19 hours ago, PloKoon13 said:

One thing I noticed about the first few minutes of the City game was us pressing their defence as far forward as the opposition penalty box. No wonder the players are all knackered!

Had some flashbacks of the 6-0 under Sarri watching that... particularly when we went 3-0 down after about half an hour. 

The thing I noticed at the same time was that they were pressing us right back in our own penalty area, but doing it at a sprint every time.  I said to the cat at the time, they won't be able to keep that up for long, but it turns out they didn't need to.

1 hour ago, dkw said:

Now show one of the million clips where we pass the ball around between the back 4 for 15 minutes while Sarri managed us, Anyone can pick out clips of youtube to make something look good, thats just pathetic cherry picking.

From that google-meister?  Surely not.

8 hours ago, dansubrosa said:

Think midfield is our biggest problem, something has to change. I really grimaced at a picture I saw earlier today, we had 3/4 players pressing a City player in possession. That’s ridiculous, literally takes the whole midfield out of game.

Hopefully Frank sees it and change our pressing. We can’t keep doing that.

This one?

I very much agree with you. Not sure if it's Kante forgetting that he can't go ball-chasing as the CDM or if it's instructions from the manager but i can't quite believe it's the latter as that would be quite amateurish.

We have Morecambe and Fulham games to get our sh*t together. After these games we have daunting task of going to Leicester and face Wolves at home. If we don't take 9 points from next 3 games in the league, Frank should be in deep trouble. 

37 minutes ago, Sindre said:

This one?

I very much agree with you. Not sure if it's Kante forgetting that he can't go ball-chasing as the CDM or if it's instructions from the manager but i can't quite believe it's the latter as that would be quite amateurish.

Yeah, that’s kind of indefensible really. If we continue to play like that, the doubts will really start to creep in sadly.

Come on Frank, sort it out.

3 hours ago, dkw said:

Now show one of the million clips where we pass the ball around between the back 4 for 15 minutes while Sarri managed us, Anyone can pick out clips of youtube to make something look good, thats just pathetic cherry picking.

The point is that Sarri managed to make us move off the ball more in due time, half a season he was complaining that the squad isn't doing the basics right but eventually he made it work, once we scored the first goal we were most likely winning the game while nowadays you get more scared if we score first since we don't really play possession football we play reactionary football and allow the opposition to come back into the game.

Lampard inherited Sarri's system and used it last season, only to abandon it this season and to rely on Kante's sideways passes that always end with Chilwell or James putting up a cross which is more like Klopp relying on Arnold and Robertson to put up a cross (both had the most assists for Liverpool last season) so no wonder Robertson has 5 assists this season while Chilwell has 4. Stop cherry picking then and see the full picture, for once.

2 hours ago, bisright1 said:

I mean, it's just not. That's complete and utter nonsense. Lampard is - if I give him any credit - trying to copy Klopps style of pressing and crossing. 

Sarri style was fast build up play and look for through balls. It was boring because he was developing the style, the players were adapting from counter attacking football and so at a base level it just looked like possession for possessions sake. But it was never about spamming crosses. No one being genuous could say that. 

Lampard may be in a period where the players are adapting to his style. But it's not the same as Sarri ball. 

 

Kante has made 0 through balls last season and this season as well he's yet to make a single through ball, talk about sideways passing and 0 movement. You can't win with a lone DM that can't pass it.

1 minute ago, Gol15 said:

Kante has made 0 through balls last season and this season as well he's yet to make a single through ball, talk about sideways passing and 0 movement. You can't win with a lone DM that can't pass it.

And we can't rely on Kante for creativity... 

57 minutes ago, Sindre said:

This one?

I very much agree with you. Not sure if it's Kante forgetting that he can't go ball-chasing as the CDM or if it's instructions from the manager but i can't quite believe it's the latter as that would be quite amateurish.

That looks a under 10 team being coach by a dad who just wants to get out of the house for a few hours. That’s absolutely horrific tactically and shows some disconnection going on at the training ground.

