Irakozium257

The season still being alive doesn't mean things are going well under Lampard. It's not as if the recent concerns came about because of the bad run. They are the wider concerns and have been there since Lampard took over and the bad run just reinforced them. We can't be 18 months into Lampard's tenure and after spending more than 200 million+ last summer, be worse than last season with no improvement, no identity, no style of play etc. 
The season could be dead if things don't change ASAP and while it's great to qualify for the Champions League knockout stage, I don't get this idea of parading it like it's something to celebrate when it's only the Round of 16 (we're not Arsenal FFS!) and not even quarter finals, semi finals or final. We used to consistently reach the knockout stage 10-15 years ago but we now have someone like Matt Law parading a Round of 16 qualification like it's some sort of success? The standards have really fallen! Based on current form, we'll lose to Atletico and get KOed from the Round of 16 again (so much for my optimism when the draw was made, HA!).
I don't know if Matt Law watches all of our games (he's a Villa fan after all) but fans who watch the team week in week out have a better sense of what's going on. It's like when pundits and journalists thought Willian was great here but he wasn't and it took them until he went to Arsenal to realize it.

I remember at Palace's first season back in the PL Ian Holloway held his hands up and said the job was too much for him, maybe Frank should consider doing the same? 
I could take the average results if the football was still good or vice versa but can never accept not both. For the first time since Conte's last few months watching games has felt like a chore and this has come at the worst possible time with lockdown imminent.

There were worrying signs from the day one. Remember his first week here? 4:0 trashing at OT and Super Cup where he did some irrational decisions like putting Tammy to shot 5th penalty ahead of Azpi and Pedro.
He did not learn and did the same thing this season when he put Mount to shot 5th PK against Spurs. This costed us a trophy and a good chance to go for another one. Also remember how we played Fa Cup final? 
Compere that to Sarri two finals.
What are the most positive things about Frank? Top4 last season and youth. But lets see the bigger picture here.
In Roman era apart from first two seasons we would never get top4 with that amount of points. We got lucky with Spurs underperforming and Leicester collapsing.
We can all agree that without Giroud goals from February to July we would finish probably 6th or 7th last season. The same Olie, who was not in the squad from August to February. He saved us and Frank last season. And Michy was ahead of him!
We would now have completely different perspective. Do not forget we had worst defense in like 30 years. And even this season we are on the road to concede more goals than in Sarri season. And back than we had Luiz, Rudiger, Alonso and Kepa as starters. and Jorgi ahead of them.
About youth, for me it was exciting first two months last season. He was the one that dropped Tomori, did not give much chances to CHO who is imo our best product. Mount was way overplayed and this annoyed so many people.
Tammy scored many goals but is not better than Giroud. Fair play to James but we knew he was the real deal even before in Wigan. Sarri also did good job with CHO and RLC, and I am sure would introduce some others if he was here last season. James and Billy for sure.
We can even argue why Ross never started last season two games in a row apart from Liverpool 2:0 and Everton 4:0 wins.
How many times he went with 3 at the back, two games in a row only to fail every single time. He never tried 442 with Werner which is so weird even when we did not had any wingers. Or Ziyech as number 8?
Zouma and Rudi kept clean sheets last season all the time but he just continued with Chris who was shit. So many tactical and lineup mistakes from Frank...
Really not many positives this 18 months... Thanks for everything, especially helping us getting Kai and others but it is time to say goodbye.
 

It's a waste of time and energy to talk about him leaving to be honest. The board clearly can't look at things objectively, and see his actual flaws as a manager.

The only reason he got the job is because of his status and that's also the only reason on why he'll keep it for now. That's why I've actually given up talking about him being sacked until he actually does.

Nizaar Kinsella just said that he won't be sacked immediately but he'll be given another chance. The board are fucking idiots.

We're going to win against Morecambe and Fulham, after that we'll lose points again and we'll be in the same position. If we sack him now the new manager atleast has some time to get ready for the Premier League match.

"Lampard faces a fight to convince Chelsea that he can lead the club towards future glory". 
I would give anything to be a fly on the wall to hear his convincing argument to our board. Liverpool, United, Spurs, Leicester and Man City are all on course to finish higher than 70 points. We are on course to finish well below that and there are virtually no signs of progression given the one dimensional play we continue to see day in and day out. 
Hopefully the board are smarter than this. 

