DukesOfHazard

Give the lad a chance he’s not played for 2 months !!

Geez people, Tomori has just come back into the squad, chill with the hate so far.
Shaky start though for us.

Why people saying it's 5 at the back and defensive, it's no such thing. It's 3 at the back with 2 win backs that attack when we are in possession and sit deeper when we dont, it's an attacking formation more than defensive. 

Love to see Fikayo starting.

That's it, we need to actually give a manager time to build a team or we have a group of players who are all suited to a different style of football and the merry go round of managers continue as they struggle to create a team that works for them.
The benefits are there to be seen in Jose's first stint, that team pretty much got us through a decade or the spine of it at least. Then if you have a squad suited to a style of play you simply hire managers who play that way.

If we go with your theory and say its the system, that means Frank is to blame and he needs to change, or we need to change him.
But what if we just for once not change the manager, and allow them to do a crazy thing and build a team of his own and give him time and more time to build something long term ?
 

Same as what Liverpool/City did, stop sacking managers and start backing them.

Forgetting for a moment or three, Frank's status as a Chelsea legend: this season we have a young, massively inexperienced manager in the first post-Eden Hazard era season, coinciding with Kante"s disconcerting drop in form, after effects of the transfer ban - which for various reasons were not addressed last month; crucial injuries to an already thin,  lightweight squad. All that without the f**kwittery that is VAR, and the season is clearly not the massive underachievement that some of you would have it.
On the plus side, we've seen more academy players make the transition to the first time since... well ever. And we've seen some genuinely exciting, entertaining foorball. So what do we do? Write off Frank Lampard as not up to the job? Bring yet another manager aiming for instant success?
Or do we wait for the end of this season, make serious inroads into the transfer market, giving Frank full backing, giving him the time and opportunity to gain experience, to learn from his mistakes, continue to integrate academy players whenever possible. In short to do things differently - to do things the way many of us have been crying out for, applying a long term strategy, rather than the short term panic buying and revolving door management policy that has invariably accompanied demands for instant success.
It's a no-brainer really, don't you think?

Think this sort of hits the nail on the head.
All of the mistakes we can see Lampard making were to be expected, after all he is a young inexperienced coach and we all knew this. However being 4th is probably still exceeding expectations at the start of the season, they've only grown in stature because of our good run and Arsenal, Utd and Spurs shortcomings.
The most disapointing part for me is the boards failure to sign a goalscorer, as much as the defence is wobbly and conceding we are still making chances but since Tammy has gone cold we have no one to put them away and this is killing us. The Leicester game was a prime example, the amount of quality balls into the box from James in particualr warranted a goal but we have no one to finish it, had we had a Droga or Costa still we'd be walking out of that with a 3-2 win even with defencve frailties and we'd have picked up antother what 3+ points just from having someone capaple of scoring other than Tammy.

Some good points in here. For me I think we have the striker to lead the line. That is Giroud. He led the line well and critically bought others in when he came on. He needs to play. 
I think we're overachieving and what Frank has done with Tammy, Mount (who was great last night) and James is top notch. That said we still feel naive defensively. He needs to sort that quick smart. 

Think this sort of hits the nail on the head.
All of the mistakes we can see Lampard making were to be expected, after all he is a young inexperienced coach and we all knew this. However being 4th is probably still exceeding expectations at the start of the season, they've only grown in stature because of our good run and Arsenal, Utd and Spurs shortcomings.
The most disapointing part for me is the boards failure to sign a goalscorer, as much as the defence is wobbly and conceding we are still making chances but since Tammy has gone cold we have no one to put them away and this is killing us. The Leicester game was a prime example, the amount of quality balls into the box from James in particualr warranted a goal but we have no one to finish it, had we had a Droga or Costa still we'd be walking out of that with a 3-2 win even with defencve frailties and we'd have picked up antother what 3+ points just from having someone capaple of scoring other than Tammy.

