Super Frank Thread

[Tomo 21,733]

1 minute ago, Mana said:

For Dortmund, I cannot say because I don’t watch them especially in the Klopp days bar one or two matches.

For Spuds, Poch coached Kane, Alli (and Son later) to become better players. Poch did a better job than Sherwood on his first season. 

At around November in his first season they were struggling badly results wise, Kane was yet to emerge and Alli and Son were still at Mk Done and Leverkusen.

His CV prior to Spurs was a solid spell at Saints and getting sacked by Espanol while bottom of the table, that didn't suggest he could have taken Spurs to the heights he did but Levy looked at what he was seeing instead of what went before. The example in reverse would be Jose, has the "CV" but would you trust him with this project?

And Pochettino season one actually had less points than Sherwood/AVB just to put that out there.

5 minutes ago, Mana said:

You can point to the good performance games but everyone you listed (bar Spuds away) was before the last international break. After that break, I don’t know what Lampard did, or the players are just tired but ever since then it has been overall shocking.

Development of a young side isn't linear, and if I want to mention more since the international break there's Villa and Lillie, two games we dominated and were only kept close due to spectacular keeper displays (Heaton) and dreadful finishing (Lillie).

7 minutes ago, Mana said:

At the end of the season, if we failed to get top 4 I’m not going to look at those games and say “That’s progress!” Because we actually did worse than Sarri. 

In a season like this it needs to be looked at with more context than league position.

For example, dropping the young players, bringing back Giroud, Pedro, Alonso etc and shithouse our way to third or keep going with the youth, have some great games but miss out on top 4 due to the greeness but decent building blocks to go forward never the less?

Id take the latter all day every day

[MoroccanBlue 5,296]

Watching Willian tonight, matter of fact the past few games, reminded me of how utterly useless he is in the final third. So utterly predictable. 

Lee Dixon was on my stream tonight, and he was in awe for Willian the entire 90 minutes. Stating the club should listen to Lampard and give him a new contract. Lee Dixon thinks a player that averages less than 10 league goals a season, is good enough for Chelsea football Club. That's the standard he thinks we are at. 

If it's true that Lampard wants to push to continue the club to rely on him in the extent that we do, then he is part of the problem. 

[Iggy Doonican 4,186]

Three clean sheets in fifteen in all competitions is diabolical and with some of the games we've got coming up this stat won't improve.

[Tomo 21,733]

18 minutes ago, MoroccanBlue said:

Watching Willian tonight, matter of fact the past few games, reminded me of how utterly useless he is in the final third. So utterly predictable. 

Lee Dixon was on my stream tonight, and he was in awe for Willian the entire 90 minutes. Stating the club should listen to Lampard and give him a new contract. Lee Dixon thinks a player that averages less than 10 league goals a season, is good enough for Chelsea football Club. That's the standard he thinks we are at. 

If it's true that Lampard wants to push to continue the club to rely on him in the extent that we do, then he is part of the problem. 

There's never been any middle ground with Willian in terms of people's opinions. Never known a player be so overrated and underrated at the same time.

People either make him out to be amazing or a Kalou caricature, both equally infuriating to read/listen to.

[MoroccanBlue 5,296]

1 minute ago, Tomo said:

There's never been any middle ground with Willian in terms of people's opinions. Never known a player be so overrated and underrated at the same time.

People either make him out to be amazing or a Kalou caricature, both equally infuriating to read/listen to.

You speaking about Dixon? Because it seems the consensus on Willian here, least from what I've seen, is that he's never been good enough. 

Tell you the truth, if this is a player Lampard rates, I'm genuinely worried. 

[Vesper 28,794]

3 minutes ago, Tomo said:

There's never been any middle ground with Willian in terms of people's opinions. Never known a player be so overrated and underrated at the same time.

People either make him out to be amazing or a Kalou caricature, both equally infuriating to read/listen to.

I was middle ground (as we had a scoring LWer in Hazard who sucked at defence so Willian balanced him out) UNTIL we turned down 65 fucking million quid for hin in 2018, knowing Hazard was leaving the next summer.

Combine that with his HORRID attitude and he can fuck off

[Vesper 28,794]

1 minute ago, MoroccanBlue said:

 

Tell you the truth, if this is a player Lampard rates, I'm genuinely worried. 

Lampard is either a diplomatic bullshitter OR he is shit judge of talent, and it is FAR from just on Willian

[Tomo 21,733]

6 minutes ago, MoroccanBlue said:

You speaking about Dixon? Because it seems the consensus on Willian here, least from what I've seen, is that he's never been good enough. 

Tell you the truth, if this is a player Lampard rates, I'm genuinely worried. 