Is it too much to ask of Lampard to get an experienced assistant manager in to help him? It's bad enough that he is young and inexperienced at the highest level but his entire coaching staff are also young and inexperienced at the highest level. And given we also have a young and part-inexperienced team, it's a case of the blind leading the blind. It's a recipe for disaster. 
It's not the same but not too dissimilar either when managers like Ancelotti, Mourinho, Conte - despite their experience - all at least had an assistant who knows about English football - Ray Wilkins, Steve Clarke, Steve Holland - to help them. Obviously, Lampard knows English football but it would be nice that he does the reverse situation here and get an experienced assistant to help him, someone to fall back on for advice when the going gets tough, for him to utilize those years of experience. Even Solskjaer has someone like Mike Phelan, who has done and seen it all with Sir Alex Ferguson, as one of his assistants. 

This.
We were atrocious against Arsenal after a free week, decent against Villa after just 1 day of rest and then back to being atrocious against Man City after another free week. And that's just an example from this past week alone. There's more if we look back over the course of Lampard's regime. 

You mentioned exactly, completely what I've been thinking to myself during the course of this season, even when we were winning against the likes of Burnley & Sheffield.
Elite football has evolved so quickly. If you are a club who has the means, you have to have, for all the positions, players who have an excellent ball technique and everything it entails to, at a minimum, grind out wins against 'smaller sides' over and over again and play confidently against 'big sides' even when you are playing away and are 2 goals behind with 'enough' minutes left. That includes the GK and the CBs. Liverpool/Klopp deservedly won the CL and the PL thanks to this approach, and Guardiola the PL before him.

He has to go. This is much worse than the second seasons of Ancelotti or Conte. After 1 1/2 years there isn´t any system or style of play other than spamming crosses into the box. The purple patch from October to December only bought him some time, we have been found out again and now look worse than ever. Sure, the players didn´t exactly cover themselves in glory either, but by watching our games you can immediately see that it is a coaching problem.
Part ways now, because the point of no return has been passed in the last few weeks. I will always respect him as a player, but as a manager he failed. Hopefully Lampard learns from this and who knows, maybe he will get a second chance in a few years.

I don't like this. Is there anything to go by that he will actually turn it around? Except for the blind hope... And this part is the worst - He either has 1 league game left to win or he’s gone before our next league game.
There are 2 weeks now between today and the Fulham game. It would make much more sense to make the change now, because right now it feels like it is delaying the inevitable.

Agree. And we will never be able to utilize the talent in the squad if a progressive manager doesnt have the backing and time needed from the fans/board.
Thats what i see different with Sarri compared to Lampard. With Sarri he created a "plattform" for us to develop from and to bring in new players that fits that specific "plattform" but as we know.. he never got the time. 
With Lampard i cant even see what he is trying to do nor anything to build from. Thats why i think he will get the sack because its not about him getting some results in the coming games because the real problem is that we doesnt have any "plattform" or basic game to develop..

Well that‘s Tuchel then. Just listen to what his former players say about his training. He even shows them which side of the foot to use for which pass.

One little thing Frank mentioned in his post match interview is something that's 100% true and nobody is really mentioning it in the media. He quickly explained how comfortable all of City's players are at recieveing the ball in tight areas and dealing with the press. It's something you really notice immedietly when watching the likes of City and Liverpool compared to us. It even really stood out in both legs against Sevilla this year.
Just about every player on those sides are excellent technically and have great first touch. There's a smooth, crisp look to their passing. Meanwhile, we have FAR too many players in our team who are just poor technically. Kante, Zouma, Tammy, Werner, Azpi. And then we have others who do have qualities technically but have next to ZERO offensive output like Kova, Jorginho, Mount.
All of these problems are made worse when we have a novice manager who is clearly not able to fix these issues in training. 
We need a manager who is maniacal at working on intricate technical training. You can tell the likes of Pep and Klopp have worked endlessly  with their players to get them so calm and smooth in their play. 

So finally we have manager that isnt hunted in the media for bad results, pity he looks to be out of his depth.

I'm in a few what's app groups with a lot of die hard CFC fans and the sheer ignorance and delusional bullshit that is spoken is actually alarming.
Apparently with COVID we can't take this season seriously, but isn't it funny they were all taken it serious when we were on the unbeaten run. They will not hear one jot of criticism of FL and actually look passed the sheer ignorance and deficiancies he has in the team and the lack of nouse to fix it. It's like we are the only team without fans, and the biggest thing of all they all keep saying is that it will take the big signings time to settle....well of course it will if they are played out of position or dropped fully.
 

