Jase

But look what happened in the following seasons. Guardiola had some bad lows in the first season but he stuck to his guns. He laid the foundation, his ideas and style of play in his first season and once he got his signings after that, they took off to a completely different level. Same can be said for Klopp at Liverpool as well.

I know I know. I am not finding excuses for Kepa at all here. But in some ways, should we be surprised that he can't even do the basics now when his confidence has been shot to pieces by say the dodgy defending in front of him? He wasn't even this bad, hopeless, pathetic, abysmal, shocking in his first season. Anyway, let's hope Mendy will help solve (some?) problems at the back.

It isn't about Man City and their resources. It's about Guardiola. With the exception of him going all weird in European matches, are you really gonna say that he is someone who will deviate from his ideas, his possession-attacking style of play? Do you really believe or think that he will change from that to say Tony Pulis-style football because of missing personnel?

Surprised no one has tried to say we only bought Havertz just to make Werner comfortable considering how happy they are to be playing together...

I guess Mendy will test this theory... https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/sep/21/kepa-arrizabalaga-confidence-shot-way-chelsea-play-doesnt-help-him-frank-lampard-liverpool?CMP=share_btn_tw

You are not wrong there but we should not also forget about a caveat here - Guardiola goes all weird when it comes to European football and changes things for no reason. Otherwise, he always sticks to his guns and plays his way, which is the point I made.

THANK YOU!

Oh for fuck sake! The point is Lampard has been in the job for over a year now. This season should be a continuation of the work he started last season. It should not be a reset just because it is a new season or because there are new signings. He has had plenty of time to implement his ideas, instill a defined style of play, a structure into the team and all he needed was better players to make it work, to make us better. The final pieces to complete the puzzle so to speak. He has got the players he wanted but is that defined style of play there? What is his style of play? I mentioned earlier, he went from trying to implement progressive, attacking football to suddenly making us pragmatic and even a one man team again after last season's restart. Not looking for a right or wrong answer here but I want to know, how does Lampard want us to play? What kind of identity does he want to instill? What kind of manager he is? Does he want to play attacking football or does he want to play pragmatic football? You look at Liverpool under Klopp and Man City under Klopp, you know what you will get from them, you know how they will play and the kind of things they will do. They have a defined style of play, an identity. No one is saying or expecting us to be the finished article right now but we should be seeing signs of that under Lampard, signs of what he actually wants in the team. Instead, we are flip flopping from one thing to another game to game and we are guessing the lineup week in week out under Lampard, which should be some sort of alarm bells especially now that we are into his second season here. You think Guardiola will move away from his possession, attacking football if he has a few players missing? Okay...

What does implementing a new playing style has to do with just the two games this season? Lampard has been in the job for a over year, hence why I said it's about the bigger picture here. We should be seeing a defined style, his ideas embedded into the team. Do you see someone like Man City change their style of play to something else when some players are out? If we keep on changing ours because some players are out, then we are fucked and will get nowhere. Also, we need to stop mentioning Willian because he is gone for good and especially when most were happy to see him gone.

I only said that because Lampard will seemingly play Mount whenever he's fit and available to play. If the others play to their best of their abilities, then Lampard would have little excuse not to play them ahead of Mount, especially on the wings.

I did not say we did not have any attacking intent in those games. We did. Also and again, the possession stats you used is skewed. We needed to chase the game after falling behind in 2 of those games, so it was only natural that we would end up with more possession. We definitely played 4-3-3 and not 4-4-2. Moreover, putting Mount, who is not a winger, just to track Robertson back kinda screams inferiority complex, doesn't it? One could argue that if we had maybe CHO on the RW, it might force Robertson back because we had an attacking threat going the other way. Yesterday wasn't the first time Havertz played as the False 9 but I don't think he has been used like a target man before, expecting to win headers against defenders like Van Dijk from long balls. Sure, we played long balls because of Liverpool's pressing but we knew that. We knew Liverpool press opposing teams. So why didn't we play someone like Giroud instead? He may lack Havertz's speed and mobility but given what we tried to do, he would have been able to hold the ball up better and give more physical presence upfront than Havertz.

