Super Frank Thread

[Vesper 28,795]

Liam Twomey

Chelsea Correspondent

 

Not for the first time this month, Chelsea haven’t come close to matching their opponents’ intensity. Arsenal haven’t played like a team in disarray and their lead is utterly deserved. Frank Lampard urgently needs to change something here.

 

[Vesper 28,795]

Chelsea fans: Discuss the Arsenal game with our reporter Liam Twomey

Tuck into Christmas dinner and eat several mince pies — tick. Watch Home Alone — tick. Indulge in festive football on Boxing Day — soon to be ticked. If you’re not spending the day watching game after game and following our coverage then you are simply doing it all wrong…

Pose your questions now and The Athletic’s Chelsea reporter Liam Twomey will join in a couple of hours before kick-off, then discuss the performance, where the match was won and lost and pick through what the result means for the club.

https://theathletic.com/2283155/2020/12/25/chelsea-arsenal-score-2/

 

[Blue Armour 4,278]

Just now, Jason said:

Fixture congestion, fatigue etc although yeah, we have never been able to press well under Lampard.

Our press was brilliant against opposition in the November PL games, and even with our B team away at Sevilla.

West Ham game and Arsenal had sufficient rest days preceding those games. No excuse for fixture congestion there.

Maybe these players aren't physically conditioned well enough yet, and after the flurry of December fixtures, the wheels have started to come off. 

 

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Vesper said:

Chelsea fans: Discuss the Arsenal game with our reporter Liam Twomey

Tuck into Christmas dinner and eat several mince pies — tick. Watch Home Alone — tick. Indulge in festive football on Boxing Day — soon to be ticked. If you’re not spending the day watching game after game and following our coverage then you are simply doing it all wrong…

Pose your questions now and The Athletic’s Chelsea reporter Liam Twomey will join in a couple of hours before kick-off, then discuss the performance, where the match was won and lost and pick through what the result means for the club.

https://theathletic.com/2283155/2020/12/25/chelsea-arsenal-score-2/

 

It's behind a paywall.  

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Blue Armour said:

Our press was brilliant against opposition in the November PL games, and even with our B team away at Sevilla.

West Ham game and Arsenal had sufficient rest days preceding those games. No excuse for fixture congestion there.

Maybe these players aren't physically conditioned well enough yet, and after the flurry of December fixtures, the wheels have started to come off. 

Free weeks are nothing under Lampard. They just give him "opportunities" to overwork the players. Ever notice random injury or two tends to pop up after a free week? Or we tend to put in poor, lethargic performances after a free week? 

[Vesper 28,795]

Just now, Jason said:

It's behind a paywall.  

well, there are 684 comments, I am not going to post them all, lol

I post SO many of The Athletic articles

would be nice if people supported them, they are the best football site on the net IMHO

[Blue Armour 4,278]

Just now, Jason said:

Free weeks are nothing under Lampard. They just give him "opportunities" to overwork the players. Ever notice random injury or two tends to pop up after a free week? Or we tend to put in poor, lethargic performances after a free week? 

It maybe speculation, but wouldn't be surprised if that were true. 

[Jase 43,479]

4 minutes ago, Vesper said:

well, there are 684 comments, I am not going to post them all, lol

I post SO many of The Athletic articles

would be nice if people supported them, they are the best football site on the net IMHO

But I find it annoying that some of their journalists are like external PRs for clubs. They never say a bad word about managers, always looking for some sort of excuses. 

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Blue Armour said:

It maybe speculation, but wouldn't be surprised if that were true. 

It's not speculation. You can easily catch this small little things, especially when they happen too often. And ever wonder why muscle injury is the most common injury under Lampard? It rarely happened under past managers. 

[Vesper 28,795]

3 minutes ago, Jason said:

They never say a bad word about managers, always looking for some sort of excuses. 

That is why we have TC!

[Jase 43,479]

26 minutes ago, Vesper said:

That is why we have TC!

https://theathletic.com/2285228/2020/12/27/chelsea-lampard-sacking-arsenal/

See what I mean? That's a piece on yesterday's game, using a few incidents to highlight what went wrong - as if we're all blind and couldn't see - and not much on the bigger questions that came from the defeat. 

[Vesper 28,795]

7 minutes ago, Jason said:

https://theathletic.com/2285228/2020/12/27/chelsea-lampard-sacking-arsenal/

See what I mean? That's a piece on yesterday's game, using a few incidents to highlight what went wrong - as if we're all blind and couldn't see - and not much on the bigger questions that came from the defeat. 

