Reddish-Blue

A good CM will be able to break up play and get possession of the ball before the opposition has a chance to hurt you on the counter. Think we've been a bit spoiled over the years having watched Essien, Makelele and Obi Mikelele...and even Ramires do the dirty work in midfield for us. Kante is at that Essien level but with so many injuries, we really need to looking for a more long term solution in midfield. Will be interesting to see what the next coach has in mind...

Alot of them have left the club as they wanted first team football....and some have done better than others. Just a few examples of our academy graduates: Reece, Mason, Gallagher, Livramento (Southampton), Tammy (Roma), Solanke (Bournemouth), Tomori (AC Milan), Guehi (Crystal Palace), Gilmour (Brighton), Colwill (on loan at Brighton), Musiala (Bayern).

The fact that we don't have a DM capable of taking the heat off the defense will always leave us open, especially on the counter. There's a reason why City and our "peers" are so far ahead of us in the table, they've got players in midfield capable of breaking up play (e.g. Casemiro, Rodri, Hojberg, Partey, Bruno G for Newcastle).

I think we chose Mendy over Areola (who was on loan at Fulham).

It's a bit different though, you are managing players on a daily basis and the expectation is that you can coach them to victories. If management was based on winning mentality, Lampard would be known as one of the best coaches going around. Unfortunately for Frank, he has zero tactical ability and that was shown throughout his spells at Derby & Everton and now at Chelsea as well. (The setup under Potter/Bruno got us draws against Liverpool....yet for some reason, he decided not to build on that and get us out of trouble). If Frank wants to coach in the Premier League again, he should go and work under Jose as an assistant.

if we can't get something from Bournemouth or Forest, it will really show how pathetic the mentality of the squad is. Can't even blame this on injuries as pretty much everyone is fit...

Honestly, would be good to see Hall get a run to end the season. At least play these youngsters and see what they have to offer the new manager next season.

I don't recall him trying to incorporate Lukaku at all. If Tuchel watched Lukaku at Inter, he would know that he doesn't play with his back to goal and he prefers to get the ball in space. The sad part is, even a washed up Lukaku is a better finisher than any other attacker we have at Chelsea at the moment. That's how far we've fallen from challenging for titles, to becoming a top 10 side in the premier league.

The biggest question will be, what does the squad look like next season? Let's say Gallagher, Kovacic & Mount were to depart, your left with Enzo & Kante as first XI midfielders, with the likes of Carney as squad rotation. Defense will be the same next season with the addition of Colwill and possibly the sale of Chalobah. GK is a massive call for the club as Kepa isn't good enough to be first choice if we are planning on returning to the UCL spots. Attack is borderline pathetic. So many individuals but none of them seem to be able to play together. We really went from Mata, Hazard, Willian & Costa to Ziyech, Pulisic, Havertz and Auba...talk about drop off in quality.

It really is a shame how all the Italian managers finished with the club. Ancelotti was kicked out, Conte had a fall out with the board over lack of signings, even Sarri left for his beloved Serie A. This group of players needs an intense maniac like Conte in charge, make them work hard in training and it'll pay off in the league.

Wonder if Spurs offered him a deal and Kane asked him to personally re-join as manager?

Feel like Frank is better suited as a coach, to help young players. He hasn't really shown any tactical ability to switch things up when his team concedes a goal or two.

The funny part is, we're 15 points from bottom and about 15 points from where I thought we would be at this point in the season (around 50-55 points). In hindsight, we probably shouldn't have signed any players in January (other than the 2 defensive additions), could have ended the season with the same deadwood and started fresh next season. Now we have a massive first team squad and every club out there will ask for cheap loan deals as they know we have to clear out players.

Feel like he'll stay at Spuds (to get the goalscoring record in PL) or if he really wants trophies to finish off his career then Bayern Munich would be perfect.

You got it the other way around mate. He won the PL with Blackburn then moved to Newcastle. Would have been part of Fergie's golden years as well if things went to plan...but he rejected them in favor of Newcastle.

It's a shame he wasn't given a proper go at Chelsea, he's much more suited to the CM role when compared to RLC & Gallagher. It's good that he's at Brighton but the fact that we let one of our better academy CM's leave for peanuts (think it was 8 million)....when the midfield has been a massive cause for concern for the past few seasons is quite worrying. We're stuck with RLC as no-one will come close to his 120k a week paycheck and that's part of the problem here for whoever takes over...too much deadwood in the first team squad.

