🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Frank Lampard

[killer1257 3,282]

we never had Emerson pre injury
we bought damaged goods
gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Board!!

With pre injury Emerson, I mean before he injured his hamstring. In the end of last season and at the beginning of this season, he belonged to the best FBs. Then he injured his hamstring and never regained form lol

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[whats happening 1,615]

we wouldnt even buy emerson if it wasnt an injury

[killer1257 3,282]

What about last season with Sarri? And here I thought we can't go any worse than Sarri. Our defense is atrocious. 
Yes I will call out Lampard hard of this because yesterday he picked the worst possible CB combo when need to be solid at the back, and not once but TWICE allowed Azpi to mark Soucek. I'm still fuming about last night on how we played and how we set up.
Kante, Christensen, Rudiger (that fecking lazy bum) and Abraham should be dropped against Watford. I wish I can add Kepa too but we are stuck with him.

Sarri had prime Hazard for a whole season. Lampard only had Puli maybe half of the season fit.

But yes, Lamps needs to improve his line up, but many people here thought Rüdiger is near world class (I did not) and they only started to realise that he might not be that great. Lampard may realise this now too

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[Vesper 30,172]

4 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

With pre injury Emerson, I mean before he injured his hamstring. In the end of last season and at the beginning of this season, he belonged to the best FBs. Then he injured his hamstring and never regained form lol

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he has never been the player he was at Roma before he blew out his knee

Roma defender Emerson suffers anterior cruciate ligament injury

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/roma-defender-emerson-suffers-anterior-cruciate-ligament-injury

[Supermonkey92 1,428]

Not only that mate but they were managed much better, Conte worked around their weaknesses, making sure we move as a unit etc. Im very much looking forward what lineup Lamps will go for this time, surely he aint gonna persist like this. Play Jorgo KOva and Mount, bring Zouma in, start with Giroud. We'll see.

Ahh mate. Fair enough conte's second season was a bit boring (though FA Cup win still!) But fuck me we were so defensively. Moving like the birds do in formation lol

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[Supermonkey92 1,428]

AC was not nearly as bad as Rudiger, but he did not have a great game at all.

I think Christensen deserves all the blame for West ham's second goal.

So fucking dopey. What was he doing, leaving the striker for azpi?

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[Supermonkey92 1,428]

I think RLC did better yesterday. He looks rusty with the ball though, but overall way better performance than last two weaks as left winger. Don't forget that he did not train with the ball for months after Corona. He only did endurance, sprinting and body exercises. I believe in Ruben to get better. Step by step.

I am probably the only one that thinks Emerson is better than Alonso. Emerson pre injury was our best fullback and when Hazard was here, their understanding was very nice. Hazard almost never passed to Alonso because Alonso is that bad

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The amount of times hazard would look at alonso like 'on your bike boy, I need to use you for space. NEVER gonna use you though' lol.

Eden knew.

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[Atomiswave 6,117]

2 hours ago, killer1257 said:

Yes but Conte had Costa Cesc and Hazard in his prime. Conte still underperformed offensively in my opinion. Lampard has only Pulisic, who is mostly injured.
Even in the offensive area, Lampard has way worse players. Conte had prime Azpi and also prime Cahill in his first season.

Our squad got worse over the time

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He sure did but look how he managed them, we were rocking the league and everyone copied us....everyone. How did Conte underperform offensively? His first season was ridiculous, we ripped teams apart.

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

A big mistake that young managers make is that they trust training play too much versus actual game play.

Lamps playing Barkley and a wretchedly out of form RLC is a testament to that I would think. Plus Willian and Alonso have been run into the ground. Damn Emerson for being so shit. 

Yeah I cant undrstand why he used RLC, too soon imo.

1 hour ago, Supermonkey92 said:

Ahh mate. Fair enough conte's second season was a bit boring (though FA Cup win still!) But fuck me we were so defensively. Moving like the birds do in formation lol

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Yes his second season after Jan we were shambolic, but not his first. Being resolute and organised does not mean you are defensive, the art of defending was our forte now its our killing blow game after game.