Bit of both, i have has shade at me thrown at Willian from both angles, for example I don't think he was as great as made out in 15/16 but equally I've never been in on the mass slating and was probably the only one on his side in that phony war with Conte (although that was more down to the fact I seriously grew to resent Antonio by then because in my opinion he took the piss out of every single Chelsea fan in those last days, especially the ones who went to The Ethiad).

I don't think I've ever been so systematically branded both an apologist and a hater of the same person.

[Strike 7,217]

Agree with Tomo firefighting on here. This is Lampard's Chelsea with zero signings and already he has made more progress than any Allegri, Enrique or Tuchel would do by integrating the youth, bringing in an attacking style of play (Ajax, Spurs, Watford away etc). Would say his job is not close to being in doubt. 

 

[Jase 43,479]

5 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

The biggest issue we have is scoring enough goals to kill teams off or get the odd goal to win a tight game.

I struggle to see how any other coach would help this situation with our attacking options once Hazard left. Take Tammy out who is still young and inexperienced at the highest level (and had similar issues in the Championship with regards to needing a few chances to score) and we have no goalscorers in this team.

Plan A earlier in the season of dominating teams and playing through them worked superbly with Jorginho and Kovacic, but now teams have realised to plug the gaps in the middle and force us wide we don't have the players to play this way. 

Reece James hasn't stayed fit to play a regular run of games yet this season, but if he was fit and a high quality left back was purchased that would make a huge difference because we'd suddenly have two full backs capable of making the by-line and having a good delivery. That in turn will also allow the wide players and a Mount/Barkley/hopefully RLC to be much more direct and be crowding the opponents box. At the moment our full backs aren't good enough which means our wide players are playing wider and not narrower. So when the ball comes in, we usually have Tammy in the box and nothing else. It may not completely solve things, because our wide players have to be hungry and selfish enough to be getting into the box and getting goals. I think Pulisic and CHO could probably do this over time but again it's needing time and patience still for players to develop that trait to their game, much like someone like Sterling has over the last couple of years because he wasn't that type of player at Liverpool.

I feel like our attacking play, especially against packed defences, has been become too predictable. It's essentially morphed into dumping crosses into the box and hoping someone somehow converts those crosses. We're hardly opening teams up anymore through passing moves. If you look at the goals we scored in the last 10 Premier League games, it is concerning when you look at how they have come about:

Arsenal 
- Penalty
- Cross from short corner (IIRC)

Newcastle
- X

Burnley
- Penalty
- Goalkeeper error
- Cross

Brighton
- Corner

Arsenal
- Goalkeeper error
- Counter attack

Southampton
- X

Spurs
- Individual brilliance
- Penalty

Bournemouth
- X

Everton
- Individual brilliance

Aston Villa
- Cross
- Individual brilliance 

[DDA 9,690]

6 hours ago, MoroccanBlue said:

Watching Willian tonight, matter of fact the past few games, reminded me of how utterly useless he is in the final third. So utterly predictable. 

Utterly Butterly 

[BlueLion. 21,491]

10 hours ago, Tomo said:

Makes me laugh when people said they'd be patient even if we were in midtable.

I think given such a reaction while 4th has shown that to be utter bullshit.

I think we all have to write this season off, on the condition the youth continue to be developed and Frank continues to learn. It doesn't make it any less frustrating though, because, let's be honest, are we really any worse than the 4th-best team in the league? I think we should be comfortably top 4 by this juncture. 

[Iggy Doonican 4,186]

Again there's references to Klopp, Poch and Pep they have absolutely nothing to do with us and our current plight. These lazy comparisons mean fuck all the only thing that matters is the here and now and we're struggling badly. Since the start of the new year we've had two straightforward wins against a struggling Burnley and championship Forest, on the other side of the coin the tedious draw against Brighton, Newcastle where we never looked like scoring and the less said about last night's fucking fiasco the better.

[Strike 7,217]

4 hours ago, Jason said:

I feel like our attacking play, especially against packed defences, has been become too predictable. It's essentially morphed into dumping crosses into the box and hoping someone somehow converts those crosses. We're hardly opening teams up anymore through passing moves. If you look at the goals we scored in the last 10 Premier League games, it is concerning when you look at how they have come about:

Arsenal 
- Penalty
- Cross from short corner (IIRC)