It hardly is a friendly tone:

If this latest shambles of a Chelsea performance could be summed up in a single sequence, it was the passage of play that led to Arsenal’s third goal.

[Jase 43,479]

Just now, Vesper said:

It hardly is a friendly tone:

If this latest shambles of a Chelsea performance could be summed up in a single sequence, it was the passage of play that led to Arsenal’s third goal.

But the piece just highlights what we already know and saw, no? 

[Vesper 28,795]

1 minute ago, Jason said:

But the piece just highlights what we already know and saw, no? 

Not everyone watched the game.

I am going to keep posting TA articles until enough people say stop.

Better their in-depth professionalism than some dross Media Referee or Transfer Tavern bollocks (like MR saying we were crazy to sell Jorginho as he is a world class pkayer vital to the squad)

[Jase 43,479]

1 minute ago, Vesper said:

Not everyone watched the game.

That's their problem. 

1 minute ago, Vesper said:

I am going to keep posting TA articles until enough people say stop.

Better their in-depth professionalism than some dross Media Referee or Transfer Tavern bollocks (like MR saying we were crazy to sell Jorginho as he is a world class pkayer vital to the squad)

No one is stopping you. All I'm basically saying is, while they have some excellent articles, they also produce some puff pieces. 

[Vesper 28,795]

2 minutes ago, Jason said:

That's their problem. 

harsh

[Vesper 28,795]

Chelsea didn’t track or press. Now Lampard faces his toughest period yet

https://theathletic.com/2285228/2020/12/27/chelsea-lampard-sacking-arsenal/

If this latest shambles of a Chelsea performance could be summed up in a single sequence, it was the passage of play that led to Arsenal’s third goal.

Bernd Leno rolled the ball out to Mohamed Elneny, who got the ball back under half-hearted pressure and moved it on to Rob Holding, who could have been forgiven for not believing his eyes when he looked up to survey his options:

None of the four Chelsea players in his immediate vicinity were in a position to get close to him, but nor were they blocking any of his likeliest passes into midfield. Bukayo Saka showed for the easy ball, while N’Golo Kante’s push upfield had left Granit Xhaka in a sea of space. Jorginho was so far behind the pair of them that he barely makes it into the shot above.

Holding opted to play it to Xhaka and, in the process, took half of Chelsea’s outfielders out of the game. Xhaka navigated Jorginho with a simple one-two and played it to Hector Bellerin, who advanced on the visiting defence with Christian Pulisic in his wake, Emile Smith Rowe to his right and Saka to his left. The ball ended up at the feet of Saka via Smith Rowe, and then in the back of the net via Saka’s mishit cross.

Within the space of 13 seconds, Arsenal went from one penalty area to another at a fairly leisurely pace without even as much as an attempted Chelsea tackle. The finish was obviously fortunate, but look again at the screenshot above: if Saka’s connection goes to plan and he delivers a dangerous cross, the alternative result is still a dangerous two-on-two aerial battle created with no defensive resistance.

“When you attack games like we did — attack is the wrong word — things like the Saka goal happen, because you don’t deserve luck,” Frank Lampard said.

Lampard is adamant that Chelsea’s problems were not rooted in his tactics, but in the application of his players. “Not good enough on the basics — sprints, pressing, running, speed of pass and trying to play,” he added. “All the basics were wrong.”

It is a bold argument for any manager to make publicly, one that leaves room for accusations of dodging responsibility from supporters and also risks alienating the dressing room. There were, however, signs from the earliest moments of the game that Chelsea simply were not going to offer the level of effort and intensity required to match a more youthful Arsenal side playing with desperation.

Here, in the first minute, Bellerin plays the ball inside to Saka on the Arsenal right. Timo Werner’s job as the left winger — leaving aside for a moment the question of whether he should be a left winger — is to track the Spaniard’s forward run, particularly because he can see that Ben Chilwell is occupied with Saka:

He does not, and the result is that Saka plays an easy pass to the overlapping Bellerin and Chilwell has to recover to try to block the cross:

Bellerin’s cross gets past him and reaches Martinelli at the back post. Chelsea are hugely fortunate that he shoots rather than laying the ball off to Smith Rowe, and that he misses the target.

