Frank showed why he is considered to be a really smart person. It was obvious that our 4-3-3 doesn't really work as well and he after already changing the role of Jorginho in the squad found a solution, instead of switching back to 4-2-3-1 he kept the formation but requested for Mount to come instead of Jorginho and offer that attacking presence and simply more options in the final third that we have been lacking with Kante-Jorginho-Kovacic. It paid off, Mount scored the winning goal.

Lampard is way too good to be true, he's brilliant. Sadly this also could mean that Jorginho will not have a place in our squad anymore, I'm starting to think we will sell Jorginho in the summer and go all in for Milinkovic-Savic.

Edited December 4, 20196 yr by Gol15

13 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Frank showed why he is considered to be a really smart person. It was obvious that our 4-3-3 doesn't really work as well and he after already changing the role of Jorginho in the squad found a solution, instead of switching back to 4-2-3-1 he kept the formation but requested for Mount to come instead of Jorginho and offer that attacking presence and simply more options in the final third that we have been lacking with Kante-Jorginho-Kovacic. It paid off, Mount scored the winning goal.

Lampard is way too good to be true, he's brilliant. Sadly this also could mean that Jorginho will not have a place in our squad anymore, I'm starting to think we will sell Jorginho in the summer and go all in for Milinkovic-Savic.

Bit premature, he has only dropped him for 1 game all season. 

 

9 hours ago, big blue said:

Bit premature, he has only dropped him for 1 game all season. 

 

The only player I can see exiting for MS is Kante. Jorginho isn't going anywhere. 

Kante isn’t going anywhere.

1 minute ago, dansubrosa said:

Kante isn’t going anywhere.

I agree. But if we buy savic, I can only see a home for him if kante goes. We'd get big money for him and savic would offer the things in our team we need kante to improve on. Jorginho can be a rotational player, kante just can't. 

4 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

I agree. But if we buy savic, I can only see a home for him if kante goes. We'd get big money for him and savic would offer the things in our team we need kante to improve on. Jorginho can be a rotational player, kante just can't. 

Surely the most important factor is that our defence is a problem and it becomes less of a problem when Kante sits in front in a two. Jorginho isn't so good at this and lacks a bit of energy by comparison. We'll see how Frank views this against Everton but the loss of Jorginho's distributional skills are offset by Kovacic's passing ability and short forward runs. It's a tough call because Jorge has become a leader and adds a bit of aggression, but if dropping him means we bolster the defence and free up Mount to attack a bit more he may have to be used against the weaker teams. Maybe Frank can use him in other ways, maybe he can learn from Kante but I'm not agreeing we should sell him. We need quality players in the squad.

 

1 hour ago, Andy North said:

Surely the most important factor is that our defence is a problem and it becomes less of a problem when Kante sits in front in a two. Jorginho isn't so good at this and lacks a bit of energy by comparison. We'll see how Frank views this against Everton but the loss of Jorginho's distributional skills are offset by Kovacic's passing ability and short forward runs. It's a tough call because Jorge has become a leader and adds a bit of aggression, but if dropping him means we bolster the defence and free up Mount to attack a bit more he may have to be used against the weaker teams. Maybe Frank can use him in other ways, maybe he can learn from Kante but I'm not agreeing we should sell him. We need quality players in the squad.

With kovacic and MS, our defence would be screened AND we'd have a more potent attacking threat AND we'd have someone who is tall enough to actually defend corners. 

With kante we just have the former. 

It's not a popular opinion I agree, maybe not even one I fully think. Is kovacic and savic better than kovacic and Kante. Is Kante and savic the solution? We'd have to sell someone out of those 3 if we buy savic. 

No problem if we bench Jorginho for Kante and Kovacic yet lets make sure they get someone else to be a penalty taker.

36 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

With kovacic and MS, our defence would be screened AND we'd have a more potent attacking threat AND we'd have someone who is tall enough to actually defend corners. 

With kante we just have the former. 

It's not a popular opinion I agree, maybe not even one I fully think. Is kovacic and savic better than kovacic and Kante. Is Kante and savic the solution? We'd have to sell someone out of those 3 if we buy savic. 

I don't see this. If we are to compete at the highest level we need top quality on the bench. City have this and Pep manages the situation well. I'd like to think Frank can do this also. Don't you?

The "war chest" allows us to buy when the ban ends.

If we are to buy I think we need to look for a new central defender. Maybe we should trigger Koulibaly's release clause at £150m. (I'd like to get Ampadu back immediately but that's another story)

Just had a look back to last season, after 15 games - 4th position and where are we now, 4th position.

The difference for me is the better style of football.

2 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

Just had a look back to last season, after 15 games - 4th position and where are we now, 4th position.

The difference for me is the better style of football.

what about goals for/against comparison after 15 games ?

8 minutes ago, coco said:

what about goals for/against comparison after 15 games ?

Using a manual count:

Sarri :

For 30 Against 14

Lampard: 

For 30 Against 21

 

14 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

Using a manual count:

Sarri :

For 30 Against 14

Lampard: 

For 30 Against 21

 

Sarri had ten goals against in two matches after 15 games bournemouth and city away in jan/feb .....so i expect Frank to catch back up on that.