[Vesper 30,172]

Frank Lampard says defeat at West Ham is 'a sign of where Chelsea are'

Chelsea miss chance to go third with shock defeat

Lampard: ‘We have a lot of hard work to do’

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/02/frank-lampard-says-defeat-at-west-ham-is-a-sign-of-where-chelsea-are

Frank Lampard admitted his team are far from the finished article after Chelsea’s 3-2 defeat at West Ham meant they missed out on the chance to leapfrog Leicester into third place in the Premier League.

Andriy Yarmolenko’s late goal secured a priceless victory for West Ham after Willian had scored twice for Chelsea, ensuring David Moyes’s side moved three points clear of the relegation zone.

But having defeated Manchester City to crown Liverpool as champions and also beaten Leicester to reach the FA Cup semi-finals, Lampard admitted this setback was an indication of how far his team must progress if they are to challenge for the title next season.

“It’s a sign of where we are – we have a lot of hard work to do to get to where we want to be,” he said. “The reason the rest of us are chasing Liverpool and Man City is because of the consistency they have developed so that is what we have to work towards. It’s obviously frustrating but if we are in that position it’s how you bounce back and move forward.”

Poor defending from Chelsea allowed West Ham to go ahead thanks to goals from Tomas Soucek and Michail Antonio before Willian’s equaliser from a free-kick. Yarmolenko’s goal in the 89th minute means Chelsea still trail Leicester by a point after their defeat to Everton, with Manchester United and Wolves two points behind Lampard’s side.

He refused to blame his players for their first defeat since the restart and said they must look ahead to Saturday night’s game against Watford at Stamford Bridge.

“I’ve not been let down by my defenders – we’ve made mistakes in the buildup to the goals, not just defenders, which cost us the game,” Lampard said. “I wouldn’t call it a wake-up call because every game is different. This wasn’t a huge surprise – if you know the Premier League and you make mistakes, it can happen. We have to accept it and move on.”

West Ham’s victory was their first since the restart and Moyes said it was fully deserved after Soucek’s goal had been controversially ruled out for VAR in the first half.

“One win is not enough – we have to win more if we’re still going to be a Premier League club,” he said. “But after the performance that we saw Chelsea put in against Manchester City, it was an outstanding result for us.”

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Supermonkey92 1,428]

 

Bullshit excuse that its down to height.

My hope is he's protecting the players publicly but privately I hope its hit home. I refuse to think this is something that needs money thrown at it to improve.



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[Vesper 30,172]

Explained: Why Chelsea are so bad at defending set pieces

https://theathletic.com/1906770/2020/07/03/chelsea-corners-set-pieces-lampard/

West Ham United built Wednesday’s 3-2 win over visitors Chelsea on the glaring set-piece weakness that has tormented Frank Lampard all season. They got only two corners in 95 minutes and both of them ended up in the Chelsea net — Tomas Soucek’s first effort ruled out after a lengthy VAR check, his second yielding a crucial equaliser just before half-time.

Both were shambolic sequences that perfectly encapsulated why Chelsea have established themselves as the worst team at defending corners in the Premier League. They have conceded nine goals from 110 corners in the league this season: that means 8.2 per cent of the corners they have conceded this season have directly led to goals. Manchester United and Norwich City are next highest but, at 4.8 per cent, they are well behind Lampard’s team.

Percentage of corners that lead to goals

PREMIER LEAGUE 2019-20	CORNER GOALS/CORNERS
Chelsea	8.20%
Manchester United	4.80%
Norwich City	4.80%
Manchester City	4.70%
West Ham	4.50%
Brighton	4.20%
Aston Villa	4.20%
Everton	4.00%
Wolves	3.90%
Arsenal	3.70%
Leicester	3.50%
Newcastle	3.20%
Watford	3.00%
Crystal Palace	2.90%
Southampton	2.60%
Burnley	2.10%
Bournemouth	1.90%
Tottenham	1.80%
Liverpool	1.50%
Sheffield United	1.10%

In fact, Opta data tells us the only team in Europe’s five major leagues to concede goals from a higher proportion of their corners this season are French side Amiens. They have let in 12 from 140 – a rate of 8.6 per cent. They also finished second-bottom of Ligue 1, seven points short of safety when their season was curtailed.

