Super Frank Thread

[Tomo 21,681]

26 minutes ago, Mana said:

Tomori IMO hasn't improved under Lampard this season. He is just as good as last season. 

And who was his manager last season?

26 minutes ago, Mana said:

Last season was trash, but this season is looking like trash as well. We have LESS points now then we did last season. We have been stuck in relegation form for months.

We I think are about 7 points down on this time last season with harder fixtures (last season we had all the top 6 at home first half bar one, this season vice versa) and about 2 points down on the same set of fixtures last season.

Add to that the loss of a bonafide match winner, our best defender out for half the season, our second best attacking player last season being out all season so far alongside our best midfielder drifting in and out of injury till about November, while there's very much room for improvement it's hardly the doomsday disaster you and others are making it out to be all things considered.

26 minutes ago, Mana said:

And has Abraham really improved? 

Yes, his all-round play at times while will never be Firmino is a lot better than it was (or atleast how I remember it) at youth level and out on loan.

Also despite a bit of a rut lately he's on course for atleast 20 goals in all comps, (and that is PL, CL and possibly latter stages of FA Cup, not stat padding in the Europa or early rounds of the cups Vs Championship opponent's) that's impressive for his first season in the Chelsea first team no matter what spin you put on it.

[Atomiswave 6,072]

11 hours ago, DDA said:

I still cant believe Chelsea fans genuinely preferred Lampard over Sarri as our manager.

You reap what you sow. 

 

Sorry mate but sarii was trash, his footy was brutal I mean brutal to watch. Supremely stubborn. And he had Eden, you remove that and who knows where we would have end up.

Most of us back FL, but 7months in its clear he is a rookie, Our defence still cant defend the basics, we are hella horrible dealing with set-pieces etc. When I watch us sometimes I go what the fuck is the system? Why is our positioning so bad so often? Is it him? The players? But I feel for him man, he is fuming.....he aint liking the attitude of the board and as the proper Chels that he is, he aint happy about it. He is a Winner, our board is anything but.

[DDA 9,570]

You guys are missing my point. I wasnt saying Sarri was the answer or us but he is certainly a safer bet than Lampard. He is more experienced and yes his football was abit boring to watch at times last season but we all know deep down the players at Sarris disposal were just not up to playing his style of football. He played the elder players for their experienced and why?? Welll isnt this season proof of why managers care to play the senior players over the youngsters at Chelsea.. Sarri would never had the same time and patience Lampard will be shown. He had to get results straight of the bat. Frank has a free season to integrate the youngsters. That should not go unnoticed and neither should the fact that we are worse off points wise than what we were under Sarri last season. 

[Tomo 21,681]

1 hour ago, DDA said:

You guys are missing my point. I wasnt saying Sarri was the answer or us but he is certainly a safer bet than Lampard. He is more experienced and yes his football was abit boring to watch at times last season but we all know deep down the players at Sarris disposal were just not up to playing his style of football. He played the elder players for their experienced and why?? Welll isnt this season proof of why managers care to play the senior players over the youngsters at Chelsea.. Sarri would never had the same time and patience Lampard will be shown. He had to get results straight of the bat. Frank has a free season to integrate the youngsters. That should not go unnoticed and neither should the fact that we are worse off points wise than what we were under Sarri last season. 

7 points down on this stage last season and 2/3 on the same fixtures. Given the loss of Hazard, a filled out Loftus Cheek and the injury problems of Kante, Rudiger and Callum that really isn't a disaster. 

[communicate 2,703]

42 minutes ago, DDA said:

You guys are missing my point. I wasnt saying Sarri was the answer or us but he is certainly a safer bet than Lampard. He is more experienced and yes his football was abit boring to watch at times last season but we all know deep down the players at Sarris disposal were just not up to playing his style of football. He played the elder players for their experienced and why?? Welll isnt this season proof of why managers care to play the senior players over the youngsters at Chelsea.. Sarri would never had the same time and patience Lampard will be shown. He had to get results straight of the bat. Frank has a free season to integrate the youngsters. That should not go unnoticed and neither should the fact that we are worse off points wise than what we were under Sarri last season. 

I personally prefer lamp over Sarri and this I coming from Sarri supporter. It was quite boring, at least this season it is more fun. However, lamp squad utilization is very2 poor IMO, and I honestly have never said that about our manager before. 

But in term of kids, of course the reason that Lamp can start 4/5 kids in epl is because this is a free season. Only fans think that it is easy to play kids when you are contending or fighting for top 4. 