We definitely play a much better style of football and having a refreshed squad with players like Tammy, Tomori, James etc just gives us a better connection to the team. What a shame Eden didn't give it one more season, he would have thrived even more in our current squad.

I think we will just get better and better the more experience we gain. Apart from the West Ham game where we were poor, I feel we deserved more when we played City and Liverpool in the season.

Edited December 5, 20196 yr by Malcolm9

13 hours ago, Gol15 said:

Sadly this also could mean that Jorginho will not have a place in our squad anymore, I'm starting to think we will sell Jorginho in the summer and go all in for Milinkovic-Savic.

Or we have a squad where we can pick several differing midfield combinations depending on who we are playing etc. Not picking someone for one game = selling him is an incredibly ridiculous logic.

I guess if we look back under Sarri it was like painting by numbers meets football by numbers with all the passing around side to side and maintaining pace between lines of players. Effective yet somewhat monotonous.

Now we see the dribbles not just of Hazard yet more players like Kovacic, Willian and Pulisic and even Kante's wonder strike against Liverpool, don't think any of that would have happened under Sarri except allowing Hazard to do it.

That is the difference for me and why we are more open defensively.

An interesting stat would be to compare average possession positions between the seasons of play. I would expect us to have more possession in the opposition half under Lampard.

Edited December 5, 20196 yr by strider6004

I was wondering why we would setup at home against inferior opponent in a straightforward 4-3-3 formation. Frank switched it second half and we really kicked into gear. Learning process I guess.

I have no fear over Jorginho. Still one of our main players. We just have more options now. With Ruben coming back we have a Hybrid of Mount and Kovacic in him. He has Mount's hunger for goals and Kovacic's penetrating skills.

As said before I really hope we do much of the learning this season. This means we we lose in a stupid way, young players go into slump and we see the frailties in our game. As soon as we buy top class players we are No longer allowed to do that.

Really poor reacting today from Frank. Should have done changes at HT. Reacted too late. And taking Reece James off instead of Azpi for instance was quite strange as well.

Needs to get Jorginho, Tomori and Rudiger back in the team. I have no idea why the first two have been benched all of a sudden.
Azpi is also shot and need to be replaced by Emerson until we find a better leftback.

Frank a little unlucky with the subs today, brings in Bats and takes off James to go 3 at the back and then we get the Kepa and Zouma horror show.

Not the kind of thing you can plan for. 

Now that we have a pretty much full strength team (minus Rudiger and Loftus-Cheek) Lampard seems to be struggling to fit them all in. It feels like all of this rotation is doing more harm than good. We were poor defensively, but we were winning, I'm wondering if all of this rotation has messed up the balance a bit. Mount, Kante, Jorginho, Tomori, Christensen, Emerson, James, all of these players have been in and out of the team of late and I'm wondering if it's knocked us out of our flow.

37 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

Frank a little unlucky with the subs today, brings in Bats and takes off James to go 3 at the back and then we get the Kepa and Zouma horror show.

Not the kind of thing you can plan for. 

also there was a clear change in tactics with willian beind instructed to go wide to create space for our mid fielders to run in.. while in the first half willian was tucking in so RJ could overlap.. but we conceeded very early.. which all started with a poor ball from Azpi that practically sold out his entire team... very irritated by the defensive errors today..  these are all seasoned pro's but failure to jump for the ball.. unexcusable.. 

1 hour ago, Sindre said:

Needs to get Jorginho, Tomori and Rudiger back in the team. I have no idea why the first two have been benched all of a sudden.
Azpi is also shot and need to be replaced by Emerson until we find a better leftback.

 

Tomori, Jorginho and Emerson had all clearly dipped in form. Frank was right to give Christensen a chance. He just hasn't taken it.

 

Jorginho? We could go with a 3 in midfield and leave out Mount, but Jorginho was dropped for the first time against Villa, and we actually performed really well in that game, and Mount especially, and in the previous game where Jorginho was suspended, against Palace, we performed really well.

 

I don't blame Frank one little bit for the starting line-up and he can't legislate for the goals we conceded, which were comical. Everton were really up for it today and we couldn't afford to gift them goals like that.

3 minutes ago, Davey Baby said:

 

Tomori, Jorginho and Emerson had all clearly dipped in form. Frank was right to give Christensen a chance. He just hasn't taken it.

 

Jorginho? We could go with a 3 in midfield and leave out Mount, but Jorginho was dropped for the first time against Villa, and we actually performed really well in that game, and Mount especially, and in the previous game where Jorginho was suspended, against Palace, we performed really well.

 

I don't blame Frank one little bit for the starting line-up and he can't legislate for the goals we conceded, which were comical. Everton were really up for it today and we couldn't afford to gift them goals like that.

Fair points though don't think with the front players we have enough to just play with three attackers, now if we bought or 'borrowed' Bale that would change IMO.

It doesn't matter how we set up the defence, Kepa or the defenders can f**k it up anyway. A Zouma scoop, Christensen missing the header against someone much shorter and then Zouma fumble and fail to clear to concede a goal is not something the manager can legislate for.

I think we need to play suicide football and the best scoring team wins, it will all change if we buy the right players and when Rudiger comes back but with what we have now going into the new few games there is no real solution.