3 hours ago, Brutos said:

That’s Frank ball which is why we are struggling to get shots on target

you can try and spin it as much as you like

You may go on as much as you want against Frank, but in this case, you’re totally out of it. We are going back to those months under Sarri when we kept passing the ball side to side and then backwards. You may not want to accept that you’re wrong here, but that was Sarri for most of the season (and I was defending him back then because I thought that the idea was good and we were just adapting to play the style). We have certainly played better football with Frank, but we’ve reverted to Sarri’s season.

1 minute ago, RMH said:

You may go on as much as you want against Frank, but in this case, you’re totally out of it. We are going back to those months under Sarri when we kept passing the ball side to side and then backwards. You may not want to accept that you’re wrong here, but that was Sarri for most of the season (and I was defending him back then because I thought that the idea was good and we were just adapting to play the style). We have certainly played better football with Frank, but we’ve reverted to Sarri’s season.

If anything Sarri instructed the players to not put up many crosses at all, we were far less direct because if the cross is bad the opposition can punish us, we really were a possession-based team.

That's not what we are now at all, we haven't reverted to that style at all, we are putting the most amount of crosses that we have done in the previous few years this season, we are almost at the top when it comes to crosses, the total opposite of how Sarri instructed the team to play.

3 hours ago, bisright1 said:

I mean, it's just not. That's complete and utter nonsense. Lampard is - if I give him any credit - trying to copy Klopps style of pressing and crossing. 

Sarri style was fast build up play and look for through balls. It was boring because he was developing the style, the players were adapting from counter attacking football and so at a base level it just looked like possession for possessions sake. But it was never about spamming crosses. No one being genuous could say that. 

Lampard may be in a period where the players are adapting to his style. But it's not the same as Sarri ball. 

 

I never said it was the same as Sarri ball, and the fast build up might have been Sarri`s aim but we rarely, if ever saw that during his tenure. The overwhelming majority of the play when Sarri was coach was slow passing around the backline, then a wall pass to Jorginho, then more tedious passing around the back.

1 hour ago, Sindre said:

This one?

I very much agree with you. Not sure if it's Kante forgetting that he can't go ball-chasing as the CDM or if it's instructions from the manager but i can't quite believe it's the latter as that would be quite amateurish.

Kante naturally goes forward, Kovacic expects Kante to cover for the space he left and Kante maybe expects the same in return.

Not the first time I see Kante totally leaving his position for his own natural role that he has been doing for his whole career, adding that he doesn't organize the team I think that we suffer by having him at the base of the midfield overall and specially against a decent team.

Having a few tackles and interceptions per game is still him being average at best when you consider how far from being the best player of the league he is right now compared to how he was a couple of years ago... He's 29, his last year in his prime but he doesn't look like he's in his prime, meaning that his experience doesn't really help him.

I blame Conte for selling Matic for Bakayoko, we need a real DM that can hold to the ball and pass, for some reason Lampard tried almost everything but putting Kovacic in front of the backline, I doubt that he would do worse than Kante there.

I dont think we can complain too much about 'sarriball' while at the same time defend the way are playing under lampard. 

There were some awful performances under sarri, and some really boring games, but he had a very short preseason, didnt really get the backing needed to change the system entirely, and he only had 12 months here. We wctually finished the season pretty strongly, and the football we played in the Europa League final was fantastic. I think with 200 odd million and a couple of seasons here, we wouldve been an excellent side. 

Now Lampard has done a great job at steadying the ship, and bringing through the young players, but he has 6 signings in his starting 11, so the pressure is going to mount on him when results and performances have been as bad as they have recently. 

Hopefully he turns it around enough to keep his job and be backed further now and in the summer, otherwise like Sarri, we will never see his ideas really come to fruition. 

18 minutes ago, dkw said:

I never said it was the same as Sarri ball, and the fast build up might have been Sarri`s aim but we rarely, if ever saw that during his tenure. The overwhelming majority of the play when Sarri was coach was slow passing around the backline, then a wall pass to Jorginho, then more tedious passing around the back.