 

 

[DDA 9,570]

39 minutes ago, Tomo said:

7 points down on this stage last season and 2/3 on the same fixtures. Given the loss of Hazard, a filled out Loftus Cheek and the injury problems of Kante, Rudiger and Callum that really isn't a disaster. 

It's not a disaster but the facts remain. Sarri is a better manager than Lampard at this current time. I really hope it works out for Frank, I really do. I'm not condemning him just yet... he will most certainly have the summer and another season to be judged upon. 

[killer1257 3,282]

You guys are missing my point. I wasnt saying Sarri was the answer or us but he is certainly a safer bet than Lampard. He is more experienced and yes his football was abit boring to watch at times last season but we all know deep down the players at Sarris disposal were just not up to playing his style of football. He played the elder players for their experienced and why?? Welll isnt this season proof of why managers care to play the senior players over the youngsters at Chelsea.. Sarri would never had the same time and patience Lampard will be shown. He had to get results straight of the bat. Frank has a free season to integrate the youngsters. That should not go unnoticed and neither should the fact that we are worse off points wise than what we were under Sarri last season. 

Yes with experienced players like Giroud, Barkley, Willian and Pedro we would have way more points...



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[DDA 9,570]

1 minute ago, killer1257 said:

 

 

Yes with experienced players like Giroud, Barkley, Willian and Pedro we would have way more points...



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Some could argue that Giroud may have buried many of the chances that Tammy has missed. Easy chances too.

[killer1257 3,282]

Some could argue that Giroud may have buried many of the chances that Tammy has missed. Easy chances too.

Giroud showed his qualities in PL last Season and he was horrible

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[ZaynChelsea 423]

Saw Arsenal vs Burnley and I am again wondering how we fucked up a lead with 11 vs 10 against this shower of shit.

Lampard is doing fuck all concerning our defence. SORT IT OUT

[ZaynChelsea 423]

And Zouma was a beast when Mourinho was here. 
Lampard hasn‘t improved any single defender.

[killer1257 3,282]

And Zouma was a beast when Mourinho was here. 
Lampard hasn‘t improved any single defender.

Zouma was a Beast because Mou likes to play anti football. Anti football means that Zouma will only play very deep without playing any passes and if he gets the Ball, shoot it away. Zouma can still play Anti Football

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[ZaynChelsea 423]

17 minutes ago, killer1257 said:

Zouma was a Beast because Mou likes to play anti football. Anti football means that Zouma will only play very deep without playing any passes and if he gets the Ball, shoot it away. Zouma can still play Anti Football

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I also saw Anti football when we fucked up against Newcastle, West Ham, Southampton...

[killer1257 3,282]

I also saw Anti football when we fucked up against Newcastle, West Ham, Southampton...

We played Mou park the bus anti football?

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[MoroccanBlue 5,198]

6 minutes ago, ZaynChelsea said:

I also saw Anti football when we fucked up against Newcastle, West Ham, Southampton...

If that was anti-football then i'm a monkey's uncle. 

Your agenda is obvious btw. We play some of the most progressive football in the league. 

[Vesper 27,310]

Mystery Kovacic absence may continue unless Lampard tweaks his system

https://www.chelsea-news.co/2020/02/mystery-kovacic-absence-may-continue-unless-lampard-tweaks-system/

Frank Lampard made several tweaks to his team against Leicester in the desperate search for goals, and one would have imagined that one of those changes would be the introduction of Mateo Kovacic.
While famously goal shy himself, the midfielder gives the team a spark it otherwise lacks, and has the classy touch and dribbling skills to open teams up.
The fact he was left out again was really puzzling. Earlier in the season, Lampard took pains to individually praise the former Real Madrid player’s performances. How has now fallen so far down the pecking order?
Yes he’s been involved in a few bad results, but so has everyone who has played this season. Fans online and at the ground are mystified by his absence.
We write every week that we expect to see him back in the team soon, but maybe we shouldn’t be so sure. Clearly, unless they work on something new in this two week break, he doesn’t fit in with how Frank Lampard wants to play this season.

[Jase 43,479]

Mertens, Cavani and Rondon: Chelsea stalled striker hunt as club gamble that current squad can secure fourth

https://theathletic.com/1576630/2020/02/02/chelsea-striker-mertens-cavani-transfer/?source=shared-article

When the substitutes’ board was raised in the 83rd minute at the King Power Stadium to show Ross Barkley coming on for Tammy Abraham, recent Chelsea history suggested Frank Lampard had picked a key moment in a key match against Premier League top-four rivals to send a political message.