Barely a minute later Chelsea’s passivity became glaringly obvious again. Xhaka receives the ball on the halfway line with space to advance into and virtually the freedom of the Emirates Stadium to decide what he will do once he gets there:

Chelsea allow him to carry the ball all the way to the left side unchallenged. Pulisic and Mateo Kovacic are neither pressuring the ball nor blocking any passing angles, and there is an obvious opportunity for Xhaka to set up an overload of Reece James with the help of Martinelli and Kieran Tierney, who is already on the move:

He takes it and while James is able to recover, he is forced to concede a corner that Arsenal did not have to work particularly hard to earn:

Werner and Pulisic offered very little by way of protection for Chilwell or James — a particularly big problem, considering that Arsenal’s two most threatening players were Tierney and Bellerin. Here, in the sequence that led directly to the penalty, Werner does not even seem aware of where Tierney is:

Xhaka slips in Tierney, Werner does not react and James is forced to rush out to deal with the danger. This time he overcommits, gets beaten and ends up bringing the Arsenal man down in the box:

On the rare occasions they did decide to pressure the ball, Chelsea’s efforts were uncoordinated and ineffective. Just look at the space Holding has to play beyond the two-man press of Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham into the feet of Saka here, initiating the sequence of play that leads to Kante fouling Saka and conceding the free-kick that Xhaka curls into the top corner:

It is possible that fatigue is a factor. Four of Chelsea’s outfield starters — Werner, Kurt Zouma, Mount and Kante — had played more than 1,500 minutes across all competitions before kick-off; in contrast, no outfield player in the Arsenal squad had reached that mark. Much was made of Lampard’s men outrunning Leeds United this month but all of the four performances since have been lethargic, including an unconvincing win over West Ham that did not merit the 3-0 scoreline.

Lampard’s job is to manage his squad through this testing run of fixtures. Werner looks badly in need of a break, mentally as much as physically, and Callum Hudson-Odoi was the only bright spark against Arsenal. Why he has not been given more of a chance becomes a more salient question with every new underwhelming display from the starters.

But this alarming dip in form raises bigger questions. Liverpool can put Chelsea nine points adrift of the title conversation by beating West Bromwich Albion, and the next two visitors to Stamford Bridge are a buoyant Aston Villa — with only 48 hours recovery time — and a Manchester City team who appear to be finally hitting their stride. Two more performances like the last four will only embolden those who are voicing their doubts about this team’s broader prospects with Lampard in charge.

Lampard encountered adversity during the winter last season, punctuated by a demoralising 2-2 draw with 10-man Arsenal at Stamford Bridge in January. But that was adversity minus expectation; the stakes this season are much higher and regardless of where the public blame lies, the manager always has more to lose than his players do.

[Blue Armour 4,278]

19 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Chelsea didn’t track or press. Now Lampard faces his toughest period yet

https://theathletic.com/2285228/2020/12/27/chelsea-lampard-sacking-arsenal/

If this latest shambles of a Chelsea performance could be summed up in a single sequence, it was the passage of play that led to Arsenal’s third goal.

Bernd Leno rolled the ball out to Mohamed Elneny, who got the ball back under half-hearted pressure and moved it on to Rob Holding, who could have been forgiven for not believing his eyes when he looked up to survey his options:

None of the four Chelsea players in his immediate vicinity were in a position to get close to him, but nor were they blocking any of his likeliest passes into midfield. Bukayo Saka showed for the easy ball, while N’Golo Kante’s push upfield had left Granit Xhaka in a sea of space. Jorginho was so far behind the pair of them that he barely makes it into the shot above.

Holding opted to play it to Xhaka and, in the process, took half of Chelsea’s outfielders out of the game. Xhaka navigated Jorginho with a simple one-two and played it to Hector Bellerin, who advanced on the visiting defence with Christian Pulisic in his wake, Emile Smith Rowe to his right and Saka to his left. The ball ended up at the feet of Saka via Smith Rowe, and then in the back of the net via Saka’s mishit cross.

Within the space of 13 seconds, Arsenal went from one penalty area to another at a fairly leisurely pace without even as much as an attempted Chelsea tackle. The finish was obviously fortunate, but look again at the screenshot above: if Saka’s connection goes to plan and he delivers a dangerous cross, the alternative result is still a dangerous two-on-two aerial battle created with no defensive resistance.

“When you attack games like we did — attack is the wrong word — things like the Saka goal happen, because you don’t deserve luck,” Frank Lampard said.

Lampard is adamant that Chelsea’s problems were not rooted in his tactics, but in the application of his players. “Not good enough on the basics — sprints, pressing, running, speed of pass and trying to play,” he added. “All the basics were wrong.”

