Super Frank Thread

[Hutcho 8,443]

We missed out on Thomas Partey. If we got him, we will be seriously challenging for the title.
Right now, I'm still not satisfied with our defense. Much better than last season's but something is missing.
We need someone to protect that back 4, and Kante sadly doesn't cut it anymore especially when he gets injured now and again.

We can't have everything all in 1 go. Need to offload some players which won't happen til next summer most likely then we can get another DM. We can't sign everyone.
If kante stays fit (not a guarantee I admit) then I think we will be fine. I don't think Thomas partey makes us go from not challenging to challenging this year.

[Vesper 28,786]

Lampard must find way to get the best out of Jorginho, says Zola

https://www.thechelseachronicle.com/club-news/lampard-must-find-way-to-get-the-best-out-of-jorginho-says-zola/

Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola has urged Frank Lampard to reassess how he uses “difference-maker” Jorginho in his system.

Jorginho has seen a resurgence this season having lost his spot in Lampard’s starting line-up when the Premier League resumed last season after lockdown.

The 28-year-old looked right at home alongside N’Golo Kante in the double-pivot midfield Lampard employed in Chelsea’s 4-0 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday.

And Zola believes Jorginho needs to play in the right role and system to thrive, implying Lampard may have given him too much “defensive responsibility”.

He told Sky Sports: “With Jorginho, it depends on what type of football you want to play.

“If you want to play possession where you have the ball all the time and you play a lot of passes, there are not many as good as him around.

“If you ask Jorginho to cover 50 metres of the pitch in width and get all the balls back, it’s going to be difficult.”

Zola, who also had Jorginho under his wing as Chelsea assistant manager in the 2018-19 season, argued that Jorginho needs protection from his teammate to reach his full potential in midfield.

“Jorginho is not a player that has a lot of physicality and mobility but he is very intelligent and is always in the right place,” Zola added.

“If you have someone who can help him, he can make a big difference. It’s just about getting the best out of him.”

In Lampard’s defence, however, it might be unrealistic to expect his deepest midfielder to be freed from defensive duties.

The fact Chelsea conceded the most goals from counter-attacks in the Premier League last season highlights how vulnerable the side has been with Jorginho being the last man in front of the defence most of the time.

Lampard’s new 4-2-3-1 system could be an attempt to solve that issue, along with the obvious plan to use Kai Havertz as a number 10.

 

[Strike 7,217]

9 hours ago, Mana said:

We missed out on Thomas Partey. If we got him, we will be seriously challenging for the title.

Right now, I'm still not satisfied with our defense. Much better than last season's but something is missing.

We need someone to protect that back 4, and Kante sadly doesn't cut it anymore especially when he gets injured now and again.

Yeah, a midfielder who understands where to be to stop counters would have been handy but I am comfortable addressing this position with a younger player in 2021. 

[Vesper 28,786]

Lampard’s bloated Chelsea squad will test his man-management skills

https://theathletic.com/2118608/2020/10/07/chelsea-bloated-squad/

Two weeks ago, as Chelsea prepared to host Barnsley in the third round of the Carabao Cup, Frank Lampard acknowledged that the club’s spectacular spending had left plenty of unfinished business. “There are decisions for me to make, for the club to make and for the players themselves to make,” he said. “I have an idea of the number of players I want in the squad, so we have healthy competition but not many players feeling like they’re out of squads and not getting the minutes they want.”

Whatever number Lampard had in his head, you can be confident it wasn’t 31; that’s how many faces you see when you scroll through the men’s senior squad page on Chelsea’s official website. The list includes Baba Rahman, Victor Moses, Jake Clarke-Salter, Danny Drinkwater and Charly Musonda, who aren’t even in the first-team training bubble at Cobham. Homes may yet be found for some of them before the EFL transfer deadline on October 16.

More problematically, however, the list also includes Marcos Alonso, Emerson Palmieri and Antonio Rudiger — established first-team players on significant wages that Lampard has made clear are peripheral to his plans.

Monday’s transfer deadline did not provide much in the way of resolution. Ruben Loftus-Cheek eased the midfield logjam by joining Fulham on loan after Chelsea had agreed to break with club policy by covering a portion of his wages for the duration of the deal, in recognition of his urgent need to play regular football. In other loan negotiations, Marina Granovskaia was not so accommodating; Juventus and Inter decided the finances didn’t make sense to take Emerson and Alonso respectively, while all parties involved were uncomfortable with the idea of Rudiger joining bitter rivals Tottenham Hotspur.

Understandably, Chelsea don’t want to set the precedent of paying their surplus players to play for other teams, or to compromise on the loan fees that have proved a valuable source of revenue in recent years. Nor were they the only top Premier League club to have significant trouble offloading unwanted high-earners in a market distorted by the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Look across the traditional “big six” and the list of sales in that bracket consists of Chris Smalling to Roma and Dejan Lovren to Zenit Saint Petersburg.

The only offer of a significant transfer windfall that Chelsea received in this window was an unwelcome one, as Bayern Munich renewed their public pursuit of Callum Hudson-Odoi. But even the European champions’ latest proposal only consisted of an option, not an obligation, to make the 19-year-old’s loan switch a permanent move. In any case, he was never among the names Lampard was inclined to let go.

Granovskaia never sells cheap, and her unwavering commitment to this principle has served Chelsea extremely well over the past decade. But her reluctance to loan cheap — even in the exceptional conditions of this market — has left Lampard with a squad situation that is at best tedious to navigate and at worst hazardous.