Newcastle
- X

Burnley
- Penalty
- Goalkeeper error
- Cross

Brighton
- Corner

Arsenal
- Goalkeeper error
- Counter attack

Southampton
- X

Spurs
- Individual brilliance
- Penalty

Bournemouth
- X

Everton
- Individual brilliance

Aston Villa
- Cross
- Individual brilliance 

The attack played well in a few of the games to be fair. But yes, earlier on in the season, in games like Wolves, Norwich, Ajax, etc the team was proactive and constantly on the move to receive passes, turn flicks around and keep the attack going. Just feels a little flat in the last month or so

[Jase 43,479]

18 minutes ago, Strike said:

The attack played well in a few of the games to be fair. But yes, earlier on in the season, in games like Wolves, Norwich, Ajax, etc the team was proactive and constantly on the move to receive passes, turn flicks around and keep the attack going. Just feels a little flat in the last month or so

Flat is one way of putting it. It’s as though we don’t practice attacking patterns, don’t do something a bit more sophisticated than just dumping crosses into the box. Where’s that bit of creativity? Where’s the ingenuity? 

[Tomo 21,733]

4 hours ago, Mana said:

Spuds targets were different than ours. They were not a solid club they are now, so they can afford to lose so many games. EL was their level, he improved Sherwood’s result, by taking Spuds to an automatic EL qualification.

Levy sacked Redknapp after a 4th place finish, Ramos less than a year after a trophy win, sacked AVB months after a record points haul for them and Sherwood despite his best ever points return.

To suggest they were this happy clappy club merely happy to get by couldn't be further from the truth.

4 hours ago, Mana said:

I expect us to beat Villa comfortably though, I shouldn’t need to lower my expectations because it’s Lampard.

Now you're changing the goalpost, you said there's been no real decent performance since the international break, that was a point of proving otherwise.

4 hours ago, Mana said:

Missing out on CL shouldn't be seen as a successful season at all. We are putting all hopes on a rookie coach to make sure he gets it perfectly right next season otherwise it will be even longer and harder for us to get back to the top. We are already two seasons away from challenging. Failure to get the right players in next summer, will make it three.

Missing out on CL would affect our transfer window. Less money to spend because of EL (or none at all), players like Sancho could go to United instead of us because they have CL we don’t....

As I've already said, when you're starting to build a team around inexperienced players a bit more context is needed. Are you implying we should have the same win or bust expectations that we would have the old guard or even Costa/Cesc/Courtois were here in their pomp?

Furthermore CL football isn't as important to players as it use to be, Zlatan, Pogba, Kante, Aubamayang, Pepe, Kovacic, Jorginho, Di Maria, Luiz (twice) all gave up CL football to join teams outside of it. Quite frankly if a player with 13-15 years of his career left is that shortsighted to chose a club on the basis of what could only end up being six games, then meh.

[Superblue 6,370]

35 minutes ago, Jason said:

Flat is one way of putting it. It’s as though we don’t practice attacking patterns, don’t do something a bit more sophisticated than just dumping crosses into the box. Where’s that bit of creativity? Where’s the ingenuity? 

I think it comes from a panic of being unable to break a team down that play deep. We usually start games well for the first 20-30 minutes and look bright but once we get past that initial period if we can't break a team down that structure seems to be lost. There's probably a bit of being naive from both players and Lampard with this, but the players seem to get their confidence drained if we can't make our domination count. 

Since the international break we have struggled badly for confidence and it's really frustrating why we haven't been able to pick back up our form from prior to this. Some players look jaded and may be carrying knocks, and others are just woefully out of form. It's also becoming less of a coincidence that our bad form has come with Kante's return too because I think a lot of those attacking patterns and passing through the lines came from Jorginho and Kovacic and the partnership they had built up together. 

I think for the most part Rudiger coming back has improved our defence and we do look more solid than we did earlier in the season, although there are still some inexcusable individual mistakes. But when we're not scoring goals and killing teams off it will naturally invite pressure and encouragement to the opposition. A keeper that struggles to save shots too doesn't help with keeping many clean sheets.

I'm hoping that this winter break we have may be what we need to take stock of the situation, get some players back properly fit and firing again. Lampard needs to try and find that formula back earlier in the season when we were at the very least putting the bottom 12-14 teams to the sword. If we had continued doing that over the last couple of months we'd probably be in 2nd place, about 15-18 points clear of 4th.

[Tomo 21,733]

2 hours ago, BlueLion. said:

I think we all have to write this season off, on the condition the youth continue to be developed and Frank continues to learn. It doesn't make it any less frustrating though, because, let's be honest, are we really any worse than the 4th-best team in the league? I think we should be comfortably top 4 by this juncture. 

That's easy to say in hindsight but if we go back to August people were taking the piss out of our squad and saying we would be lucky to even make Europe. Arsenal, Spurs, Wolves and even Everton were all widely expected to finish above us.