Is it really a good thing when we get free weeks under Lampard? Because that is when he will just use the opportunity to overwork the players and random injuries will pop up and lethargic performances will follow. It's been a trend ever since he came in.
Lack of pre-season or not, that does not even explain Lampard's decision, for example, to overplay Werner, play him as a winger, when he did his best work at Leipzig as a second striker, to the point where he has looked jaded and his confidence looks shattered. That is not because we didn't have pre-season or even because of Lampard's inexperience. That is just a braindead tactical decision and bad player management. Moreover, Lampard knew we wouldn't have pre-season and the kind of the schedule we would have going into the summer and he still went out and bought the players that he did anyway. Is the lack of pre-season really an excuse then? We are into 18 months in Lampard's time at the club, not 18 weeks. That is why his first season was important because that should be where he set up the template of his system, embed it to the team etc and then you look at where we can improve, buy the players and fit them in. But so far, Lampard has made an absolute mess of it, even with the lack of pre-season. He was still changing systems at the start of the season before stumbling onto 4-3-3, then doesn't seem to have a clue on how to fit Werner and Havertz - his two biggest signings - in. Moreover, even if we get 3 weeks to work on things, will Lampard really move on from the playing style of us getting the ball wide and spamming crosses into the box? 🙄
At this point, we're just hoping Lampard will turn things around rather than actually have real confidence that he will do so.

Seriously had it with this argument.
Ziyech and Werner trained with the squad since late July. 
Chilwell is PL proven. 
Silva is experienced beyond years. 
Mendy is a GK
Havertz is the only exception however he's only played in his strongest position TWICE all season. 
You don't spend this much money on players without having a plan on how to utilise them all effectively. What we have seen so far is mismanagement of our most expensive assets. That screams inexperience. 
 

Such a garbage manager and tactician. Before we know it, Liverpool will at a minimum grind wins over and over again and we'll be completely out of the title race because of his cluelessness. We need someone who has a near-mad scientist approach to tactics and in-game management, and Lampard is sooo average at both. I deeply hope that the board is in touch with Tuchel.

Deluded, absolutely deluded.
The man is lifeless. it shows in the football.

Even get benitez in for the season , he did alright last time and there’s no fans to boo him (which was embarrassing for us )

We are 6th on 26 points after spending 200m on top quality players. 7 wins 5 draws 4 losses. Looks ok until you realise Villa and United have played less games than us and are above us. Tottenham, Man City and Southampton have played less games than us and will likely leapfrog us by the time they catch up. 
This is the tipping point of the season, for me he has to go and soon if we want to get any chance of making top 4 yet alone pushing for an improvement on last seasons position.
If it were any other manager and it would not be acceptable to be outside top 4 with these group of players and to also be sitting wondering how are we going to score goals or create chances. 

Feels even worse a day after, no fucking excuses, I dont wanna hear it. This was utter trash to such a degree that im willing to bet the players have stopped giving a fuck, something has happened.
We got fucking LUBRICATED by an absolute garbage of a broken Ars team and they still made us look like fools all over the pitch. You must question that.

This is it. I dont understand why he came at the time he did! Was it to win fans over with look we've hired a legend or just general lack of options. He shouldve been in as a assistant manager to someone with way way way more experience. Its not working. In some games it has but majority you can see the obvious cracks that once appear he doesn't seem to be able to fix.
Think be summer now...even if reach top 4 especially if limp over the line again. Be surprised if mid season but never know...
Just a mess

Excellent read, and it offers clues on how to figure out that big elephant in the room, which I keep mentioning. Why has our pressing deteriorated so rapidly from Nov to Dec? Its like night and day
I think the point regarding this being an avalanche effect is a good one. We basically have overworked a lot of the players by playing them continuously over the previous month, and the effects are being felt in the last few games.
I think the decision to go to a 4-3-3  (which I don't think was the original plan, given how we loaned out both RLC and Barkley) and Lampard's persistence with playing 4-3-3,  just because it produced a string of good results, have resulted in him playing certain players over and over again without much rotation. This goes for Mount, Werner, Kante and the two full-backs. It might not have been so bad if we had at least one of the 2 loanees with us right now. And maybe you could argue that the Ziyech/Pulisic/CHO/Havertz injuries didn't help.
The lack of pressing has also made us a lot more vulnerable in recent weeks. 
We went from being the team with most consecutive clean sheets, to leaking goals again. Its not really because Mendy became less of a keeper. Its because our back 5 is getting more exposed.