We didn't see it, it was slowly coming out but we had some prime Donna's that needed moving on and new signings in Sarris mould to make it more effective. 

Lampard doesn't have quite the same issue, he is in his second year and had a transfer window where he got everyone he wanted. What he seems to be doing though is not aiming for Sarris style (which is what we want but haven't seen) or a strong counter attacking team that defends well (a style we have won with before) but a poor version of klopps liverpool. If he can make that style work better, great. But I'm not that optimistic right now. 

 

28 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

If anything Sarri instructed the players to not put up many crosses at all, we were far less direct because if the cross is bad the opposition can punish us, we really were a possession-based team.

That's not what we are now at all, we haven't reverted to that style at all, we are putting the most amount of crosses that we have done in the previous few years this season, we are almost at the top when it comes to crosses, the total opposite of how Sarri instructed the team to play.

I give you that, with Sarri it was all about not losing the ball and pass it sideways if there was no other option, which is what we ended up doing for 90 minutes. Now, players are instructed to go for it and the fact that we end up crossing is because the only options of going forward we have at the moment is with the FBs as the midfield is just not quick enough (probably due to lack of energy as a result of the amount of games played per week). So when we try through the middle we end passing it sideways and back to defenders, who then go to the FBs that charge forward to put in a cross. What I meant is that we are completely lost trying to go through the middle so we pass the ball sideways and back to defenders a lot.

12 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

We didn't see it, it was slowly coming out but we had some prime Donna's that needed moving on and new signings in Sarris mould to make it more effective. 

Lampard doesn't have quite the same issue, he is in his second year and had a transfer window where he got everyone he wanted. What he seems to be doing though is not aiming for Sarris style (which is what we want but haven't seen) or a strong counter attacking team that defends well (a style we have won with before) but a poor version of klopps liverpool. If he can make that style work better, great. But I'm not that optimistic right now. 

So your claiming Lampard didnt have any issues from when he took over, really? Come on, hes had quite possibly the most difficult 2 seasons in the history of top flight football in this country, possibly other than the Wars. The entirety of his tenure has been during difficult situations, from losing our best (and the leagues best) player, a transfer ban, integrating youth as we are all so desperate to see (and all said they would allow a few years of integrating youth, results don`t matter, don`t need trophies blah blah), all while being a massively inexperienced manager. The biggest mistake he has made is not having an experienced been their, done that coach with him, but even they would have never been through these problematic times.

 

Frankly if our fans cant give someone like Frank Lampard time to attempt to get out of this poor period, while he is attempting to integrate and build a young side into a cohesive unit in a period where its obvious that all managers are struggling to get a handle on it then our fans are never ever going to allow any manager to fail at any point in their career with us, and we will never have a sensible allowance for any manager to have time to build over time. We might as well just accept that we arent going to see youth integrated from now on, we arent going to have "a playing style/identity" and are just going to have to carry on shipping managers in and out whilst still (hopefully) winning trophies to satiate those impatient fans and owner.....good times.

 

I had a coach once tell me, and i`m paraphrasing, "you need to give someone time to fail, so you can see where those failures are so you can eliminate them through time and education"

Edited January 7, 20215 yr by dkw

13 minutes ago, big blue said:

I dont think we can complain too much about 'sarriball' while at the same time defend the way are playing under lampard. 

There were some awful performances under sarri, and some really boring games, but he had a very short preseason, didnt really get the backing needed to change the system entirely, and he only had 12 months here. We wctually finished the season pretty strongly, and the football we played in the Europa League final was fantastic. I think with 200 odd million and a couple of seasons here, we wouldve been an excellent side. 

Now Lampard has done a great job at steadying the ship, and bringing through the young players, but he has 6 signings in his starting 11, so the pressure is going to mount on him when results and performances have been as bad as they have recently. 

Hopefully he turns it around enough to keep his job and be backed further now and in the summer, otherwise like Sarri, we will never see his ideas really come to fruition. 