Europe's worst corner defences

TEAM	CORNERS CONCEDED	CORNER GOALS CONCEDED	CORNER GOALS/CORNERS
Amiens	140	12	8.60%
Chelsea	110	9	8.20%
Borussia Dortmund	103	7	6.80%
Werder Bremen	198	13	6.60%
Bayern Munich	102	6	5.90%
Koln	201	11	5.50%
Leganes	132	7	5.30%
Brescia	195	10	5.10%
Monaco	137	7	5.10%
Schalke	178	9	5.10%

Asked after the match what he could do to fix Chelsea’s persistent fragility defending set pieces, Lampard sounded worn down by the problem. “When a team is bigger than you, as (West Ham) were, you can work all week… if someone is much taller than the opponent and outjumps them, then they are going to score goals,” he said.

“That’s what happens, so we were aware they were bigger than us and they were going to try to score goals or win the game. But the players have to deal with that on the pitch.”

It wasn’t a response to fill any supporter with confidence but revisiting the footage makes Lampard’s weary tone understandable. Chelsea don’t possess the personnel for an elite set-piece defence and have tried things throughout the season in order to compensate. But any system is only as good as its execution and both West Ham corners were riddled with individual errors.

David Moyes clearly drilled his players on one routine because the positioning and runs were virtually identical both times: Issa Diop attacking the near-post area guarded by Mateo Kovacic and Tammy Abraham, Soucek attacking the far post, Michail Antonio loitering in the six-yard box and Angelo Ogbonna occupying a defender near the penalty spot:

Jarrod Bowen delivers the first corner to the near post, where Kovacic beats Diop to the ball but only succeeds in flicking it on. Behind him, Abraham should be well-positioned to cut it out but, having crouched low as if preparing to jump, he isn’t ready to rise towards the ball as it zips off his team-mate’s head. After a failed attempt by Antonio to bring it down in the six-yard box, the ball drops at the back post, where Soucek manages to bundle it past both Cesar Azpilicueta and Kepa Arrizabalaga.

VAR came to Chelsea’s rescue, judging that the offside, prone body of Antonio was directly in the goalkeeper’s line of sight as Soucek scored, and soon after, Christian Pulisic cleverly won a penalty which Willian converted to give them a lead they scarcely deserved.

But far from lessons being learned, the mistakes at West Ham’s second corner of the match were even more egregious than for the first.

West Ham line up exactly the same way. This time, Marcos Alonso is blocking Diop’s path to the near post, determined not to be left behind again, while Azpilicueta gives himself a little more room to track Soucek’s run to the far post. N’Golo Kante has also been detailed to mark Antonio, preventing him from directly challenging Kepa:

Bowen floats the ball directly to the back post. Kepa ventures off his line but misjudges the flight, running into Kante and Antonio before he realises he can’t get to it. As he then backpedals furiously, Soucek gets up above Azpilicueta and directs his header into the floor. The goalkeeper, moving backwards and to his right, can’t react to a ball that is bouncing slowly to his left:

It shouldn’t matter because the moment the ball sails over his head, Abraham has the right instinct to drop back on to the line. As he watches Soucek connect with the cross, his feet are planted and he’s perfectly positioned to clear the header. Yet, somehow, he misjudges the bounce, leans back, misses the ball completely and falls down as it trickles in.

This isn’t even the first time that Kepa and Abraham have managed to let a goalbound header go through them on the line. In September, at Molineux, Abraham was credited with an own goal when his ill-fated attempted clearance directed a firm header from Wolves’ Romain Saiss into his own net with Kepa in close proximity:

Not much was made of it as Chelsea were 4-0 up at the time, thanks in part to a spectacular hat-trick from Abraham, and went on to win 5-2.

There was a higher price to pay at the London Stadium.

---

Lampard has already overhauled his strategy for defending set pieces once this season.

