Jase

You forgot to mention that Lampard is seemingly playing Giroud to persuade him to stay in January, even at the cost of causing tactical imbalance to the side.

You're putting a lot of hope on Pulisic to stay fit all of a sudden...

If a team is a one man team, then that kinda means the rest of the team is shit and it's also not sustainable in the long run.

But here's the thing, what happens if Ziyech comes back and has an off day, like against Spurs recently? Then what? Also considering how injury prone Pulisic is and the fact that people keep making fun of it, it's ironic to then see people are seeing him as our savior. Plus, FML if we become a one man team with Ziyech again!

Put it this way; Before Giroud was put back into the starting XI, our attacking play looked fluid and we were scoring a good number of goals and the goals were scored by different players. But ever since he came back in, our play looked less fluid and only him is the one mainly scoring.

Totally forgot to add the poll yesterday But not that it matters...

Pretty sure Kovacic and James have been doing that in the last 2 games but their accuracy was horrendous. Nowhere the target.

Is it immaturity or just pure stupidity? A lot of the players have played and/or seen enough games by now to have a sense of what to do in such situations. What happened yesterday was almost a carbon copy of the game at West Ham last season. We weren't playing well, we couldn't break the opposition down but we still decided to overcommit and then get picked off on the counter in stoppage time. It was also compounded by the fact that Zouma kept backing off Neto and basically inviting him to shoot at goal. He should have just fouled him on the halfway line and taken a yellow for the team. On top of that, where were the change and help/leadership from Lampard? He talked about Wolves' counter attacks after the game yesterday but did nothing to help stop them during the game and then blamed the players. His two subs were like-for-like and he did not seem to tell the players to calm it down etc. The more I think about it, the more I think Mourinho has a strong point when he basically said Lampard doesn't do anything when the team isn't doing well. I don't think Lampard will ever be a vocal manager, one who shouts and screams on the touchline but a lot of the time, you will see him just cross his hands or has his hands in his pocket and look on silently. Lampard only seems to react when we score and miss chances. That's it. Klopp is obviously a much more vocal manager on the touchline but he was shouting at his players to "WAKE UP!" when Liverpool were playing poorly in the first half against Fulham last Sunday. Have we seen anything even close to that from Lampard when we aren't playing well? Also, this season is already bonkers and it looks like places could be decided by the smallest of margin in terms of points. Every point will likely matter a lot, probably more so than usual. If we are struggling to win a game, then sometimes we just gotta take the point, run and regroup. Instead, we lost in stupid fashion again and are now even under bigger pressure to get things right next week.

It's Mourinho. Are you really surprised by his actions after all these year? He'll do anything to pursue his own agenda.

Wasn't the full game but they already did, at Krasnodar.

One could say also that our last two games were Everton and Wolves. Hardly City and Liverpool. Yet, we contrived to lose both in stupid fashion. From looking rather assured of ourselves, we've suddenly gone back to looking clueless and unpredictable. The free week is good and bad. Good because the players can get some respite and bad because I fear potential muscle injuries happening again.