It is a bold argument for any manager to make publicly, one that leaves room for accusations of dodging responsibility from supporters and also risks alienating the dressing room. There were, however, signs from the earliest moments of the game that Chelsea simply were not going to offer the level of effort and intensity required to match a more youthful Arsenal side playing with desperation.

Here, in the first minute, Bellerin plays the ball inside to Saka on the Arsenal right. Timo Werner’s job as the left winger — leaving aside for a moment the question of whether he should be a left winger — is to track the Spaniard’s forward run, particularly because he can see that Ben Chilwell is occupied with Saka:

He does not, and the result is that Saka plays an easy pass to the overlapping Bellerin and Chilwell has to recover to try to block the cross:

Bellerin’s cross gets past him and reaches Martinelli at the back post. Chelsea are hugely fortunate that he shoots rather than laying the ball off to Smith Rowe, and that he misses the target.

Barely a minute later Chelsea’s passivity became glaringly obvious again. Xhaka receives the ball on the halfway line with space to advance into and virtually the freedom of the Emirates Stadium to decide what he will do once he gets there:

Chelsea allow him to carry the ball all the way to the left side unchallenged. Pulisic and Mateo Kovacic are neither pressuring the ball nor blocking any passing angles, and there is an obvious opportunity for Xhaka to set up an overload of Reece James with the help of Martinelli and Kieran Tierney, who is already on the move:

He takes it and while James is able to recover, he is forced to concede a corner that Arsenal did not have to work particularly hard to earn:

Werner and Pulisic offered very little by way of protection for Chilwell or James — a particularly big problem, considering that Arsenal’s two most threatening players were Tierney and Bellerin. Here, in the sequence that led directly to the penalty, Werner does not even seem aware of where Tierney is:

Xhaka slips in Tierney, Werner does not react and James is forced to rush out to deal with the danger. This time he overcommits, gets beaten and ends up bringing the Arsenal man down in the box:

On the rare occasions they did decide to pressure the ball, Chelsea’s efforts were uncoordinated and ineffective. Just look at the space Holding has to play beyond the two-man press of Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham into the feet of Saka here, initiating the sequence of play that leads to Kante fouling Saka and conceding the free-kick that Xhaka curls into the top corner:

It is possible that fatigue is a factor. Four of Chelsea’s outfield starters — Werner, Kurt Zouma, Mount and Kante — had played more than 1,500 minutes across all competitions before kick-off; in contrast, no outfield player in the Arsenal squad had reached that mark. Much was made of Lampard’s men outrunning Leeds United this month but all of the four performances since have been lethargic, including an unconvincing win over West Ham that did not merit the 3-0 scoreline.

Lampard’s job is to manage his squad through this testing run of fixtures. Werner looks badly in need of a break, mentally as much as physically, and Callum Hudson-Odoi was the only bright spark against Arsenal. Why he has not been given more of a chance becomes a more salient question with every new underwhelming display from the starters.

But this alarming dip in form raises bigger questions. Liverpool can put Chelsea nine points adrift of the title conversation by beating West Bromwich Albion, and the next two visitors to Stamford Bridge are a buoyant Aston Villa — with only 48 hours recovery time — and a Manchester City team who appear to be finally hitting their stride. Two more performances like the last four will only embolden those who are voicing their doubts about this team’s broader prospects with Lampard in charge.

Lampard encountered adversity during the winter last season, punctuated by a demoralising 2-2 draw with 10-man Arsenal at Stamford Bridge in January. But that was adversity minus expectation; the stakes this season are much higher and regardless of where the public blame lies, the manager always has more to lose than his players do.

 

Excellent read, and it offers clues on how to figure out that big elephant in the room, which I keep mentioning. Why has our pressing deteriorated so rapidly from Nov to Dec? Its like night and day

I think the point regarding this being an avalanche effect is a good one. We basically have overworked a lot of the players by playing them continuously over the previous month, and the effects are being felt in the last few games.

I think the decision to go to a 4-3-3  (which I don't think was the original plan, given how we loaned out both RLC and Barkley) and Lampard's persistence with playing 4-3-3,  just because it produced a string of good results, have resulted in him playing certain players over and over again without much rotation. This goes for Mount, Werner, Kante and the two full-backs. It might not have been so bad if we had at least one of the 2 loanees with us right now. And maybe you could argue that the Ziyech/Pulisic/CHO/Havertz injuries didn't help.

The lack of pressing has also made us a lot more vulnerable in recent weeks. 

We went from being the team with most consecutive clean sheets, to leaking goals again. Its not really because Mendy became less of a keeper. Its because our back 5 is getting more exposed.