The tipping point was the free header Victor Osimhen scored from the centre of the six-yard box in October’s 2-1 away win over Lille in the Champions League. It was the third headed goal they had given up from the same position, following in the footsteps of Leicester City midfielder Wilfred Ndidi and Liverpool striker Roberto Firmino on Premier League visits to Stamford Bridge.

Until that Lille game, Lampard had favoured a purely zonal system, with Abraham guarding the near-post area in the manner fellow striker Didier Drogba once did for the club and four defenders stationed in a line along the edge of the six-yard box, with the three midfielders in front of them attempting to disrupt opposition runners:

Osimhen’s header was the fifth set-piece goal Chelsea had conceded in the first three months of the season across all competitions.

Lampard’s response was to switch to a mixed strategy: Abraham stood on the six-yard line with Kurt Zouma, the most aerially-dominant defender in the squad, with both given freedom to attack the incoming ball from their zones. Virtually everyone else was assigned a specific opponent to mark:

Chelsea went six matches across all competitions without conceding from a set piece, winning five of them, and recorded back-to-back clean sheets for the first time against Newcastle at home and Ajax away. But what transpired in a rollercoaster festive period underlined that there could be no perfect solution; Dan Gosling and Alireza Jahanbakhsh scored overhead kicks for Bournemouth and Brighton respectively after Lampard’s men had won the first ball but failed to properly clear their lines.

In between those two setbacks, Arsenal took an early lead at the Emirates when Calum Chambers beat Fikayo Tomori to Mesut Ozil’s out-swinging corner and flicked it towards the back post, where Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang stole in behind a ball-watching Emerson Palmieri and powered a header beyond Kepa:

A relative lack of height, aggression and physicality will always complicate this Chelsea team’s attempts to defend set pieces but the problem is amplified whenever Zouma is absent. Lampard’s decision to make Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rudiger his favoured central defensive partnership in recent months has its logic in open play — but both can be dominated in the air.

Manchester United’s visit in February underlined this fact. Their second goal did not exploit Chelsea’s system for defending corners, but the individuals. Bruno Fernandes floated his delivery to the far edge of the penalty area where Harry Maguire, a genuine force in the air, easily shook off Rudiger to power a header past Willy Caballero:

Chelsea had been given a similar warning a fortnight earlier at the King Power Stadium. Two goals from Rudiger helped secure a 2-2 draw with Leicester but Lampard’s side were hugely fortunate not to concede a winner to Jonny Evans from a corner in the 77th minute. Christensen allowed himself to be bundled to the ground as James Maddison whipped in his delivery, giving up a completely free header on the edge of the six-yard box. It was a gilt-edged miss:

Lampard has been given good reason to doubt the reliability of other areas of Zouma’s game, but his formidable aerial presence is sorely missed at dead-ball situations.

---

There is another squad with a similar physical profile to Chelsea in the Premier League.

In any given match, Pep Guardiola’s starting XI is dominated by small, technically-focused midfielders and forwards, and yet Manchester City have conceded only four goals from 86 corners (not including last night’s Liverpool game) this season — an above-average rate of 4.7 per cent, but manageable. So how do they do it?

City’s primary strategy is simply to avoid giving away corners in the first place, keeping control of the ball in the opposition half. No team has conceded fewer than their 86 corners this season, an average of 2.8 corners per match. They also unsurprisingly average the highest share of possession in the Premier League: 66 per cent.

Chelsea try to pull off a similar trick but the equation is slightly less favourable: 59.9 per cent possession on average and 3.4 corners conceded per match. One tweak that might help, therefore, is for Lampard to place even greater emphasis on his players keeping the ball — though that might also make it even harder to break down pragmatic opponents such as West Ham from open play.

