Super Frank Thread

[whats happening 1,612]

15 minutes ago, Superblue_1986 said:

That's why he's zonal marking in there. 

Watching him, I'd worry that he would be ball watching and not track or successfully mark his man. 

He's played a lot of games this season and fulfilled the same role defending set pieces which to me says Lampard can't trust him to mark and defend man to man.

maybe youre right. i just know he's good on the first post.

[ZaynChelsea 423]

Who should be Kepa replaced with? Caballero? No thanks, didn‘t really hit the ground running either.

[DDA 9,924]

8 minutes ago, ZaynChelsea said:

Who should be Kepa replaced with? Caballero? No thanks, didn‘t really hit the ground running either.

He would have saved both corner goals tonight. 

[NikkiCFC 8,285]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

It's no wonder we can't defend at all when Lampard is saying things like this...

FUCKING HELL!

WOW! 

I am shocked that he sees it this way.

And it was not just this game. Goal we conceded against Villa, Mount was covering tall Villa CB who scored.

Chelsea:Valencia 0:1. Set piece goal by Rodrigo 1.80cm. Tammy 191cm was close to him 

Chelsea:Liverpool 1:2 Firmino 1.81cm scored between Alonso 1.88cm and Chris 1.90cm.

Newcastle:Chelsea 1:0 Hayden 1.87cm scored near Rudiger 1.90cm.

Many, many similar situations...

So saying it is a height issue is PURE BS! 

It is all on him!!!

 

 

[NikkiCFC 8,285]

Also last season with Sarri we conceded 39 goals in 38 PL games. 29 in 36 if you take away those two crazy games against City and Bournemouth.

44 already with Frank in 32. Surely over 50 by the end.

Dont tell me it is because we lost Luiz.

[NikkiCFC 8,285]

1 hour ago, Tomo said:

It's happened twice now which makes it even worse.

I like when managers have tactical flexibility but we maybe put two best performances this season just before the break against Liverpool and Everton.

Why he needed to change anything after? 

Even tho we won against Villa, City and Leicester I dont think we had good performances in those games...

 

[Henrique 9,133]

Did people watch the game? The focus is on the defensive tactics, but today's result is on individual errors.

1-0 and seconds before the end of first half Rudiger concedes a fucking corner in a very clumsy way. 1x1. Rudiger and Christensen acted both as clown on West Ham second and third goals.

 

 

[Henrique 9,133]

26 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

Also last season with Sarri we conceded 39 goals in 38 PL games. 29 in 36 if you take away those two crazy games against City and Bournemouth.

44 already with Frank in 32. Surely over 50 by the end.

Dont tell me it is because we lost Luiz.

Luiz was by far our best CB. It speaks loud about our lack of quality at the defense.

[Blue Armour 4,436]

I know this will be in people's heads..., but I hope he does NOT chop and change the back 4 after this result. Maybe bring on Zouma for one of the CBs but nothing more.

Experimentation with the back 4 is just a disaster waiting to happen at this late stage. I do not want to see lackluster Emerson play and make our attack even more inept

Getting rid of a winning formula with Giroud starting up front, was itself a massive mistake.   Hope he rectifies that one.

[MoroccanBlue 5,375]

The issue is that all of our CBs are secondary CBs. A secondary CB needs a leader and organizer next to them, ala Terry. 

[NikkiCFC 8,285]

27 minutes ago, Blue Armour said:

I know this will be in people's heads..., but I hope he does NOT chop and change the back 4 after this result. Maybe bring on Zouma for one of the CBs but nothing more.

Experimentation with the back 4 is just a disaster waiting to happen at this late stage. I do not want to see lackluster Emerson play and make our attack even more inept

Getting rid of a winning formula with Giroud starting up front, was itself a massive mistake.   Hope he rectifies that one.

In the last 14 games we had just 3 clean sheets and this were the only three games we had Zouma-Rudiger pairing. Liverpool, Everton, Leicester... 

Not saying they are good players just they work better together.

[Jase 43,479]

4 hours ago, Jason said:

It's no wonder we can't defend at all when Lampard is saying things like this...

FUCKING HELL!

We are not going to buy CBs, are we? 

[communicate 2,703]

4 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

That's why he's zonal marking in there. 