I don't think anyone is defending the way we are playing now, it is those who want Frank out that are defending the sh*t, boring football we mostly played under Sarri. As I said before, I defended Sarri and my god the amount of money I wasted going to games all season (and yes, I was at that City match at the Etihad as well), but I did defend him because I saw what he wanted to play and thought it was good to put up with the crap as the mean to an end. But he didn't want to stay, so bye bye and thanks for trying. Similarly, I see what Frank wants to do here and, even though now we are going through a bad spell of football, I want to stick with him as I don't think this is just down to him. The players are so lethargic that you can see in their faces that they have very little energy. Other teams have looked lost too this season, and others will get back to the slump. I like the idea of football that Frank has brought (play the youth, high intensity football, and more direct attacking football than Sarri) and, also, I don't want to go back to the merry-go-round of coaches. 

12 hours ago, Brutos said:

This leads me back to the coaching because if they are coached all week to pass and move and come match date the players don’t either the players can’t adapt, they are not getting it,  they aren’t good enough or the coaching staff aren’t up to it. 
Solution 1: Refresh the entire playing staff 

Solution 2: Refresh the entire coaching staff

 

One will have to give.

 

I could not agree more. The best teams are hiring coaches who know how they want their team to play, with organised plans and tactics. These coaches then look for available players who could fit into those schemes, buy them then practice, practice and practice. It means that when players are out injured, their replacements can step in and the team performs in generally the same way. Depending on the opposition, they may play a little more conservatively at times but the progressive fast moving, forward passing football will still be in play.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the Chelsea coaches (particularly the main person in training, Jody Morris) are skilled in this area. Instead Chelsea look to buy excellent individual players, and they do have some but there is no obvious playing structure to the team week in week out and instead we have a mishmash. For Chelsea to get a good result, the team need at least 3 or 4 of the very talented players (forwards) to play near their highest level. When they can't due to lack of confidence (Werner), tiredness, even playing in an unfamiliar position (Havertz), not getting regular outings (CHO) and picked for the wrong games (all Chelsea mainly did against City was to send in high crosses without Giroud playing) the rest of the team is not often good enough to get the goals the team needs to win as the defence is creaking against the better sides. This has certainly been shown in the last few weeks. When the crosses do come over there is often no more than two Chelsea players in the box. When other teams attack, they have many more racing in at pace. Does anyone really believe Kante, Mount, Kovacic or Jorginho are going to score more than the odd goal this season in free play? I have said this before, if Chelsea want to compete consistently at the top level, they need a coach who can combine all of the individual talents to work as a unit and that does not mean just trying to have more possession by passing sideways or backwards all the time. FL offers History and Enthusiasm, Jody Morris little else. I think back a couple of seasons ago to the match against Liverpool in the UEFA Super Cup where Chelsea were unlucky to lose on penalties. That night their football was exciting and dynamic but whatever they do now in training, it has all been lost. Of course Chelsea will win a few games against lower positioned teams this season and occasionally may even look quite good when individuals play well but unless significant changes to the coaching setup are made, I fear the last few weeks are going to be the norm. If FL does get replaced, he will regret not looking for a better coach to work alongside him.

46 minutes ago, dkw said:

So your claiming Lampard didnt have any issues from when he took over, really? Come on, hes had quite possibly the most difficult 2 seasons in the history of top flight football in this country, possibly other than the Wars. The entirety of his tenure has been during difficult situations, from losing our best (and the leagues best) player, a transfer ban, integrating youth as we are all so desperate to see (and all said they would allow a few years of integrating youth, results don`t matter, don`t need trophies blah blah), all while being a massively inexperienced manager. The biggest mistake he has made is not having an experienced been their, done that coach with him, but even they would have never been through these problematic times.