When they do concede corners, Manchester City defend their penalty area with everyone. Here they are last month against Burnley, flooding their own box, even when 5-0 up:

No one is left upfield to carry a threat in transition, and some of their most dangerous attackers are actively involved in the defensive effort. Kevin De Bruyne guards the near post area, accompanied by either Gabriel Jesus or Sergio Aguero at the front of a line of five players positioned zonally across the six-yard box:

Guardiola has also tweaked things throughout the season. In the early months of the campaign, Rodri and Kyle Walker were the two players at the front of the five-man line but a couple of high-profile goals conceded at the near post prompted a change. First came Lucas Moura in August, peeling away from Aguero and outjumping Walker to head in a cross that had floated over Rodri’s head. The goal secured Tottenham Hotspur a 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium:

Then, a month later, Kenny McLean exploited a mix-up between Rodri and Walker to head Norwich into a shock 1-0 lead at Carrow Road:

Guardiola responded by moving those two players to the back of the line, where they would zonally guard the back post area of the six-yard box while Fernandinho and Aymeric Laporte — his most forceful aerial presence — shuffled to the front. The overall structure of every man back to defend the incoming ball,  with some of City’s smaller players stationed on the edge of the box to disrupt and block opposition runners, remained the same:

A relative lack of height and aerial physicality has not held Manchester City back from being a dominant Premier League team over the past three years.

It need not scupper Chelsea’s hopes of doing the same — but Lampard might need to find a less-flawed solution, or go with less-flawed personnel, to ensure it does not derail their top-four hopes.

[Superblue 6,372]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

Explained: Why Chelsea are so bad at defending set pieces

https://theathletic.com/1906770/2020/07/03/chelsea-corners-set-pieces-lampard/

West Ham United built Wednesday’s 3-2 win over visitors Chelsea on the glaring set-piece weakness that has tormented Frank Lampard all season. They got only two corners in 95 minutes and both of them ended up in the Chelsea net — Tomas Soucek’s first effort ruled out after a lengthy VAR check, his second yielding a crucial equaliser just before half-time.

Both were shambolic sequences that perfectly encapsulated why Chelsea have established themselves as the worst team at defending corners in the Premier League. They have conceded nine goals from 110 corners in the league this season: that means 8.2 per cent of the corners they have conceded this season have directly led to goals. Manchester United and Norwich City are next highest but, at 4.8 per cent, they are well behind Lampard’s team.

Percentage of corners that lead to goals

PREMIER LEAGUE 2019-20	CORNER GOALS/CORNERS
Chelsea	8.20%
Manchester United	4.80%
Norwich City	4.80%
Manchester City	4.70%
West Ham	4.50%
Brighton	4.20%
Aston Villa	4.20%
Everton	4.00%
Wolves	3.90%
Arsenal	3.70%
Leicester	3.50%
Newcastle	3.20%
Watford	3.00%
Crystal Palace	2.90%
Southampton	2.60%
Burnley	2.10%
Bournemouth	1.90%
Tottenham	1.80%
Liverpool	1.50%
Sheffield United	1.10%

In fact, Opta data tells us the only team in Europe’s five major leagues to concede goals from a higher proportion of their corners this season are French side Amiens. They have let in 12 from 140 – a rate of 8.6 per cent. They also finished second-bottom of Ligue 1, seven points short of safety when their season was curtailed.

Europe's worst corner defences

TEAM	CORNERS CONCEDED	CORNER GOALS CONCEDED	CORNER GOALS/CORNERS
Amiens	140	12	8.60%
Chelsea	110	9	8.20%
Borussia Dortmund	103	7	6.80%
Werder Bremen	198	13	6.60%
Bayern Munich	102	6	5.90%
Koln	201	11	5.50%
Leganes	132	7	5.30%
Brescia	195	10	5.10%
Monaco	137	7	5.10%
Schalke	178	9	5.10%

Asked after the match what he could do to fix Chelsea’s persistent fragility defending set pieces, Lampard sounded worn down by the problem. “When a team is bigger than you, as (West Ham) were, you can work all week… if someone is much taller than the opponent and outjumps them, then they are going to score goals,” he said.

“That’s what happens, so we were aware they were bigger than us and they were going to try to score goals or win the game. But the players have to deal with that on the pitch.”

