Super Frank Thread

[Tomo 21,733]

6 minutes ago, Mana said:

You DO know we had a helping hand many times this season right?

You should be as happy as anyone because you wrote off our chances of even making Europe and had us being around where Arsenal are.

[OneMoSalah 8,776]

10 minutes ago, Vybz Kartel said:

Personally I think he needs to be sacked for Pochettino, his a average manager at most imo. He will never really take us anywhere because he can't coach defending. 

I think no top 4 - it could be something the club looks at but probably highly unlikely. You want to give managers time but again, 12 points clear 6 months ago to relying on a last week fixture it doesnt look good.

We sacked Di Matteo sitting 2nd, sacked Carlo when he finished second etc so if it happened, although I doubt it will, you would not exactly be surprised with the way football is. I know its a different time and squad but to blow that 12 points regardless of your manager in the manner we did looks bad. I still think we will make it v Wolves and win the FA cup but it covers the cracks a bit. I know we lost Hazard in the summer but the definitive thing from this season that has caused us a lot of grief is the backline. We werent particularly clinical under Sarri either so the conversion while its been a big issue isnt as bad as the defences inconsistency and obvious signs of regress imo. 

I do agree with what Tomo said in this thread top 4 and a potential cup win isnt the worst season and weve seen the promise, the good, the bad but it cannot be the same next season in terms of losing 12 or 13 PL games or losing such a gap. Thats why I think we will give Lampard next season to improve on this one.

[Laylabelle 9,351]

1 minute ago, Tomo said:

Even if the worst happens on Sunday we've still massively hit above fan expectations. Go back to August, people were claiming we'll be lucky to finish top half (and even claimed they'd be happy with it aslong as we promoted youth, lol).

Which is a good thing but to lose it on the last day with a run of silly results be hard to take. We had a gap..we were comfy now suddenly down to the wire in the space of a few games.

[Jase 43,479]

2 minutes ago, Tomo said:

Even if the worst happens on Sunday we've still massively hit above fan expectations. Go back to August, people were claiming we'll be lucky to finish top half (and even claimed they'd be happy with it aslong as we promoted youth, lol).

That's pre-season expectations. You can always adjust them as you go along and having been in the Top 4 for pretty much all season, it would be a major disappointment if we were to crash out of it on Sunday. 

[Laylabelle 9,351]

1 minute ago, Jason said:

That's pre-season expectations. You can always adjust them as you go along and having been in the Top 4 for pretty much all season, it would be a major disappointment if we were to crash out of it on Sunday. 

Exactly. Couple games ago we had a 5 point gap. Now we don't. Its the manner in which its been lost. Not so much today but Sheffield and West Ham. Shouldn't be defending like that still at this stage! And Palace couldve ended worse.

[Tomo 21,733]

9 minutes ago, Jason said:

That's pre-season expectations. You can always adjust them as you go along and having been in the Top 4 for pretty much all season, it would be a major disappointment if we were to crash out of it on Sunday. 

Im not arguing it will be a crushing disappointment but at the same time we can't go overboard on squad bashing and lose sight of the bigger picture.

[Laylabelle 9,351]

We are just lucky other results have fallen our way cause we could easily be out the running aleady

[Tomo 21,733]

6 minutes ago, Mana said:

I should be happy?

I should be happy that we crashed out of top 4...but because it's "above fan expectations" I should be happy.

Also I told everyone - that I'm going to treat FL as I would with ANY other manager. I don't care if he's a rookie. ANY other season we would be around 8th place.

Hold on, are you saying you're holding Frank to the same expectations you are to the manager's who's managed the old guard in their prime?

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Tomo said:

Im not arguing it will be a crushing disappointment but at the same time we can't go overboard on squad bashing and lose sight of the bigger picture.

It's hard to look at the bigger picture when we've been taking one step forward and then two steps backward for at least a good few months now. 

[Tomo 21,733]

8 minutes ago, Jason said:

It's hard to look at the bigger picture when we've been taking one step forward and then two steps backward for at least a good few months now. 

Well I guess it's personal perception, for me this season has always been a evolutionary one (that's why I've at times been downbeat after wins and the opposite in defeat). If this was about getting top 4 at all costs we'd have brought back Jose and shithoused it.

Yes there's a lot of work that needs doing to get us back challenging for the league (including tactically from Lampard's perspective) but I've seen more than enough promise to make me hopeful going forward.

[Laylabelle 9,351]

Let's hope can sort out the huge defence problems for next season..

54 goals against... you have to go down to Southampton in 12th with 59 to find the next highest. Thats shite. Only 7 teams have a worse count...

[Magic Lamps 11,653]

10 minutes ago, Jason said:

It's hard to look at the bigger picture when we've been taking one step forward and then two steps backward for at least a good few months now. 

