Jase

Chelsea 3-0 West Ham PRE/POST-MATCH DISCUSSION, LIVE CHAT AND ANALYSIS 2020/21 Premier League Match 14 21st December, Monday 2020 Stamford Bridge 20:00 Kick Off (UK time)

What do you expect when no one is making the runs upfront? Giroud, for one, certainly isn't going to outrun the Wolves defenders.

Will that happen? We had CHO and Ziyech available at the same time at some point, even when Pulisic was out, and yet Werner was constantly being used out wide. The one time he played as the main striker was against Southampton and okay, while that game may have suited his strengths but that was really the only time we did that and it has not been seen since. Moreover, Werner is rather similar to Vardy in their game style and if Leicester can make it work with Vardy upfront, then why can't we? The crossing thing is also another pathetic one. We only ever put high crosses into the box for Giroud/Abraham to score and for Werner/Pulisic etc to somehow win in the air. Where's the variation in the crosses? We've become so predictable with the type of crosses we put in.

Lampard talked a lot about Wolves' strength being the counter attacks in his post-match press conference and yet did nothing to help stem that...

Mourinho said this about Lampard after the League Cup earlier this season and he might be right... https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/sep/29/chelsea-supporrt-from-frank-lampard-jose-mourinho-carabao-cup

Doesn't this then expose Lampard's lack of guts? Fair enough Giroud has scored goals of late but we've gone from Lampard barely using him at all to suddenly using him more frequently, after he threatened to leave in January.

Dortmund didn't sack Favre just because they lost 3 games all of a sudden...

Putting crosses into the box is one thing - sides like Liverpool and Man City do that a lot - but what I don't get is why we kept putting high crosses into the box for the likes of Werner and Pulisic to win. If it's delivered for Giroud, fine, go high with the cross but otherwise, why the fuck were we putting high crosses in? Where were the low crosses or even the cutbacks!? And another frustrating thing was nobody was intelligent enough to stay deeper and pick up the second balls - there were a good number of them - but yet, everyone kept trying to go for the high crosses!

What happened just now is another case of not learning from the past. This was just like the West Ham game back in June/July. We weren't playing well, struggling to score and instead of just saying "okay, let's just settle for the point here, run and regroup", we overcommitted ourselves brainlessly and conceded a late winner. Fucking joke!

Still a one man team, I guess...

I know we haven't had pre-season this time and that it was ridiculous Lampard changed formation almost every game last season, but it's weird that he has gone from doing that to not changing it at all. It seems like he'd rather fit square pegs in round hole and pray that it succeeds.

But that doesn't explain why we only attacked down the left flank. It's becoming a common thing that we only ever attack down one flank in a game.

Want to know something scary? IF Arsenal win their next 2 games, they will be only 3 points behind us before we kick off against West Ham.

Pulisic aside, am pretty sure we had CHO and Ziyech available at the same time at one point but Lampard didn't even bother to try it out.

Hardly a secret that I was over the moon when we signed Werner but really, what was the point of us even signing him when we aren't even utilizing his strengths? Did we buy him only because of his goalscoring numbers at Leipzig? Don't get me wrong, am not making excuses for some of the basics that he couldn't do right of late but it's clear as hell that he isn't a winger and yet, he gets put out there to do winger things. Moreover, he did miss a few bad chances in the 2-3 games after the last international break but more recently, we have barely even created any chances for him. So really, what's the point of him then? Why didn't we just go buy an out-and-out winger?

Or better, just take Neto out and take the yellow card! And that's always gonna be Zouma's problem. His defensive flaws get exposed when the game becomes open and he has to deal with 1 v 1 situations.

It's becoming a common theme really that we only ever attack down one flank.

Am sure it's not purely down to the formation but ever since Wolves got promoted to the PL in 2018/19, we've failed to beat them when playing with a back 4 (D1 L2) but have beaten them when playing a back 3 (W2).

Amount of games played.

4 points worse off than at the same stage last season.

Could be in mid-table by the time we kick off on Monday.

Just like last season, we immediately crumbled when the title talk began to heat up... ...And oh, the annual winter slump is here again!

Title challengers? HA! More like Top 4 scrappers again!

We suddenly score after a quick switch of play and attacking play. *pretends to be shocked*

On top of all the problems with players, we also didn't play with any kind of tempo or intensity. Everything was just bloody slow and pedestrian. Barely making space for players to operate in.