It wasn’t a response to fill any supporter with confidence but revisiting the footage makes Lampard’s weary tone understandable. Chelsea don’t possess the personnel for an elite set-piece defence and have tried things throughout the season in order to compensate. But any system is only as good as its execution and both West Ham corners were riddled with individual errors.

David Moyes clearly drilled his players on one routine because the positioning and runs were virtually identical both times: Issa Diop attacking the near-post area guarded by Mateo Kovacic and Tammy Abraham, Soucek attacking the far post, Michail Antonio loitering in the six-yard box and Angelo Ogbonna occupying a defender near the penalty spot:

Jarrod Bowen delivers the first corner to the near post, where Kovacic beats Diop to the ball but only succeeds in flicking it on. Behind him, Abraham should be well-positioned to cut it out but, having crouched low as if preparing to jump, he isn’t ready to rise towards the ball as it zips off his team-mate’s head. After a failed attempt by Antonio to bring it down in the six-yard box, the ball drops at the back post, where Soucek manages to bundle it past both Cesar Azpilicueta and Kepa Arrizabalaga.

VAR came to Chelsea’s rescue, judging that the offside, prone body of Antonio was directly in the goalkeeper’s line of sight as Soucek scored, and soon after, Christian Pulisic cleverly won a penalty which Willian converted to give them a lead they scarcely deserved.

But far from lessons being learned, the mistakes at West Ham’s second corner of the match were even more egregious than for the first.

West Ham line up exactly the same way. This time, Marcos Alonso is blocking Diop’s path to the near post, determined not to be left behind again, while Azpilicueta gives himself a little more room to track Soucek’s run to the far post. N’Golo Kante has also been detailed to mark Antonio, preventing him from directly challenging Kepa:

Bowen floats the ball directly to the back post. Kepa ventures off his line but misjudges the flight, running into Kante and Antonio before he realises he can’t get to it. As he then backpedals furiously, Soucek gets up above Azpilicueta and directs his header into the floor. The goalkeeper, moving backwards and to his right, can’t react to a ball that is bouncing slowly to his left:

It shouldn’t matter because the moment the ball sails over his head, Abraham has the right instinct to drop back on to the line. As he watches Soucek connect with the cross, his feet are planted and he’s perfectly positioned to clear the header. Yet, somehow, he misjudges the bounce, leans back, misses the ball completely and falls down as it trickles in.

This isn’t even the first time that Kepa and Abraham have managed to let a goalbound header go through them on the line. In September, at Molineux, Abraham was credited with an own goal when his ill-fated attempted clearance directed a firm header from Wolves’ Romain Saiss into his own net with Kepa in close proximity:

Not much was made of it as Chelsea were 4-0 up at the time, thanks in part to a spectacular hat-trick from Abraham, and went on to win 5-2.

There was a higher price to pay at the London Stadium.

---

Lampard has already overhauled his strategy for defending set pieces once this season.

The tipping point was the free header Victor Osimhen scored from the centre of the six-yard box in October’s 2-1 away win over Lille in the Champions League. It was the third headed goal they had given up from the same position, following in the footsteps of Leicester City midfielder Wilfred Ndidi and Liverpool striker Roberto Firmino on Premier League visits to Stamford Bridge.

Until that Lille game, Lampard had favoured a purely zonal system, with Abraham guarding the near-post area in the manner fellow striker Didier Drogba once did for the club and four defenders stationed in a line along the edge of the six-yard box, with the three midfielders in front of them attempting to disrupt opposition runners:

Osimhen’s header was the fifth set-piece goal Chelsea had conceded in the first three months of the season across all competitions.

Lampard’s response was to switch to a mixed strategy: Abraham stood on the six-yard line with Kurt Zouma, the most aerially-dominant defender in the squad, with both given freedom to attack the incoming ball from their zones. Virtually everyone else was assigned a specific opponent to mark:

Chelsea went six matches across all competitions without conceding from a set piece, winning five of them, and recorded back-to-back clean sheets for the first time against Newcastle at home and Ajax away. But what transpired in a rollercoaster festive period underlined that there could be no perfect solution; Dan Gosling and Alireza Jahanbakhsh scored overhead kicks for Bournemouth and Brighton respectively after Lampard’s men had won the first ball but failed to properly clear their lines.