Agreed. When got off to an indifferent start I thought midtable was likely. But that purple patch in Autumn raised some expectations. I think now we are gradually settling into the position where I thought we would be. If we do make top 4 at this point it will probably be down to the averageness of other teams, as much as anything. We have a limited squad with some talented youth, and an inexperienced management team. To expect much more would be unrealistic

Lampard is overachieving so far.
His main striker is a 22 year old from the academy.
His main wingers are a 21 year old Pulisic that is injury prone and a 31 year old Willian that never scored loads in any season.
His main midfield player is a 21 year old Mount from the academy.
His captain is 30 year old Azpilicueta playing Left Back since we have no other option.
The fact that we are still top 4 is massive.

Conte would just bitch and moan because he didn't get the players he wanted. He would have us sit back every game and take a cowardly defeat like he did against City rather than show faith in the players he has and tell them to give it a go. Conte is one of the last coaches I would want in charge of this group right now, he would suck the life out of them.

Don't actually mind if he's out, if we start Giroud.....the number of quality balls James put in against Leicester with no one on the end of any was frustrating. At the very least Grioud could knock it down for any one making runs into the box.

Agreed. He must be hoping James/CHO can cause enough issues down the right to break them down as it doesn't look as if that will come through the centre.

I’ve just read another article saying our interest has cooled and Spurs are in the front seat, fingers crossed!

Your guess....so you haven't actually watched these games which makes me wonder how you've come to this conclusion.

No Jorginho! Not sure if I’m keen on this set up. 

I know there i a long way to go but you get help but get giddy at where we are sitting.

Throw in the fact we've got here without are best defender and midfield .
Oh and Ruben missing too!

If CHO and Mount both sign new deals i think its actually been a good summer all things considered.
Morata money will add to the Hazard money next summer and hopefully Frank/Petr will have clear targets in mind and any other deadwood will have been sold off and young guns filling their squad roles.
I'm very excited for the season to kick and Wednesday to see who Frank starts with after 5 days with the team.

On paper not that great but my god what a night that 11 gave us!!

I think you’re being harsh, he had a very good season at Derby & derby fans are desperate to keep him and Jody from what I’ve seen. His first year in management; he’s lowered the average age of the team by about 3 years, integrated the youth, improved the style of play massively, all the while not letting the results slip either & they’ve just fallen at the last hurdle in the playoff final, in large part to a goalkeeping howler. 
 
Is it too soon? I think so, but it doesn’t take away from the job he’s done this year.

To be honest, serving the ban this year is beginning to grow on me.
Maybe we could use this summer to have a huge reshuffle behind the scenes, we seem to have started already with Cech. Once all of that is done, we can plan ahead and scout targets etc for next year.
Theres young players returning from loan, maybe give one or two players a go? They will feel like new additions.
We can take the ban now and turn it into our favour.
The only thing is Sarri. He seems to be on thin ice, despite achieving good results.

This is basically what I have been saying for a few years now. People say he isn't at Terry, Lampard and Drogba's level, but they don't seem to take into consideration that all of these players played together, Hazard hasn't had that kind of luck. Whenever this topic get's bought up, I always say the same thing, if Lampard wasn't there to score the vital goal, it was Drogba, if it's not Drogba or Lampard, it's Terry, Cole, Robben, Duff, Essien, etc, etc. There was always somebody else to fill in when one of these players couldn't. Hazard will perform in a big game, then when he doesn't do it again in the next big game and we end up losing, people criticise him and say he doesn't step up in the big games, well all of the players I mentioned above were the same, they didn't turn up to every big game, and they relied on others around them to get us through. Drogba is probably an exception though, he lived for the biggest games, sometimes a bit too much because he often didn't turn up against weaker teams.
If Hazard got to play with the level of Chelsea players we had back then, nobody would be talking about his big game record. Even without them, his big game record is very good, especially in domestic competitions.