That's on Lampard now, if he can't motivate the players to get even a point out of the rest of the season, then his chances of managing a decent club are all but over for the next few years. Remember that he was "given" the Derby county job as a favor from Uncle Harry, and he's been given this role till end of the season due to his legend status...but at some point, you have to wonder whether Lamps is actually cut out to be a manager...

I wouldn't say we were badly run, we had the target of winning trophies under Roman and that's what the club achieved through various top level managers and some very good players representing us over the years. The fact that it's been a number of seasons since Hazard left us and not a single attacker can replicate what he brought to our attack....that's the biggest concern. We keep signing shiny new toys but they don't work because every single player we've bought is a system player, not one has the actual individual brilliance to beat their opponent and get a goal for themselves. Changing ownership was never going to be easy and the club got it all wrong the minute they decided that Potter was the man to lead the club forward. There were rumors that Tuchel did something with the backroom staff which led to his sacking from Chelsea but it's a shame that we couldn't get a top level manager in to lead the first season under new ownership.

Agree with your points, just feel personally that Carney could be a solid squad player moving forward and he also ticks the HG box for the PL criteria. Feel like we'll need to hang onto 1-2 of the HG players purely out of necessity to make up a 25 man squad. Not sure if the rules have been relaxed on that but I do recall it was 17 foreign players + 8 HG players for the PL squad and in the past we had the luxury of having some of the squad players classified as U21 (e.g. CHO, RLC, Mount, Abraham, Reece). Kovacic will likely have to be sold, same as Gallagher & Chalobah to recoup whatever funds we can get. Wonder if Maatsen gets sold as well as he won't want to stick around as 3rd choice LB behind Cucurella over here. RLC - I don't see him taking a wage cut to leave the club, maybe if Palace are interested, seemed to like it over there CHO - similar to RLC, no-one's going to pay him 120k a week to be bang average, maybe a mid-table side gives him a go for a low transfer fee Pulisic & Ziyech - anything in the 10-15 million range and we should sell immediately Aubameyang - there will be a few teams out there that need a backup striker Lukaku - we can only hope someone comes in for him Havertz - wonder if Bayern Munich are keen to bring him back to the Bundesliga as I just don't see where he fits, he's not a #9, he's not a #10 and he's definitely not a winger

Shame that this will end up as a training drill for their attack.

Alli & Barkley were supposed to be England's next #10 to be that goalscorer/creator from midfield, shame they both had zero footballing IQ. If Poch does get the role, will be interesting to see how he sets the teams up and gets them motivated. Between James/Gusto, Fofana, Badiashile, Colwill, Chilwell, Enzo, Carney, Mount (if he chooses to stay), Mudryk, Broja, Madueke...there's quite a bit of talent in there.

If Ziyech is the most creative attacker, then serious questions need to be asked as to why the club thought it was a good idea to spend 35+ million on Sterling, 30+ on Madueke and 70+ million on Mudryk....then there was the 15+ million on 5 months of Felix who hasn't been able to create more than 1-2 goals in his time here. You don't just sign players for the sake of it, this was the chance to build a squad but now we're stuck with players no-one else wants and we're likely getting a manager who will have to work with what he's got as there is every chance FFP comes to bite us without UCL money next season. Compare us to Newcastle and they are absolutely flying....Bruno G was a class signing and their big name signing is actually looking the goods up front (Isak).

I just don't get how we have become allergic to scoring goals, especially at home. Like how are the players not motivated to put in a decent shift at their home ground? Teams know they don't have to beat us anymore, they just turn up and make sure to run around the pitch and our players give up. All this talk of players saying "we have to do better" but not a single player in the first team can say that they put in a 8/10 performance on the pitch and this has been going on since December or earlier than that.

Other than Badiashile (when he was given an actual run in the side with Potter) and Enzo.....we didn't need any other players in January. Felix will go down as a flop (no wonder why United/Arsenal didn't agree to pay 15+ million for a 5 month loan), Mudryk has looked out of sorts and Madueke can barely get a seat on the bench....so much for "100 million worth of attacking talent". I also question why Lampard was brought to the club for like 8 to 10 games, is this like a farewell tour for him? Might as well have kept Potter till end of the season and negotiated a lower payout based on performance. I can only imagine what Arsenal, City and United are going to do to us....will be very surprised if it's not 10-0 aggregate against us after those 3 games.

That's going to be the biggest problem for Mason, wherever he goes. He needs to add consistent goals/assists to his game to take that next step. As for the contract length, I'd be surprised if it's more than 3 years in length as Mason would be better off proving himself in the next 2 years and then negotiate a better deal or hit the open market and get a move elsewhere (whereas Reece will have his fair share of injuries due to the body build...so the 6+1 deal makes perfect sense for his future).