Watching him, I'd worry that he would be ball watching and not track or successfully mark his man. 

He's played a lot of games this season and fulfilled the same role defending set pieces which to me says Lampard can't trust him to mark and defend man to man.

Who? 

[OneMoSalah 8,883]

4 hours ago, Jason said:

It's no wonder we can't defend at all when Lampard is saying things like this...

FUCKING HELL!

That is odd. Actually it isnt an odd comment, it is incredibly mind boggling. Andre Villas-Boas wouldnt even stoop to saying something like that when it is so clear there is more to it than a team being taller than us. Or have we been playing taller teams most games this season then because defending set plays has been a major issue for us.
 

If FL truely believes what he has said there then I don’t know what to expect. I know we lack height in comparison to previous teams but Andreas, Tomori, Rudiger, Zouma, Alonso, Tammy, Giroud and Barkley have all featured regularly across parts of the season and they are all 6 ft plus. Even if there is teams who have more height than us several other teams find a way to deal with that. They have done before us and will do after. It just seems like a very lazy answer to give or he’s deflecting it to protect his own arse or the players. It is clear as day we need to work on defensive set pieces... it has been since the first weeks of the season. I seen a stat in Feb that we had conceded 80 corners which was lowest amount but had conceded 6 goals from those which is 7.5% - the highest % of anybody in the league. Not sure where to find most recent ones but wont be good reading Id imagine.

[Tomo 21,751]

Usually after a bad result has particularly annoyed me I eventually look at it in a bit more context and feel a bit better on refection, not today, if anything it's got me even more wound up.

The main reason being it was totally avoidable, I have got a bit of stick for being critical despite the three wins last week but I was doing it for a reason and that was because I could see a night like this coming from Mars. Even if we got away with it last night (which we nearly did as Giroud should have scored near the end) I still would have felt down as it was only kicking the can down the road, make no mistake this was coming, if it didn't happen tonight it would have been Bramal Lane or Selhurst Park (possibly even Watford at home), still could be if no lessons are learned!

 If that was our best line up I'd suck it up until there's a chance to change things, but it wasn't, EVERY SINGLE PLAYER who was part of that incredible smashing of Everton (which was probably our best and most complete performance since the same fixture in Conte's title season) have been available since the restart, why haven't we seen that lineup (exception being Pulisic in instead of Pedro) again? and worse than that, why has the catalyst for that display only been seen in 50 minutes out of position in 4 games? That game (and the Liverpool game) were beautiful, it looked like we finally found our best core of players, best system, the style of play was mesmerising and it didn't even last another game, ripped up for shit on a stick football where a player that wasn't even playing for us that afternoon is now having to bail us out constantly, just how?

Another thing really annoying me are the CB issues. I'm not Zouma's biggest fan but him and Rudiger were slowly forming a really good partnership before the break, WHY THE HELL HAS THAT BEEN TINKERED WITH? I'm one of the minority that think while our CBs will never be world class (apart from potentially Fik) they've been dealt a bad hand with Kepa's form and constantly being rotated about, pick Zouma with either Fik or Rudi keep them there and all off a sudden things won't look too bad.

Don't get me started (again) on Kante walking into the side no matter what, it was bad enough earlier on in the season but Frank still hasn't learned his lesson. The fact he's still being selected means either Lampard genuinely thinks we're actually better with him in the team despite all the evidence and metrics saying otherwise or he's playing him because of what he was/is at his very best. I hate being critical of him (Kante) as he's one of my favourite all time players for the club and I'll always appreciate the difference he made when he arrived but that's one thing with me, I'm so club/team orientated that I don't have trouble letting my head rule my heart. Also with Mount in the side, we don't even miss Kante's engine as much as we use too.

Then there's the regista issue. Some people don't seem to want to embrace the idea of a regista because they're all on the "traditional DM" idea and can't be moved, but it's actually one of the most important positions in the modern game, having players who can dictate from deep at a high level are absolute gold dust in the modern game, we've got not only one but two and neither are being played, and in favour of putting a box to box player there (therefore neglecting his best attribute), that's Mourinho lite.

Frank's a young manager so I will give him the time to fix this shit especially as I have seen serious promise with him (if this was an experienced manager pulling this I'd be going full Claude) but if these tactics and selections are the "new normal" I'll give him till Christmas.