It was a day that had summed up the problems that drove Chelsea’s fraught and ultimately failed striker search throughout January. After a litany of missed first-half chances from Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Mason Mount, only Antonio Rudiger’s first Premier League goals for 15 months prevented Leicester from handing Lampard’s men a ninth loss of the season.

This late substitution wasn’t quite Jose Mourinho deploying Andre Schurrle as a false 9 at Old Trafford in 2013 while publicly pursuing Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, or Antonio Conte pointedly handing an unfit Barkley his Chelsea debut in a Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal in 2018 to highlight his lack of squad options.

But given the Chelsea head coach’s demeanour only 24 hours earlier at Cobham, the cynic’s interpretation was tempting — even if he later explained: “We have spent a lot of time this week on how we press without the ball and I thought Ross has been playing pretty well recently. It was just a case of bringing him on, [getting] he and Willian in those positions to maybe get a bit more ball because at that point it hadn’t really stuck for us much up there. It was just a choice.”

Olivier Giroud did not even travel with the Chelsea squad to Leicester, having trained with his future in the balance on January transfer deadline day. “It was nothing to do with his frame of mind, no,” Lampard insisted. “But he has had a few days where a lot of scrutiny has been on him and around him. I think it was case of travelling without him.

“We will all go away for a week away from each other. It’s probably what’s needed for everyone and we will come back and work hard, and Olivier is here. If he shows himself in training — because that is how I pick the team generally — then he will get his opportunities.”

Lampard had cut an agitated figure at Cobham on Friday as he admitted that, with almost 12 hours of deadline day remaining, the window was “95 per cent shut” for Chelsea. He even spoke faster than normal, his eyes darting quickly from left to right, any smiles vanishing from his face almost as soon as they appeared.

And in his keenness to paint his team as “underdogs” in what remains of the top-four race, his praise of Bruno Fernandes as a “world-class” signing for United and his invocation of “work” as the only solution to Chelsea’s problems, there were ominous echoes of the Conte who became content to use his media engagements to lob verbal grenades on his way to a toxic divorce with the board.

But the message here was slightly muddled, the obvious annoyance a little aimless; for Lampard also admitted that he wouldn’t have been satisfied by Chelsea buckling to pressure — both from the management and an expectant fan base — and talking themselves into a questionable deadline-day deal, as United later did with Odion Ighalo.

“The reality is I have an idea here as well of where I want to get to and I don’t think any knee-jerk reaction from myself or from the club would have been positive,” he insisted. And the reality of the January transfer window for Chelsea, as it was for other clubs, was a choice between doing something underwhelming or doing nothing.

As first reported by the Telegraph, sources have told The Athleticthat Chelsea were presented with an opportunity to take Salomon Rondon on loan from Chinese Super League club Dalian Yifang on deadline day. His arrival would have freed up Giroud to leave but would also have meant replacing the man who will likely lead the line for France at Euro 2020 this summer with a striker who scored 35 goals in 140 Premier League appearances for West Brom and Newcastle.

Chelsea opted not to go down the route with Rondon that United did with Ighalo, and the episode provided a fitting end to a January window that, having begun with the optimism born of a successful transfer ban appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), ended with as much frustration inside Cobham as played out on social media.

Agents had been alerted to Chelsea’s desire to do business in January even before the CAS decision was handed down and sources have told The Athletic that Marina Granovskaia met with the representative of Napoli forward Dries Mertens before Christmas to gauge his level of interest in a January move to the Premier League.

Lampard’s interest in Mertens sprang as much from his ability to play in a variety of attacking roles as his elite goalscoring pedigree and there was hope that his expiring contract might present a rare opportunity to acquire a quality forward relatively cheaply. The Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis quickly shut that possibility down. Mertens is also injured, and three goals shy of passing Marek Hamsik as Napoli’s all-time top goalscorer. It was a non-starter.

Chelsea enquired about Edinson Cavani once he made it clear he was unsettled but were only prepared to take him on loan. Paris Saint-Germain wanted a sale and not even Atletico Madrid, the player’s preferred destination, could match the €20 million asking price. That level of expense made no sense for an increasingly injury-prone 32-year-old who is paid more than N’Golo Kante, the highest earner at Stamford Bridge.

The only other high-profile striker who actually changed clubs late in the January window was Krzysztof Piatek. Representatives acting on his behalf offered him around the Premier League but Chelsea were not interested in spending on a striker who could not even hold down a regular starting place in a struggling AC Milan side.