In between those two setbacks, Arsenal took an early lead at the Emirates when Calum Chambers beat Fikayo Tomori to Mesut Ozil’s out-swinging corner and flicked it towards the back post, where Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang stole in behind a ball-watching Emerson Palmieri and powered a header beyond Kepa:

A relative lack of height, aggression and physicality will always complicate this Chelsea team’s attempts to defend set pieces but the problem is amplified whenever Zouma is absent. Lampard’s decision to make Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rudiger his favoured central defensive partnership in recent months has its logic in open play — but both can be dominated in the air.

Manchester United’s visit in February underlined this fact. Their second goal did not exploit Chelsea’s system for defending corners, but the individuals. Bruno Fernandes floated his delivery to the far edge of the penalty area where Harry Maguire, a genuine force in the air, easily shook off Rudiger to power a header past Willy Caballero:

Chelsea had been given a similar warning a fortnight earlier at the King Power Stadium. Two goals from Rudiger helped secure a 2-2 draw with Leicester but Lampard’s side were hugely fortunate not to concede a winner to Jonny Evans from a corner in the 77th minute. Christensen allowed himself to be bundled to the ground as James Maddison whipped in his delivery, giving up a completely free header on the edge of the six-yard box. It was a gilt-edged miss:

Lampard has been given good reason to doubt the reliability of other areas of Zouma’s game, but his formidable aerial presence is sorely missed at dead-ball situations.

---

There is another squad with a similar physical profile to Chelsea in the Premier League.

In any given match, Pep Guardiola’s starting XI is dominated by small, technically-focused midfielders and forwards, and yet Manchester City have conceded only four goals from 86 corners (not including last night’s Liverpool game) this season — an above-average rate of 4.7 per cent, but manageable. So how do they do it?

City’s primary strategy is simply to avoid giving away corners in the first place, keeping control of the ball in the opposition half. No team has conceded fewer than their 86 corners this season, an average of 2.8 corners per match. They also unsurprisingly average the highest share of possession in the Premier League: 66 per cent.

Chelsea try to pull off a similar trick but the equation is slightly less favourable: 59.9 per cent possession on average and 3.4 corners conceded per match. One tweak that might help, therefore, is for Lampard to place even greater emphasis on his players keeping the ball — though that might also make it even harder to break down pragmatic opponents such as West Ham from open play.

When they do concede corners, Manchester City defend their penalty area with everyone. Here they are last month against Burnley, flooding their own box, even when 5-0 up:

No one is left upfield to carry a threat in transition, and some of their most dangerous attackers are actively involved in the defensive effort. Kevin De Bruyne guards the near post area, accompanied by either Gabriel Jesus or Sergio Aguero at the front of a line of five players positioned zonally across the six-yard box:

Guardiola has also tweaked things throughout the season. In the early months of the campaign, Rodri and Kyle Walker were the two players at the front of the five-man line but a couple of high-profile goals conceded at the near post prompted a change. First came Lucas Moura in August, peeling away from Aguero and outjumping Walker to head in a cross that had floated over Rodri’s head. The goal secured Tottenham Hotspur a 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium:

Then, a month later, Kenny McLean exploited a mix-up between Rodri and Walker to head Norwich into a shock 1-0 lead at Carrow Road:

Guardiola responded by moving those two players to the back of the line, where they would zonally guard the back post area of the six-yard box while Fernandinho and Aymeric Laporte — his most forceful aerial presence — shuffled to the front. The overall structure of every man back to defend the incoming ball,  with some of City’s smaller players stationed on the edge of the box to disrupt and block opposition runners, remained the same:

A relative lack of height and aerial physicality has not held Manchester City back from being a dominant Premier League team over the past three years.

It need not scupper Chelsea’s hopes of doing the same — but Lampard might need to find a less-flawed solution, or go with less-flawed personnel, to ensure it does not derail their top-four hopes.

Interesting article and I think City's tactic would suit us also.

