Super Frank Thread

[Special Juan 28,091]

Jamie Redknapp looking like a cunt again today eh?

[Laylabelle 9,534]

5 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

Jamie Redknapp looking like a cunt again today eh?

Its intresting reading back on his predictions..though he got ours right. Just not Spurs in 3rd.

[Superblue 6,372]

I like that Lampard hasn't over celebrated top 4. It is an excellent season considering where we are currently, but his comments show how much further he wants to get to and doesn't want just top 4 to be the benchmark for Chelsea.

 

[communicate 2,703]

Congrats to frank for a wonderful first season. Top 4 is a brilliant achievement. He has done many thing right especially incorporating young player in to the team. With Tomori, mount, tammy, reece, gilmour we have 5 "new" signing this seaaon and Lamp has done well utilizing them. 

Now here come the difficult part, by taking this team to top 4. Lamp has increased expectations for Chelsea. Next season, he will need to guide us to at least competing with the top 2. I don't expect us to win the league, with our midfield and gk, I don't think we can, but we need to be closer 

[coolhead23 1,147]

Really happy for Lampard and the team.

A new manager who doesnt have much experience, no transfer to back him, our best player goes away, our new signings were players under 21/22 ... I had low expectation at the start, all I wanted was that we dont get relegated anything else was good. But today Lampard has exceeded all expectation for me.

He has shown all traits of being brilliant, normal/average and ridiculously poor in the entire season. I hope and really hope that he goes back to the drawing board to uses the experience from this season combined with his experience as a player to keep upgrading his strategy.

He has kept a marker now and anything less for next season would be a failure. I really hope Board believes in the manager and have a long time vision rather than short term gains. 

KTBFFH!!! 

[Jase 43,479]

One personal challenge for Lampard is to survive past the second season and beyond. The last time we had the same manager for 3 seasons and beyond was Mourinho (twice). Before that, it was Ranieri. 

[Superblue 6,372]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

One personal challenge for Lampard is to survive past the second season and beyond. The last time we had the same manager for 3 seasons and beyond was Mourinho (twice). Before that, it was Ranieri. 

It does however feel like there has been a shift in levels of patience over the last few years, even if that hasn't necessarily reflected in managers staying long.

Conte and Sarri both had some real difficult periods where in previous years I think a decision would have been made mid-season, but the club persevered with them. Conte caused his position to become untenable himself by being difficult to work with (he's had problems with the board now everywhere he's been as it sounds like there are murmurings of discontent at Inter now as well).

Sarri resigned from his post to join Juventus. We don't know if the club would have stuck with him if this hadn't have happened, but they didn't let fan unrest mid season influence them.

i think in Lampard the club knows they have someone who is perfect for them outside of the success on the pitch.

He's a club legend and his successful playing career provides excellent marketing opportunities, he represents the club perfectly, speaks well, has a superb relationship with the media and besides this little spat with Klopp, which is something of nothing, there's no controversy with him. What appears to be an excellent working relationship with the board and Marina makes a huge difference too. Compared to other manager's, he also is prepared to do what's right for the club and not just himself, so there is a longer term plan there of bringing through academy players and the players being signed younger, long term and versatile acquisitions compared to the experienced, short term signings Mourinho and Conte would target, or players like Jorginho who was specific for Sarri's style but isn't very versatile to adapt to a very different way of playing or manager.

Of course, it's a results business and now that Chelsea look like they'll go big this summer in the market, there will be more pressure next season on Lampard to continue to deliver on expectations but I do believe the club will be prepared to be patient with him and still give him time to implement what he's trying to do at the club. 

For me personally, if we can bring a couple of quality additions in defensively and so long as our new attacking signings do well, mixed with what we already have, I think we should be looking to add 10 - 15 points next season and show improvements on the defensive side of our game. That, for me, will have us closer to the top 2, and be laying a solid foundation for title challenges over the coming years.

[Jase 43,479]

2 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

It does however feel like there has been a shift in levels of patience over the last few years, even if that hasn't necessarily reflected in managers staying long.

Conte and Sarri both had some real difficult periods where in previous years I think a decision would have been made mid-season, but the club persevered with them. Conte caused his position to become untenable himself by being difficult to work with (he's had problems with the board now everywhere he's been as it sounds like there are murmurings of discontent at Inter now as well).

Sarri resigned from his post to join Juventus. We don't know if the club would have stuck with him if this hadn't have happened, but they didn't let fan unrest mid season influence them.

Inclined to agree but on the other hand, there is an argument to be made of 'if we sack manager A, is there a good/suitable manager out there to replace him?'. 

With Sarri, that is debatable. There were several times he was reportedly on the verge of being sacked but always ended up avoiding it because we picked up a win at the right time. And while we don't know if the club would have stuck with him if Juventus hadn't come calling, they didn't exactly fight tooth and nail to keep him, did they? Plus, the fan unrest may have influenced the board's decision to hire Lampard instead of someone like Max Allegri. 

[Tomo 21,751]

59 minutes ago, Jason said:

Inclined to agree but on the other hand, there is an argument to be made of 'if we sack manager A, is there a good/suitable manager out there to replace him?'. 

That's always been a bit or a cop out argument in regards to keep or sack a manager in my opinion. Not so much with Sarri but when it got to the end with Mou and Conte here (examples from rivals would be Emery, Pochettino, Rodgers, Dalglish, Mou again at United) there would be many a manager that would have done better than the crap they were serving up, especially in the short term.

[Jase 43,479]

Wonder if Lampard wants to do something similar eventually...

 

[King Kante 1,643]

Beat expectations. I predicted 6th. So, 4th plus a cup final is way beyond. However, there is still work to do, I would say that things for SFL to do are: 

1) Buy a new GK

2) Buy a new CB 

3) Buy a new LB

4) Stop going completely gun-ho and leaving us wide open at the back. All he needs to do here is the easy to do 1 in front, 1 behind system i.e. when pressing have 1 CB in front of the attacker left up field and have the other CB or DMF sitting behind but in front of the next furthest up field opposition attacker.

5) Employ someone to coach the defense properly at set pieces. 

[NikkiCFC 8,286]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

And while we don't know if the club would have stuck with him if Juventus hadn't come calling, they didn't exactly fight tooth and nail to keep him, did they? 

I think Sarri would stay if no transfer ban. Pretty sure he even said this.

So transfer ban gave us: Frank, Tammy, Mount, Gilmour, Tomori, James, and now we probably would not buying Kai, Timo, Hakim if we could buy last summer. We would get someone like Pepe for instance.

So transfer ban has been amazing thing for Chelsea in every possibly aspect. We did not even suffer in terms of results at all!