Chelsea’s long-term targets were not available in January. Jadon Sancho and Borussia Dortmund agreed to revisit his situation in the summer while Timo Werner had no desire to leave RB Leipzig in the midst of a Bundesliga title race and a top-scorer battle with Robert Lewandowski. Wilfried Zaha and Moussa Dembele were both prohibitively expensive, and neither enjoyed unanimous endorsement in the club’s transfer discussions.

In this barren landscape, Chelsea were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the recent past — most notably the disastrous summer of 2017, when pressure from Conte played its part in around £55 million being spent on deadline-day deals for Danny Drinkwater and Davide Zappacosta that the club are still reckoning with.

Nor was it palatable to allow Giroud to leave without securing a replacement, regardless of his desire to safeguard his starting spot for France at Euro 2020. The optics in particular of sending him to Jose Mourinho and Tottenham, then watching both reel in and overtake Chelsea in the final stretch of the Premier League top-four race, would have been virtually impossible to recover from.

So in the end, Chelsea decided to stand put, prioritising the summer over the present. It is a calculated gamble that this squad, managed by Lampard, can get over the line to fourth. If it works, they will be in a perfect position to pursue top-tier names and take the team to the next level.

Lampard is invested in that long-term vision but he also knows that, like every other Chelsea coach in the Roman Abramovich era, he is being judged on his results right now. “We are fortunate that we have a nice group of young players at the minute but we have to keep looking forward and we are,” he told Match of the Day after victory over Hull City in the FA Cup.

“But for this season, short-term [recruitment] needs to be done. For the bigger picture, of course there is a plan, but for now, when you look at it, we want to finish in the top four. At the minute, it is quite clear to me where we can improve so we have to look to that.”

This is the tension that spilled out of Lampard on deadline day and the tension that might have surfaced once more if Chelsea had paid for their missed chances against Leicester. Instead, Rudiger’s equaliser gave him the chance to deescalate the situation heading into the winter break.

“It’s gone,” Lampard said of the transfer market. “I am not interested in the window, I am not interested in talking about it. I am interested in the point we got and what we do going forward.”

After sitting out the January window, Chelsea will remain a flawed team between now and the summer. Lampard’s decision to drop Kepa Arrizabalaga for Willy Caballero at the King Power underlined that, to achieve this season’s targets, he will need to navigate difficult problems at both decisive ends of his team.

But the public attitude of Chelsea’s head coach will be every bit as important in ensuring that he will be the man to oversee the club’s longer-term rebuild.

[Superblue 6,331]

19 hours ago, DDA said:

I still cant believe Chelsea fans genuinely preferred Lampard over Sarri as our manager.

You reap what you sow. 

 

This wasn't really a thing because Sarri wanted to leave so I don't think it was ever between Sarri and Lampard, it was who to replace Sarri who was obviously outbound. I think Sarri would have wanted to leave to be honest whether that interest from Juventus was there or not. His football hadn't endeared itself to our fan base last season and was almost certain to be an even harder watch this year without Hazard and RLC, and with the glut of injuries we had heading into the season start.

I was pro Lampard in the summer and I fully stand by that still because what I felt would happen has which is that he would be willing to place faith in our younger players which I doubt another continental manager would have done. Someone like Allegri say, is he really going to play Tammy over Giroud, Mount over Barkley, CHO over Pedro, Tomori over Luiz?

At the stage we are at currently which even last year is miles behind City and Liverpool, the building blocks need to be put into place. With the transfer ban, this season felt like a complete free hit of a season to try something new.

Whether Lampard proves to be a success as our manager or not, he has helped already to lay some new foundations at the club with a number of young players who will be well served for this season of invaluable experience playing regular first team football. I expect all of them to have long careers in the Premier League ranging from good to excellent and the hope is all will continue to develop from this. What is also a really important side point to this is they have all, bar Tammy, committed long term to Chelsea and I am pretty sure Lampard has had an extremely large influence on this that a pathway is now available at Chelsea.

I think this has also opened the eyes of the board that more trust can be placed into the academy providing first team squad players. The longer term picture hopefully being that our recruitment can centre around 2 things - the best young talent and the highest level of talent we can attract, instead of mid-range squad fillers eating significantly into our transfer budget.

And the other positive of this being that it hopefully encourages the next talented crop of youngsters that there is finally seemingly a pathway into the first team squad.

The bonus of everything is we're still bang in the race for top 4, with no one yet capable of stringing any semblance of form together.

The key is going to be this summer, top 4 or not this season. Can the board and management start really re-shaping this squad properly to push back up towards the top 2 again.