 

Frankly if our fans cant give someone like Frank Lampard time to attempt to get out of this poor period, while he is attempting to integrate and build a young side into a cohesive unit in a period where its obvious that all managers are struggling to get a handle on it then our fans are never ever going to allow any manager to fail at any point in their career with us, and we will never have a sensible allowance for any manager to have time to build over time. We might as well just accept that we arent going to see youth integrated from now on, we arent going to have "a playing style/identity" and are just going to have to carry on shipping managers in and out whilst still (hopefully) winning trophies to satiate those impatient fans and owner.....good times.

 

I had a coach once tell me, and i`m paraphrasing, "you need to give someone time to fail, so you can see where those failures are so you can eliminate them through time and education"

I'm not claiming that at all and I don't think he should be sacked. 

I would give frank to the end of the season and in that time he needs to show that he has a plan and that he knows what he is doing. 

I don't think he does. I don't get the feeling he is studying the game as much as other managers. I agree with your coach though and he needs more time to prove me wrong or right. 

I think he had issues and challenges, and overcame them. I think he's the best man manager we've ever had, which is how he overcame them. It's how he has got our signings playing well, it's why we do look like we are trying, it's how youth got integrated. 

What I don't know is whether he can go to the next level tactically and coach these players to be better than they are or whether he is just the best manager in the world at picking XI players and putting them on the pitch. But we need more than that. 

Edited January 7, 20215 yr by bisright1

34 minutes ago, RMH said:

I don't think anyone is defending the way we are playing now, it is those who want Frank out that are defending the sh*t, boring football we mostly played under Sarri. As I said before, I defended Sarri and my god the amount of money I wasted going to games all season (and yes, I was at that City match at the Etihad as well), but I did defend him because I saw what he wanted to play and thought it was good to put up with the crap as the mean to an end. But he didn't want to stay, so bye bye and thanks for trying. Similarly, I see what Frank wants to do here and, even though now we are going through a bad spell of football, I want to stick with him as I don't think this is just down to him. The players are so lethargic that you can see in their faces that they have very little energy. Other teams have looked lost too this season, and others will get back to the slump. I like the idea of football that Frank has brought (play the youth, high intensity football, and more direct attacking football than Sarri) and, also, I don't want to go back to the merry-go-round of coaches. 

Exactly Sarri got my backing because i saw something admist the growing pains, likewise Frank last season for all his greenness i was excited about the potential end product because when things came together we were irresistible. 

My worries have started because this stage of the process we should really be starting to see it come together. I'm not even talking about challenging for titles i'm talking about an identity and consistent style of play that's visible every week come win, draw or lose, we look like strangers out there and it's getting worse with every passing week. 

Edited January 7, 20215 yr by Argo

2 minutes ago, pcmacca said:

I could not agree more. The best teams are hiring coaches who know how they want their team to play, with organised plans and tactics. These coaches then look for available players who could fit into those schemes, buy them then practice, practice and practice. It means that when players are out injured, their replacements can step in and the team performs in generally the same way. Depending on the opposition, they may play a little more conservatively at times but the progressive fast moving, forward passing football will still be in play.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the Chelsea coaches (particularly the main person in training, Jody Morris) are skilled in this area. Instead Chelsea look to buy excellent individual players, and they do have some but there is no obvious playing structure to the team week in week out and instead we have a mishmash. For Chelsea to get a good result, the team need at least 3 or 4 of the very talented players (forwards) to play near their highest level. When they can't due to lack of confidence (Werner), tiredness, even playing in an unfamiliar position (Havertz), not getting regular outings (CHO) and picked for the wrong games (all Chelsea mainly did against City was to send in high crosses without Giroud playing) the rest of the team is not often good enough to get the goals the team needs to win as the defence is creaking against the better sides. This has certainly been shown in the last few weeks. When the crosses do come over there is often no more than two Chelsea players in the box. When other teams attack, they have many more racing in at pace. Does anyone really believe Kante, Mount, Kovacic or Jorginho are going to score more than the odd goal this season in free play? I have said this before, if Chelsea want to compete consistently at the top level, they need a coach who can combine all of the individual talents to work as a unit and that does not mean just trying to have more possession by passing sideways or backwards all the time. FL offers History and Enthusiasm, Jody Morris little else. I think back a couple of seasons ago to the match against Liverpool in the UEFA Super Cup where Chelsea were unlucky to lose on penalties. That night their football was exciting and dynamic but whatever they do now in training, it has all been lost. Of course Chelsea will win a few games against lower positioned teams this season and occasionally may even look quite good when individuals play well but unless significant changes to the coaching setup are made, I fear the last few weeks are going to be the norm. If FL does get replaced, he will regret not looking for a better coach to work alongside him.

