Jase

Looks good in theory but it will not work, will it?

Jovic? That's a shit comparison. He had only that 1 good season in 2018/19 and people just believed the hype and jumped onto the bandwagon. Werner had at least 4 seasons and steadily improved year in year out at Leipzig.

Remember the winning run we had during last season's September-October period and then the results and performances just went south after that? Same thing seems to be happening this again. We had that long unbeaten run but it's now suddenly 3 defeats in 4 with 4 consecutive poor performances (5 if one were to include the dead rubber against Krasnodar).

Might have to start revising my expectations...

That's their problem. No one is stopping you. All I'm basically saying is, while they have some excellent articles, they also produce some puff pieces.

But the piece just highlights what we already know and saw, no?

https://theathletic.com/2285228/2020/12/27/chelsea-lampard-sacking-arsenal/ See what I mean? That's a piece on yesterday's game, using a few incidents to highlight what went wrong - as if we're all blind and couldn't see - and not much on the bigger questions that came from the defeat.

Is this really what we are now? Just play with a classic #9 and start dumping crosses onto his head? All that money spent and we're playing Burnley-esque football. Why didn't we just hire Big Sam when he was available? Rice is a good player but we are truly fucked if we need a 21-year-old to come rescue us.

I won't be surprised if Lampard starts Havertz out wide again.

It's not speculation. You can easily catch this small little things, especially when they happen too often. And ever wonder why muscle injury is the most common injury under Lampard? It rarely happened under past managers.

But I find it annoying that some of their journalists are like external PRs for clubs. They never say a bad word about managers, always looking for some sort of excuses.

Free weeks are nothing under Lampard. They just give him "opportunities" to overwork the players. Ever notice random injury or two tends to pop up after a free week? Or we tend to put in poor, lethargic performances after a free week?

It's behind a paywall.

Villa's league results this season have been weird. - When they have not conceded, they have won 7 out of 8 games. Drew 0-0 in the other game. - When they have conceded, they have lost 4 out of 5 games. Beat Liverpool 7-2 in the other game.

Fixture congestion, fatigue etc although yeah, we have never been able to press well under Lampard.

When results are going well, Lampard preaches patience with the new players. When results are going bad, Lampard suddenly wants the new players to adapt quicker. (second time he has said this recently) All this while looking clueless on how to get the best out of the 2 biggest attacking signings on the pitch. It was unfortunate that he got COVID-19 but the Havertz situation also needs to be addressed soon!

I was only wondering about it. God knows if Lampard is saying something else behind closed doors. There are far bigger issues, IMO, in the last few games.

Whether Mendy is truly the real deal for us in the long run remains to be seen but he's not the problem right now. There are problems further ahead of him.

It's also around the same we started to play the better sides, if you like, and I don't believe for one second our recent struggles is due to the players losing motivation because they cannot challenge for the title. How many players in the current squad have even challenged for league titles in their career anyway? If anything, these last few games just exposed Lampard's naive tactics, style of play and the inability to get the best out of this group of players.

Who said anything about it being just about today?

The problem with Jorginho is, he is not good enough. He is not good enough when he starts and he rarely even changes games when he comes on as a sub.

Where were you when Jorginho was shit against West Ham?

Nagelsmann won't leave Leipzig midway through the season. Pochettino is going to PSG.

Has anyone noticed that we are behind Villa (on GD), who avoided relegation by 1 point last season, in the table and have played 2 games more?

I'm all for managing expectations, like what Lampard did during our good run especially with the current state of the squad, but is there a case of managing them too much to the point where it does not inspire confidence in the players or make them believe that they can actually outperform themselves?