I suspect this will be a regular occurrence unless Pulisic and Ziyech can stay fit and CHO shows his worth.

Is Lampard following Zakaria on Instagram? If so, we might have a chance.

The only Chelsea manager to have beaten Klopp's Liverpool in the Premier League in the last 5 years...

Just because we ended up with more possession, it didn't mean we didn't play on the break or tried to do so. Moreover, we shaded only slightly more than 50% of the possession. As I said, it's all about the attacking intent when we did get the ball. We made it work back then. Also, the game at Anfield was a bit of an anomaly given how crazy that game turned out but that game plus the one at home, we were never going to just continue sitting back while trailing, were we? We went 2-0 down at home last season but we threw caution out of the window and similarly at Anfield, we did that once Pulisic single handedly got us back into the game. Only normal if we ended up with (slightly) more possession because we had to go for it. Then why no CHO then when he is our only available winger right now? Furthermore, we are so super reliant on ball carriers in such games and can't find a way to play around this problem, then we are fucked. We did the defending part well but my point is, what did we do going the other way? Werner 1 v 1 as in the one he cut inside onto his right foot? If so, then there's no guarantee Pulisic wouldn't have done the same considering he also prefers to cut inside onto his right foot. Mount played Kante in? When was that? I remember Havertz set Kante up in the first half for a shot but that was a near half chance at best. All in all, that is what...3 chances you mentioned and not all were even clear cut. And again, I've yet to see a justification of playing Havertz upfront and then just lumping long balls onto him to win against Van Dijk.

Funny thing is, Lampard supposedly doesn't even see Kante as a defensive midfielder.

It's about the bigger picture here. I shared the post with you just now but what has happened to the style of play that Lampard tried to implement this time last season? The one that saw us wanting to play on the front foot, press the opposition, dominate possession and the opposition. We have seemingly moved away from that at the start of the year.

Werner on why he rejected and the future at Chelsea... https://www.goal.com/en/news/my-goal-is-to-get-to-the-level-of-mane-salah-firmino-chelsea-new-/mqkvzmzyk62m1deu0nf33el5j

But will Lampard's style of play be ultimately different from Mourinho or Conte? Who knows...he has practically gone from trying to implement progressive, attacking football this time last year to making us play pragmatic football, as I mentioned above.

No, we did not just blindly play an attacking game against Liverpool last season. We played on the counter attack and showed attacking intent when we did get the ball and apart from Werner and Havertz in yesterday's XI, all the others were the players who played and competed well against them last season. If we were able to do that in several games last season, why couldn't we do that yesterday? We were unlucky to lose to them in the Super Cup and at home in the league. Moreover at one point or another in those games, we had Pulisic/Mount/Pedro on one side and Willian on the other. Yesterday, we had Mount, who is practically like the new Willian, on one side and Werner on the other. Are those options really different from what we had last season? You could also practically put Mount and CHO as the wing options, Havertz as the No.10 and Werner upfront instead. No one said about anything about going all out attack yesterday. As I have said numerous times, I was okay with the counter attacking approach but not happy with how passive we were and the execution of the plan. We were basically lumping long balls to Havertz for him to win in the air against Van Dijk and hoping Werner did something on the break. Other than that, where was the threat for us?

According to David Ornstein, we inserted a sell-on clause in Lamptey's Brighton contract but no buy-back clause...

I don't think so. I think we're still stuck with the pragmatic mindset that we used to have. If we actually play proactively and press from the front, we wouldn't be seeing that. How often do you see Man City or Liverpool wide players dropping so deep to defend?

Ironic to hear considering how much stick Mourinho or Conte used to get for setting up 'conservatively' in big games.

Despite all the inconsistency and bad results last season, think we all agreed that it was Lampard's first season and that he needed time to implement his ideas, his style of play and all that. We are now in his second season, we should be seeing his ideas already, having that defined style of play, even with all unfavorable circumstances. This season should be a continuation of the work he started, we should not be resetting everything just because it is a new season or we bought new players etc. I posted this earlier...

Chelsea want a holding midfielder – Lampard does not count Kante as one https://theathletic.com/2079386/2020/09/21/chelsea-frank-lampard-ngolo-kante-declan-rice/