We have other coaches than Jody Morris and frank lampard is also supposed to be the head coach, Jody isn't the main man. 

He hired a good coach in the summer. It's literally not just the two of them 

Jody is an assistant. He's meant to meat out franks instructions and motivate the team. He's not our tactical mastermind and doesn't have to be. 

Edited January 7, 20215 yr by bisright1

4 minutes ago, bisright1 said:

We have other coaches than Jody Morris and frank lampard is also supposed to be the head coach, Jody isn't the main man. 

He hired a good coach in the summer. It's literally not just the two of them 

Jody is an assistant. He's meant to meat out franks instructions and motivate the team. He's not our tactical mastermind and doesn't have to be. 

If you watch City or Liverpool, you will have always some idea of how they are going to play. Match to match I have no idea of how Chelsea are going to play so who is the tactical mastermind? Has he been isolating due to Covid the last few weeks/months?

8 minutes ago, Argo said:

Exactly Sarri got my backing because i saw something admist the growing pains, likewise Frank last season for all his greenness i was excited about the potential end product because when things came together we were irresistible. 

My worries have started because this stage of the process we should really be starting to see it come together. I'm not even talking about challenging for titles i'm talking about an identity and consistent style of play that's visible every week come win, draw or lose, we look like strangers out there and it's getting worse with every passing week. 

But that's just it, we have seen progress even this season, we have played well against Leeds, Sevilla, or coming back against West Brom (three down due to individual mistakes, we would not have come back in recent previous seasons), and I thought we started well against ManCity, or we showed glimpses of good play against Villa. I'm sorry, I'm not all doom and gloom, there are several clean sheets and good attacking at the beginning of the season. You can see now in the players faces that they are shattered, OK, we are playing crap and that Arsenal game was disgraceful, but against City you can see that players are all over the place but can't really run and are just basically jogging. I put that down to tiredness and we'll get over it. But mostly, I don't see any long-term manager available at the moment and I don't want to go down the hire-fire route again. Let's see how Frank does this season, which is what an interim coach would do, and assess at the end of it. But that's just my opinion.

8 minutes ago, Argo said:

Exactly Sarri got my backing because i saw something admist the growing pains, likewise Frank last season for all his greenness i was excited about the potential end product because when things came together we were irresistible. 

My worries have started because this stage of the process we should really be starting to see it come together. I'm not even talking about challenging for titles i'm talking about an identity and consistent style of play, we look like strangers out there and it's getting worse with every passing week. 

I think the signings have been somewhat a blessing and a curse for Lampard especially considering majority of them are first teamers. I think he established a functioning squad last year and things were starting to take shape and he could've possibly done with Mendy, Chilwell and maybe Ziyech (With Willian leaving) but all the other high profile signings has meant he has started from scratch again.

I think 6 weeks ago he started to get some form of identity established within the team but injuries to key personnel and downturn in results has left the squad drained of confidence. I have confidence in Lampard to hit the reset button during this phase which is a bit of a post winter break. He just did not have the time to change things up in the winter's congested period, it is all well and good for members like us to say lets go 3 at the back or shift and go with 2 strikers etc, but implementation takes days on the training pitch and he has just not had that during this tough period.

We need to give him time to make these changes, I agree at times he has appeared lost on the sidelines but with time on his side where he has been able to establish a Plan A, B, C etc. This is his 3rd season in Management and I am sure with time he will be able to establish a playing style which will be beneficial to the team long term.