Havertz and Werner might need Chelsea formation change to bring best out them https://theathletic.com/2264487/2020/12/16/werner-havertz-formation-chelsea/?source=emp_shared_article This season, it seems, is not going to be kind to the teams with designs to be considered Premier League contenders. Earlier this month, when they swept aside Leeds United at Stamford Bridge with a display of high-tempo ruthlessness, Chelsea had the look of a side who had found themselves heading into the festive fixture crunch in good shape. Eleven days and back-to-back defeats against Everton and Wolves later, it’s once again reasonable to question the on-pitch identity they had built with such style. Frank Lampard was in no mood for such introspection in the immediate aftermath at Molineux. For him, this was simply a case of poor game management. “The threat from Wolves is clearly the counter-attack and it is a major threat from what they have got,” he said. “It is the main one because they have speed and quality in forward areas. The players knew it before the game, the players knew it in (the) game but we allowed some counter-attacks. If you are going to allow a team to play to their strengths then you may lose.” Nothing he said left the impression there could be a departure from the 4-3-3 system that has underpinned Chelsea’s rise in recent weeks, even as Everton and then Wolves’ defensive success left many querying whether the formation is viable with the squad’s wing depth so depleted. The bigger headache for Lampard, however, will probably come when he ponders whether or not the tactical framework he has chosen can maximise either of his two marquee summer signings. Timo Werner — operating from the right and later from the left of the front three at Molineux — had three shot attempts against Wolves, none on target and none particularly memorable. He has now failed to score in his last eight Chelsea appearances across all competitions and while that time span includes some freakish misses, three of his lowest expected goals (xG) ratings of the Premier League season have come in his last four games. Wolves largely kept him out wide, where his sloppy passing often made him more of a hindrance than a help. Werner’s touch map vs Wolves Kai Havertz, meanwhile, was replaced by Mateo Kovacic in the 71st minute after producing his most anonymous performance of the season. Deployed as a No 8 on the right of the midfield three, he touched the ball fewer times (47) than any outfield Chelsea starter other than Werner and Olivier Giroud, had no shots and played no key passes. The vast majority of the passes he completed were safe options, either sideways or backwards, offering little to the team’s more progressive passages of play. When it comes to Havertz there is no shortage of reasonable mitigation. He contracted COVID-19 in November and was bed-ridden with significant symptoms for more than a week. As well as depriving him of training time, the illness also further slowed an already tricky adaptation process to a new style of football with a new team in a new league. Having played for spells as a No 8, a No 10, a winger and a false nine in four years at Bayer Leverkusen, he has been deployed in all four positions in his first four months at Chelsea. He is also 21. Havertz revealed during his unveiling press conference in September that he considers himself primarily as a No 10. Werner, meanwhile, reached a new level of attacking threat at RB Leipzig last season when coach Julian Nagelsmann slotted him into a bespoke tactical role, somewhere in between an on-the-shoulder striker and a left winger, with either Yussuf Poulsen or Patrick Schick acting as the muscular attacking focal point. The one thing that Havertz and Werner’s ideal roles have in common is that neither exist in Lampard’s 4-3-3. It won’t always matter. As recent weeks have shown, Werner is more than capable of carrying a constant threat on the left of a front three, provided that he is allowed to do most of his running into the box without the ball rather than with it. While he can be a devastating ball-carrier in transition situations — as Newcastle and Leeds both found out to their cost — he lacks the skill of an elite winger to consistently dribble past his marker, and his touch is too inconsistent to be heavily involved in possession play. On his better days, Havertz has also shown signs of growing into the No 8 role, finding pockets of space to receive the ball on the half-turn, moving it on intelligently and arriving late in the box to connect with crosses. The slick sequence of play which led to Giroud’s equaliser against Leeds exhibited all of these qualities. Hakim Ziyech’s return from a hamstring injury will help both. The man Ajax fans dubbed “The Wizard of Amsterdam” has been exactly as advertised so far in England, establishing himself as the creative hub of this Chelsea team from the moment he came into the starting XI. Werner can connect with his devilish in-swinging crosses as Quincy Promes once did, and the defensive attention the Morocco international attracts can free up Havertz to express himself fully. But until then, Lampard might need to lean on the tactical flexibility he showcased at key moments of last season. The 4-3-3 is only as effective as the balance of personnel within it; Chelsea’s dearth of fit wingers right now might have made a return to 3-4-2-1 more logical against Wolves. Another option — one that requires less disruption to the team’s defensive and midfield balance — would be a 4-4-2 diamond, with Havertz operating at the tip and Werner up front alongside either Giroud or Abraham: That particular tactical scenario would penalise Christian Pulisic, Chelsea’s most dazzling attacker for long stretches of last season and a man Lampard really needs to find momentum for after a frustrating stretch of hamstring trouble. But any option the manager chooses will carry a significant selection cost in a squad blessed with as diverse an array of attacking talent as this one. Chelsea’s on-pitch identity will probably continue to shift with the tides of form and fitness, along with the unpredictable storms in this most volatile of seasons. Lampard will need Werner and Havertz to help him chart a course through it all.

Isn't it in Mourinho's nature to just be hostile (or close to one) against his direct rivals? The only one he didn't that to over the years was Alex Ferguson and that's probably because he knew Ferguson could play the same game too. He didn't dare to poke the bear, so to speak. Another factor that may have contributed to Mourinho's bitterness (if you really want to call it that) towards Lampard is that Mourinho wasn't happy at all when he left us and then joined Man City on loan. One of the recent The Athletic's articles mentioned how Mourinho got scared of Lampard potentially leading City to the title after our 5-2 loss at Spurs in 2014/15 that he decided to park the bus for the rest of the season and crawl our way to the title. As for Ancelotti, it's not his nature to be picking fights with people, is it? Compared to someone like Mourinho, Ancelotti is the more universally liked figure.

That's just your (conspiracy) theory. If isn't it, then prove it.

Oh god, are you really still going on about that?

All the praise on our players doing well while out on loan. Just watch the same people bash the same players when they come back to play for us.

Did nothing to help stem the flow of the game and then blamed the players after that. Classic Lampard. That's what I said yesterday that Mourinho may have a point about him here...

Maybe Wenger was onto something when he wasn't starting Giroud week in week out at Arsenal... As you alluded to there, I don't think Giroud contributes much to the overall play of the team if he isn't scoring the goals and he presents a tactical problems for the team as well. As we saw against Everton and Wolves, he did zilch - apart from the goal at Wolves - and those two teams looked comfortable dealing with Giroud's physicality, especially when they know he doesn't have the mobility and pace to hurt them.

The game is on Monday.

What is stupid about the last 2 games is that while the performances weren't great, we could have taken 2 points from both games, run and regrouped for the next set of tough games. Instead, we had Mendy who gave away a penalty by turning into Kepa against Everton, who didn't create anything at all, and we stupidly overcommitted in injury time at Wolves and lost both games.

How many points from these games...? West Ham (h) Arsenal (a) Aston Villa (h) Man City (h) Would be unthinkable but imagine if we lose all four...

What I would say about Nagelsmann is that the only thing he did at Leipzig last season that they didn't do before was progressing to the final four of the Champions League. Otherwise, it was par for the course in the Bundesliga and DFB Pokal. Leipzig reached the DFB Pokal final in 2018/19 but got KOed in the 3rd round in 2019/20. Just like the seasons before, Nagelsmann also had Leipzig challenged at the top of the Bundesliga last season and they were even 1st after 19 games played but then faltered after that because of too many draws, ending the season 16 points behind Bayern and just 3 points ahead of the 5th placed side. Imagine the furore here if the same thing happens with us...

Man City haven't done it either, before Wolves climbed to 10th after yesterday's win.

Gotta wonder whether all this shoehorning from Lampard has been more bad than good... Also find it a bit strange that Lampard took like 2 months to integrate Pulisic last season but immediately threw Havertz into the fire and doesn't seem to want to take him out of it for a while.