ozboy

There's a lot of different aspects to managing. Lampard clearly does some parts of the job well, assisted by abramovitch and that is getting quality players to the club. Havertz and Werner were pretty good scores by any standard. Equally he's brought young players through in a way no coach has since at least going back to Raneri (as far back as I easily recall) Those are things to do with personality as opposed to the actual science and art of winning matches. Its crystal crystal clear that the defence has been crap from the start of last season to last week. Despite that

Good post

All I know is that who ever is responsible for the problem so far, its Frank's job to fix it. If we keep letting in 2-3 goals every game Frank will be gone. 2. Last seasons's results bought him some time, but look what happened to Ancelotti. 3. The defensive system is not very good. Its just been chopped and changed too often. That was bad enough last season but its not this one. The positional play in transition to defence is not good enough and that's because we over commit in attack. 4. I keep coming back to the subs bench against Southampton. No midfielders but two wingers

I would play Rudigier in goal if mendy is unfit. At least he can use his hands and arms properly then and won’t pull out of a tackle. I also think it is beyond stupid putting ziyech, Abraham, Giroud and cho on the bench but leaving Kovacic out. I thought lampard was supposed to be intelligent. I just don’t understand how that can be rational. I hope a more balanced apporoach is used in this game. If Silva is fit let’s play him. There is a case to play Reece James at right back despite his defensive issues but I’d prefer us to stick with a steady back 4.

Even live you could see the big gaps between the lines in transition. Lots of teams have defensive gaps in transition. Many goals come from transition. still our formation has 4 out and out attackers, and that’s arguably one too many. If we do play that formation Kante and Jorginho need to hang back more and patrol the centre. such a crap game. I do think a few of our guys were tired. Jorginho and Kante played a lot of minutes in the two internationals. The subs made us worse in that game. Ziyech trying too hard gave the ball away every time.and James giving away free kick.

Zouma was good tonight bar that one error. Our best defender.

Zouma error for their second but a better keeper would have bailed him out. Pretty gutless by kepa.

It’s a shocker. Lucky we have great forwards. But why put two wingers and a striker in the subs. Ridiculous.

A number of player look a bit tired. Havertz is still adjusting. Werner looks great as does Chilwell Kanye’s passing is off.

No midfielder in the subs unless you count James.

Maybe there is more to the Silva thing than the long plane flight. I used to go on business pretty much every year to the uk from Sydney and the jet lag is harder than you think. It’s notionall harder going west than East but it builds up. And he may have niggles. On paper this should be easy but a lot of the team have had a tough international week

So who is on the injured list for this one?

I don’t think Germany have another game this week do they? Kante and Kovacic will have had a couple of hard games.

Tomori probably should have taken the deal and got the premier league experience which he needs. He is a good player but has errors, including positional errors in him. More experience would be helpful and there would be less pressure. Rudigier should be sold in my view, not enough technique either with or without the ball.

As things stand we have 3 spare centre backs that are all pretty much equally good or bad Christenson, Rudigier and Tomori. None have established themselves in the first team. All are probably too good for the Championship, their only remaining destination this window. Not sure what happened to Moses, guess he will stay on loan at Inter. Not sure why anyone thought Jorginho was going. He is likely to be regular starter.