Even when we deal with the initial corner, we seem to struggle to clear our lines so having more players in the box may help with this. It's hardly like it'll affect Kepa who struggles to come out for anything anyway, and maybe that's then a way to tell him to stay on his line and just deal with his area, passing on responsibility then to the defenders to deal with anything outside the 3 or 4 yards in front of the keeper. 

The organisation at the back with regards to marking, ball watching, etc has been abysmal. I think stacking the best and more dominant players aerially on our 6 yard line and given instruction to attack the ball without worrying necessarily about tracking a runner is worth trying.

I wouldn't be too worried about not having anybody higher up the pitch. We have good pace in our forward areas that if they stay alert we could potentially break and push out very quickly. The pace and threat we'd have to counter would be enough to ensure most teams in the league wouldn't be prepared to over-commit themselves.

I think Lampard needs to try something different now. We literally look like conceding from every set play at the moment.

[communicate 2,703]

1 hour ago, Superblue_1986 said:

Interesting article and I think City's tactic would suit us also.

Even when we deal with the initial corner, we seem to struggle to clear our lines so having more players in the box may help with this. It's hardly like it'll affect Kepa who struggles to come out for anything anyway, and maybe that's then a way to tell him to stay on his line and just deal with his area, passing on responsibility then to the defenders to deal with anything outside the 3 or 4 yards in front of the keeper. 

The organisation at the back with regards to marking, ball watching, etc has been abysmal. I think stacking the best and more dominant players aerially on our 6 yard line and given instruction to attack the ball without worrying necessarily about tracking a runner is worth trying.

I wouldn't be too worried about not having anybody higher up the pitch. We have good pace in our forward areas that if they stay alert we could potentially break and push out very quickly. The pace and threat we'd have to counter would be enough to ensure most teams in the league wouldn't be prepared to over-commit themselves.

I think Lampard needs to try something different now. We literally look like conceding from every set play at the moment.

Even with all player defending corner, city is still vulnerable from set pieces. In games that i watched they are so freaking dominant, it doesn't even matter. The best way of how they defend set pieces is by not conceding them in the 1st place. 

[Superblue 6,372]

26 minutes ago, Mana said:

We are 3/4 in to the season and he still hasn't changed nada. He also sets this up during his Derby County season. I find it difficult that he will change the way we set up with a click of his fingers.

Did you bother reading the article, or watch any of the games? We've changed how we defend set pieces already this season so I see no reason why Lampard wouldn't look to make changes again. 

I actually think how he originally set us up was better than we are now. Our players cannot be trusted to carry out man marking successfully. 

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1 minute ago, Superblue_1986 said:

Our players cannot be trusted to carry out man marking successfully. 

Neither is zonally. With man marking, you can at least point the finger at people if they don't do it properly. Zonal marking can be a cheap excuse used to forgo the marking responsibility. 

[killer1257 3,282]

Neither is zonally. With man marking, you can at least point the finger at people if they don't do it properly. Zonal marking can be a cheap excuse used to forgo the marking responsibility. 

And how many top teams do man marking?

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[Jase 43,479]

2 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

And how many top teams do man marking?

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I don't know. I don't pay close attention to it.

And before you go on a rant at me, no, I am not suggesting how we should approach defending set pieces. 

[killer1257 3,282]

I don't know. I don't pay close attention to it.
And before you go on a rant at me, no, I am not suggesting how we should approach defending set pieces. 

I have seen not one top team that does man marking

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[MoroccanBlue 5,381]

When you have a 6'3 striker marking the goal post and Azpilicueta marking the tallest guy on the pitch, not once, but twice, and both occasions leading to goals, you can only conclude its down to coaching. 

 

Not sure if many of you remember our 2010 title winning season thoroughly, but we were awful in marking set pieces. The very reason why we won the title on the last day of the season, in spite doing the double against United, Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal, was down to our poor marking against mid table sides. Ancelotti carried on after Scolari and had us zonal mark in set pieces, when under Mourinho we were very tight in our marking. 

I find it very lazy, zonal marking.