Have we tho? I think we took a massive step forward with the performance vs Utd and today a loss va a far superior wide was always in the cards. You always criticized that our offensive dynamism has gone lost during the season but we have rediscovered some of it lately. Become more versatile too. Today’s loss was more down to an inferiority of individual quality than a Regress in development 

[Jase 43,479]

5 minutes ago, Tomo said:

Well I guess it's personal perception, for me this season has always been a evolutionary one (that's why I've at times been downbeat after wins and the opposite in defeat). If this was about getting top 4 at all costs we'd have brought back Jose and shithoused it.

Yes there's a lot of work that needs doing to get us back challenging for the league (including tactically from Lampard's perspective) but I've seen more than enough promise to make me hopeful going forward.

Even if it is an evolutionary season or whatever you want to call it, it does not mean some form of expectations should not be expected. We are still Chelsea FC and have not even fallen to the depths of Arsenal.

I have said this before and I will say it again, I do not care if it is the players but if Lampard does not solve our defensive problems next season - be it from set pieces or just our general defending from open play - it will get him the sack and it could be his downfall as a manager long term wise. Our tactical organization at times this season has been abysmal. Different type of manager but compared to someone like Conte, we can be so easy to play against. You have players running around like headless chickens. You have players who look like they are being asked to do things that they are not good at - and then Lampard punishing them by dropping them, ironically. In general, it looks as if Lampard just asks the players to go out there and score more goals than the opposition. 

[Jase 43,479]

5 minutes ago, Magic Lamps said:

Have we tho? I think we took a massive step forward with the performance vs Utd and today a loss va a far superior wide was always in the cards. You always criticized that our offensive dynamism has gone lost during the season but we have rediscovered some of it lately. Become more versatile too. Today’s loss was more down to an inferiority of individual quality than a Regress in development 

Read the whole post again. I never said it was only this game or the last. We have been yo-yo-ing between the good and bad for a number of months now and the same mistakes are getting made over and over and over again without anyone seemingly learning from them. 

[Tomo 21,733]

7 minutes ago, Mana said:

Errr...yeah? He took the Chelsea job. He's not ready to take over Chelsea and it's showing.

Hazard is gone - I get - fine. But how can our defence be THIS bad? Last season our defence is one of the best in the country, now this season we are one of the worst.

Are you saying we badly miss David Luiz??

That's ludicrous, how can a team with not a single world class player fresh from losing their game changer and trying to completely overhaul their style of play be expected to reach the same targets a team with about 7 international captains and finished article managers hit?

Yes Lampard has rough edges he needs to fix but the reality is we don't have the squad at present to be doing better than a top 4 challenge and expecting more because "we're Chelsea" is the exact type of unrealistic expectations we use to laugh hysterically at Liverpool fans for having pre Klopp.

Regarding the defense, we were one of "the best" last season because Sarri played risk averse possession football after Arsenal cut us open about 6 times in 15 minutes, and people spent the season moaning about how boring it was, with this squad there's a trade off, Sarri decided to master the possession bit first whereas Lamps wants to get the attack firing first, the end result is roughly the same one-way or another, we challenge for the top four as that's where this current squad is at and it's the ceiling.

[Tomo 21,733]

10 minutes ago, Jason said:

Even if it is an evolutionary season or whatever you want to call it, it does not mean some form of expectations should not be expected. We are still Chelsea FC and have not even fallen to the depths of Arsenal.

I have said this before and I will say it again, I do not care if it is the players but if Lampard does not solve our defensive problems next season - be it from set pieces or just our general defending from open play - it will get him the sack and it could be his downfall as a manager long term wise. Our tactical organization at times this season has been abysmal. Different type of manager but compared to someone like Conte, we can be so easy to play against. You have players running around like headless chickens. You have players who look like they are being asked to do things that they are not good at - and then Lampard punishing them by dropping them, ironically. In general, it looks as if Lampard just asks the players to go out there and score more goals than the opposition. 

We're just basically saying the same thing in different ways.

Ofcourse there has to be improvement next season, especially with the backing he's getting and (hopefully) a keeper of his choice.

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

Most goals conceded since 1996/1997 season. 55 back then, now 54 but we have one more game.

PL before had 42 games... So this is our worst defensive season in the last around 30 years!

 

[Vesper 28,779]

Top-heavy Chelsea need improved defence to challenge ‘big six’ rivals

https://theathletic.com/1941626/2020/07/22/chelsea-big-six-rivals-mini-league-arsenal-liverpool-city-tottenham-man-united/

Providing the next three matches go well, the future beyond them looks incredibly bright for Chelsea.

Frank Lampard’s rebuild is already set to be supercharged by the quality additions of Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner, and now Kai Havertz, the most coveted young player in Europe alongside Jadon Sancho, is keen to be part of the next great team at Stamford Bridge.

