn't fully committed to it, referee gave nothing and Villa went on to score.

SOMEBODY, KILL ME NOW!!!

Wait, didn't you want Allegri???

Fuck it if they don't know how to cross. I would give $500 to someone just to see a different type of cross, regardless of whether it succeds or fails!

But this is something that can be worked on. Regardless of whether someone can do it or not, I find it appalling if a team can only play one type of crosses. It won't be successful every time but god damn it, vary the crosses! Try them!

Yeah...and look what happened when he came on and went upfront. We passed the ball backwards, sideways - SLOWLY - before looking to spam crosses into the box, all after allowing Villa to get back into their defensive shape. Like what was even the point of putting Werner upfront if we were just gonna continue spamming crosses into the box? Why didn't Lampard just leave Giroud on or bring Abraham on? Heck, could have even gone 2 up top with Werner and Giroud and get the former to work around the latter for any drop down etc. We played such braindead football towards the end.

Hate to stereotype here but we look like a side coached by a typical English manager, don't we? 4-3-3 (or whatever system you want to put here), with a classic #9 leading the line, get the ball out wide and spam crosses into the box.

If we want to play crosses so badly, fine but vary the crosses. Go high, go low, drill it across the goal, whip it into the box etc. But do we always do? Put high crosses into the box and only Abraham and Giroud have a chance of winning them. Liverpool and Man City also play with **** ton of crosses but there's variation with them. City, for example, at their best would work the ball wide and look to drill in low crosses for someone to get a tap-in inside the box.

Aston Villa (-2) Down to +3 only. 3 points worse off than at the same stage last season, after spending 200 million+ in the transfer market...

Pass Pass Cross Pass Pass Cross Pass Pass Cross Rinse and repeat.

I have no fucking clue why Lampard even put Werner upfront to begin with if he wasn't going to ask the players to stop spamming crosses into the box and asked them to look for early passes instead! You can talk about us not having Ziyech till the cows come home but no one, NOT ONE FUCKING PLAYER, even tried to look for his run and play a forward pass for him to run into, especially when Villa were leaving gaps around. Instead, we kept passing backwards and sideways and then tried to spam crosses into the box (we even saw Christensen and Rudiger stupidly passing the ball to one another in the 88th minute!). It was the same case when Giroud was still on the pitch but at least the spamming crosses approach worked with him, even if it's predictable. But trying to do that when Werner was on the field? It's just stupid, braindead football. And by the way, Ziyech didn't play against Southampton earlier this season and we still managed to make use of Werner's strengths when he played upfront then. The one player who could maybe played Fabregas-esque passes was taken off in the second half.

We put Werner upfront late on in the game but what did we do? Passed the ball backwards, sideways and then try to deliver high crosses into the box. There were at least 2 such crosses - one from Chilwell in the 74th minute and another one from Azpi 5 minutes later. Fucking clueless. Nobody even took risks to play forward passes or those vertical passes. Fucking clueless football!

Goals aside, Lampard has got tactical problems with the players. Whenever we play Werner out wide in this 4-3-3, he doesn't offer anything going forward - e.g. creating chances - and when we play Giroud upfront, he doesn't offer anything either, barely involved in the game. Both players don't offer much apart from trying to get at the end of chances. And that's without even going into Lampard's use of Werner in this winger role...

That is because Lampard has yet to answer or convince fully about the concerns in the team. Every win buys him some time but god knows what he has been doing.

Aston Villa have won only 1 of 5 league games this season when they have conceded - the 7-2 win over Liverpool. Lost the other 4. [there, I've jinxed it for us ]

Offered nothing all game up until then. #justsayin

No, you aren't. It's just some people are making excuses for it (not S.M.O of course).

Supposed to be back in training this week, according to Lampard last Friday.

Villa looking open as well but as if Lampard will play Werner upfront...

Christensen's last 3 league games: L 0-2 Liverpool - sent off D 3-3 West Brom D 3-3 Southampton

2 starts in 3 days for Pulisic. Lampard really playing with fire with his hamstring.

Villa's XI...