The continued presence of Alonso and Emerson has left Chelsea with three senior left-backs and club captain Cesar Azpilicueta, a right-back, might actually be second-choice to Ben Chilwell for the position. Rudiger’s determination to fight for his place, coupled with Fikayo Tomori’s decision to turn down an 11th-hour loan offer from West Ham United, means Lampard has five first-team centre-backs vying for what will, in most games, be two starting spots. The lack of interest around Europe in rehabilitating Kepa Arrizabalaga’s battered reputation also guarantees Chelsea will have three established goalkeepers at least until January.

Every manager wants squad depth, and Lampard will particularly appreciate the variety of options at his disposal after a 2019-20 campaign in which injuries crippled Chelsea at times. With the fixture schedule more congested than ever as football looks to make up time lost due to the pandemic shutdown, every club is likely to suffer more squad disruption. COVID-19 positives are going to add to the danger of conventional injuries.

But even accounting for the unique challenges of football’s new reality, Lampard simply doesn’t have enough minutes to offer all of these players who, at least in their own minds, are all worthy of significant roles. Chelsea are already out of the Carabao Cup and, given the raised expectations generated by the club’s huge recruitment drive, Premier League and Champions League games are unlikely to provide many opportunities for wholesale change to whatever the manager settles upon as his trusted best XI.

Rudiger has a long way to go to force his way into that particular side. It would have been much easier in a political sense for Lampard to let Tomori join Everton on loan weeks ago, but he is adamant that the academy graduate is simply a better player and therefore more useful to him. Having been omitted from every squad since the opening day of the season — a season leading into a European Championship he is desperate to play in — Rudiger is well aware of where he stands in the manager’s thinking. Yet he remains.

Kepa’s outlook is arguably even bleaker. Lampard no longer needs to pick Willy Caballero to underline his loss of trust in Chelsea’s record signing. The goalkeeper performance bar was set so low in 2019-20 that things will need to go seriously wrong with Edouard Mendy on the pitch for him to lose his place. “It’s maybe not the dream situation,” the Spaniard said this week. “We have to experience things like this. I am confident to turn the situation around. When I have the opportunity to play I will try to do the best possible.”

Dressing room resentment at selection decisions is nothing new. No head coach is universally popular with his squad. The group always includes players the manager consistently disappoints or, worse, freezes out. Lampard managed his squad skilfully last season to empower and establish a vibrant group of talented academy graduates without alienating Chelsea’s more senior professionals.

That successful balancing act indicates he is capable of meeting this challenge too, particularly since January 1 is less than three months away. But between building on the good aspects of last season and bedding in a raft of expensive new signings while attempting to build a coherent team that wins at a higher rate on the pitch, it is a challenge he could have done without.

Chelsea’s first-team squad

Goalkeepers: Kepa Arrizabalaga, Willy Caballero, Edouard Mendy, Nathan Baxter.

Defenders: Antonio Rudiger, Marcos Alonso, Andreas Christensen, Thiago Silva, Fikayo Tomori, Kurt Zouma, Ben Chilwell, Reece James, Cesar Azpilicueta, Emerson Palmieri, Jake Clarke-Salter, Baba Rahman, Victor Moses.

Midfielders: Jorginho, N’Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic, Mason Mount, Hakim Ziyech, Billy Gilmour, Kai Havertz, Danny Drinkwater.

Forwards: Tammy Abraham, Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner, Olivier Giroud, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Charly Musonda.

 

remove the red, it's 25 players

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

 

[1chelsea 864]

 

Nailed it[emoji119][emoji122][emoji122][emoji122]

[Vesper 28,786]

LAMPARD DETAILS HIS APPROACH TO SQUAD MANAGEMENT

https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/2020/10/10/lampard-details-his-approach-to-squad-management?cardIndex=0-0

In modern football, perhaps the most challenging aspect of a head coach’s job is managing a group of highly-motivated and ambitious professionals when you can only pick 11 of them to start each game, and Frank Lampard has been explaining how he approaches that particular aspect of his role as Chelsea boss.

snip

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

What is Chelsea’s best midfield?

https://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2020/10/13/21511338/what-is-chelseas-best-midfield

 

[kellzfresh 7,229]

 

[lucio 5,418]

Time to be thinking about a replacement 

[ZaynChelsea 423]

SORT THE FUCKING DEFENCE OUT!!! FFS

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

7 minutes ago, ZaynChelsea said:

SORT THE FUCKING DEFENCE OUT!!! FFS

We will never have solid defense with him.

[Jase 43,479]

63 goals conceded in 43 Premier League games.

[ZaynChelsea 423]

Simeone? People will start hating but he will surely sort out the defence and strengthen our counters.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Lampard should take a hard look at himself. Playing pulisic on the right wing and Mount on the left, so our two wingers were not in their strong positions.

We never controlled the game throughout the second half. How does he keep setting up Chelsea to be dominated by smaller sides?

[Milan 17,853]

While we can produce some exciting and sexy stuff up front finally, that defence is just a joke, and he fucking picks the worst players to save his ass. Good luck with that...

[Atomiswave 6,072]

6 minutes ago, ZaynChelsea said:

Simeone? People will start hating but he will surely sort out the defence and strengthen our counters.

He would make an instant impact, so would Poch imo. But people will say Poch never won anything, they will say Simeone is shithousery footy. All I know is anyone other than FL and he would have been roasted

[Magic Lamps 11,653]

We would ruin it all by sacking him now. And it will not happen anyway.

Lampard will get his 3 years i suppose no matter what the fans say.

I dont want allegri or simeone or other super defensive coaches. we are heading in the right direction. scoring enough goals. Poch I dont know. could maybe work. is not a winner tho.