Lampard will not be expected to complete the construction of that next outstanding team as soon as 2020-21, although Chelsea’s most impressive transfer window for half a decade will certainly mean they’d go into it with realistic expectations of getting much closer to the Premier League title-winning points tallies posted by Liverpool and Manchester City over the past three years.

Tonight’s visit to Anfield provides another opportunity for Lampard to measure the gulf to true excellence, even if Liverpool’s spectacular intensity has understandably dipped a little since officially clinching their first English league title for 30 years. It is also a chance for this transitional Chelsea squad to refine their approach to the big domestic clashes that will have a decisive influence on their own quest for trophies in the future.

Chelsea’s results against the Premier League’s traditional “big six” this season are a real mixed bag, as you might expect.

Victories away at Tottenham and Arsenal were achieved with performances imbued with the kind of resilience Lampard wants to see more often, while the home win over Manchester City that confirmed Liverpool as champions was the result of arguably the most complete display since he took charge.

But naivety has also come to the fore in the less flattering moments: somehow failing to protect a 2-1 lead at home to 10-man Arsenal in January, missing several chances to clear the ball before Hector Bellerin sidestepped a hobbled Tammy Abraham to curl in the late equaliser that secured a 2-2 draw; twice undermining some bright moments against Manchester United by crumbling in defensive transition; succumbing to their own errors away at City and at home to Liverpool after competing well for long spells.

Chelsea sit fourth in the “big six” mini-league and can move above City into third place with a draw against Liverpool, who are unsurprisingly occupying top spot.

The head-to-head table supports the broader evidence that Arsenal and Tottenham have fallen away from English football’s elite, while United’s remarkable success against their biggest domestic rivals supports the growing optimism around Old Trafford that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is building a team to be feared again.

But there is another aspect to the “big six” mini-league that should be of relevance to Lampard: with the Liverpool game still to play, Chelsea have already conceded more goals than all but Arsenal in matches against the other Premier League giants and kept only one clean sheet — the convincing 2-0 away win over Tottenham in December.

The arrivals of Ziyech, Werner and possibly Havertz should help alleviate the fact that Chelsea have also scored a relatively modest 12 goals in their nine matches against “big six” opponents, but Lampard knows from his own experiences as a player at Stamford Bridge that dominant teams are made at both ends of the pitch.

Chelsea’s overall tally of 15 goals conceded against the rest of the “big six” is distorted slightly by that 4-0 opening-day collapse at Old Trafford (above) — a scoreline that told us nothing reliable about what to expect from either club for the rest of this season. But the broader pattern cannot be denied; in five of the nine matches, Lampard’s defence has been breached at least twice.

You can question how important it actually is to dominate your “big six” rivals if you want to win the Premier League title. There are, after all, 28 matches against the other 14 teams in the division with 84 more points up for grabs, a number big enough to sustain a title challenge on its own in some seasons.

Antonio Conte steered Chelsea to the title in 2016-17 with 93 points, despite losing at home to Liverpool and away against Arsenal before his inspired shift to a 3-4-2-1 system, and to Tottenham and Manchester United after that tactical tweak. Their secret was that they lost only one of the other 28 games, a shock 2-1 home defeat to Crystal Palace in the April, by which time the resolve of the chasing pack had been well and truly broken.

But it wasn’t until Chelsea dispatched City 3-1 in a brilliantly dramatic game at the Etihad in the December that Conte’s players seriously began to believe they were on course to win the club’s second championship in three years. If not quite crucial for the overall points total, these matches really do matter in terms of swinging the momentum of a title race and establishing who the best team in England actually is in the minds of the contenders.

Two years earlier, Jose Mourinho’s approach was, above all, to make sure Chelsea didn’t lose to the rest of the “big six”. He won a relatively underwhelming four of the 10 matches but only lost one, a 5-3 thriller at White Hart Lane in January 2015.

Carlo Ancelotti was more aggressive in 2009-10 and was rewarded with seven wins from 10 games against his domestic rivals, with 19 goals scored. Chelsea should have won the title much more comfortably that season, and would have done were it not for sloppy defeats against Wigan and Aston Villa.

Both of those title-winning sides defended significantly better, against both “big six” opposition and overall, than Lampard’s current team have done. No champions in the Premier League era have ever conceded as many goals as the 49 let in by Chelsea this season, and there are still two matches to play. The team that came closest to achieving the feat — the Luis Suarez-inspired Liverpool of 2013-14 — found the limit of trying to outscore their opposition with an infamous 3-3 draw against Crystal Palace a week after the Gerrard Slip game.

Chelsea have already done the kind of transfer business that should help bring their attack up to a title-winning level, and the signing of Havertz would raise the potential ceiling even further.

But both against their main Premier League rivals and beyond, Lampard will need to find significant defensive improvement if he is to build a team as complete as the best sides he once played in at Stamford Bridge.