Jase

No offence but your knee-jerk rhetoric is getting boring on here.

Poor lad. Scored two goals for us and we failed to win both games.

Since people were banging on about meritocracy, wasn't it fair that Lampard dropped Tomori for his shaky performances?

With Rudiger out injured for so long, at least Zouma or Christensen has had to play. So pick your poison...

Azpi has had good defensive performances this season - e.g. people worried Sterling would roast him when we play Man City but he kept him quiet - but no one bothered to say anything because it doesn't fit the narrative. People only speak about him when he has poor performances. Since people are happily jumping onto poor performances - including the younger players - right now, it is surprise that people have largely kept quiet about James' defensive mistakes in past 2 games, one of which cost us against West Ham. Why? Is it because it doesn't fit the narrative?

I don't know if I should feel pissed or try to put things into perspective with the recent poor results. How many of us expected the team to be sitting in the Top 4 right now when we had the transfer ban, have some young players and a young manager? I think we expected the team to be struggling somewhere in mid-table, like what Arsenal are experiencing right now. On a whole, we are certainly punching above our weight right now and things could still go right (as we learn and improve) OR horribly wrong. I'll admit though that the recent 7-game winning run raised my expectations. Perhaps I need to go back to having zero expectations. The main concern though is the fact that we keep on making the same defensive mistakes and look no closer to finding some sort of solution. Part of it I believe is down to coaching (WHAT ON EARTH ARE LAMPARD & CO. DOING IN TRAINING?!) and another part is individuals just can't stop making (basic defensive) errors themselves. Maybe having better defenders will help sort out the errors but at the end of day and I said this some time ago, if the stupid mistakes don't go away, it's gonna be Lampard's downfall at the club.

Then we're gonna just pretend all their other players are great as well and we don't have any..?

WILL WE EVEN WIN THIS!?

Not defending Azpi here but as @Superblue_1986 mentioned, none of our defensive options right now are great - in this case at LB. Alonso is just damn straight bad and slow. Emerson is inconsistent, one game he looks fine and the next he looks straight up bad (e.g. Man City away recently). Lampard is trying to patch things up for now - I think he's desperate for a new LB in January - and he's gone with Azpi who has the most "defensive credit" in the team. The one thing maybe you can criticize Lampard for is changing the backline too often rather than trying to make sure the players learn from their errors and do better next game. It feels like if a player makes a mistake, then he's out of the next game (e.g. Emerson).

Were you saying this every time he did well on the right under Sarri last season?

I said DEFENSIVELY in my initial reply.

Have you forgotten Luiz's defensive errors in his time here? Have you not seen Luiz at Arsenal?

Defensively, Luiz might even be worse than Zouma in our un-organized defence!

I'd agree but all this constant chopping and changing with the back 4 has not helped of late. The defenders might be error prone but how do we expect any continuity/understanding in the team when Lampard is changing the back 4 almost every game? Also, I question what on earth coaching is being done in training. We've conceded some really stupid, simple goals of late - e.g crosses from either side and someone just ghosts in to score. It's gotten to the point where we hope the crosses are inaccurate or someone just misses the chance.

In case you haven't noticed, our good early season form - especially when under a new manager - has tended to tail off during the November-December period and this season is no different. I seriously don't think it's a case of just one player going off the boil etc.

LOL

1 win and 3 defeats in last 5 games. That annual winter slump is definitely on again. Our away form has been the only thing that's keeping us in the Top 4. If that goes out of the window, then we're truly fucked. And oh, our next 2 away games...Spurs and Arsenal.

And people thought Willian was a new born player under Lampard...

He has regressed so badly since that Barcelona game.

We've won only TWICE in the league when conceding first since the start of last season...

Your hate is real.

But I want to hear YOUR suggestion. GIVE US NAMES!

Juggling between 2 or even 3 strikers is always a tricky business but we don't want to have a huge difference in quality between them, do we? If people are fine with having competition for places in other areas of the squad, then a little competition upfront wouldn't be the worst thing.

Erm, unchanged XI from midweek. Giroud not on the bench this time.