5 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

You do know we signed six players this summer that are likely to start the majority of our games? Is that not changing the personnel? 

We were without our first choice central defender and goalkeeper... Guess which two positions made errors leading to goals yesterday? 

Zouma and Christensen are very limited players but we're stuck with them for now. There's a real lack of quality centre backs available and that's why we signed a 35 year old Silva... We knew we were unlikely to shift any of the current centre backs and that's why we've still got 5 on the books. 

This is a three year plan with Lampard. Year 1 was a success because he got top 4 and promoted several academy players into the first team squad. 

Now we can buy players we've addressed getting a quality striker in that's been lacking since Diego Costa left, we've replaced Willian and Pedro, freshening up the wide options for the first time in about 5 years. Replaced the creativity we lost through Hazard leaving with Havertz. Addressed the goalkeeper problem with signing Mendy. Addressed the problem of having no quality left back. 

But there is still work to do, we need better centre backs, don't be surprised to see us sign 2 next summer... Or even go all in for Declan Rice come January. 

We know the weaknesses of this team and so does Lampard and the board... It's a marathon not a sprint to fix it and Lampard's job is going to be to keep us competitive and in the top four until then. 

Fair point, and i appreciate the money that Roman has spent. My worry is as ive said with Silva and his age, how many games will we get out of him. Take him out of the equation and we're stuck with literally the same back four that shipped over 50 goals last season. With Spurs, Arsenal and Everton all stronger this season, there's no guarantee that we will finish top 4. If we were unlikely to shift any of our centre backs in the last window why should that change in the next one. I cant help but feel that we put all our eggs in one basket and focused too much on changing our attacking options(yes i agree we needed to) when our more serious weaknesses lay in defence. In other words we've taken a gamble, i hope it doesn't haunt us.

For me Jorginho has been playing well this season and Frank has seen the value he has as a playmaker to link play from our four strange drunkards, I mean defenders, to Kai, Mount, Werner et al. With Zyiech and Pulisic he will only become more valuable.

What Frank has failed to do and must do in order to be successful here is sort out the defence. We all know it but we cannot keep giving away cheap goals.

It is schoolboy stuff. How a big lad like Kai is muscled off the ball and plays in Ings while Christensen is on co co land not watching.

How Zouma shanks his back pass and Kepa misses the ball entirely.

How he got his subs wrong again. You dont take off Mount rather than Kai or Pulisic whem defending a lead. You dont bring on a none match fit Zyiech.

You dont leave on Dave who misplaced pass after pass and looked out of sorts all second half. You dont bring on Tammy rather than a defender in the dying minutes when defending a lead. Each sub hurt us.

Yes easy to say in hindsight, but was what I was thinking as these things unravelled while I watched the recording.

Having Silva in defence gives you a better CB, but a 36 year old who goes off with Brazil every month and won't play 2 games a week that often. Even with Silva I still feel we are weak at the back because I see problems with Kante and Jorginho in midfield. Kante has been out of form for a good while now and Jorginho has just as many weakness as positives. We need a Fabinho or Rodri type player, great passer but big, strong, not slow, and can feel in for at the back if a CB gets pulled out of position.

Can the doom-mongers just chill out a bit? I'm not saying Lampard doesn't have to answer some questions about Chelsea's defensive record, despite my arguments elsewhere that the clubs needs another window or two to fix the dross they bought before he arrived.

However, I always felt the first few months was a damage limitation exercise while new players get fit, accustomed to new side, players adapting to them etc. After five games, we are level with Sp*rs, one point behind Arse, just two behind Liverpool, one ahead of city and two ahead of utd (albeit having played a game more). Everton could be a threat and they are five ahead, but their ability to sustain has to be in question as they haven't been challenging the top four for years.

So no, not everything is perfect. There have been some missed opportunities wasted to get all three points v west brom and southampton due to terrible defending. But despite all this, no-one has really got away from us. 

There are reasons to be positive too. Chelsea are the third top goal-scorers with 13 goals and that's despite Pulisic and Ziyech hardly playing yet, Werner and Havertz taking inevitable time to adjust.

The week ahead against Sevilla and Utd will be another significant test, but i don't think people should be writing the season off just yet..  

2 hours ago, axman2526 said:

For me Jorginho has been playing well this season and Frank has seen the value he has as a playmaker to link play from our four strange drunkards, I mean defenders, to Kai, Mount, Werner et al. With Zyiech and Pulisic he will only become more valuable.

What Frank has failed to do and must do in order to be successful here is sort out the defence. We all know it but we cannot keep giving away cheap goals.

It is schoolboy stuff. How a big lad like Kai is muscled off the ball and plays in Ings while Christensen is on co co land not watching.

How Zouma shanks his back pass and Kepa misses the ball entirely.

How he got his subs wrong again. You dont take off Mount rather than Kai or Pulisic whem defending a lead. You dont bring on a none match fit Zyiech.

You dont leave on Dave who misplaced pass after pass and looked out of sorts all second half. You dont bring on Tammy rather than a defender in the dying minutes when defending a lead. Each sub hurt us.

Yes easy to say in hindsight, but was what I was thinking as these things unravelled while I watched the recording.

Jorginho has his moments but watch what he's like defensively. Offers little protection to the back four and doesn't have the pace to get back. Been that way since the first season under Sarri.

3 hours ago, coco said:

But we wanted to be like city and score goals goals goals, at least i stay awake the whole 90 minutes now, the football JM2.2 Sarri and FSW played was  

 

Can't disagree with that. It's certainly fun to see goals, lots of goals. 

3 hours ago, Osgoodwasgood said:

Fair point, and i appreciate the money that Roman has spent. My worry is as ive said with Silva and his age, how many games will we get out of him. Take him out of the equation and we're stuck with literally the same back four that shipped over 50 goals last season. With Spurs, Arsenal and Everton all stronger this season, there's no guarantee that we will finish top 4. If we were unlikely to shift any of our centre backs in the last window why should that change in the next one. I cant help but feel that we put all our eggs in one basket and focused too much on changing our attacking options(yes i agree we needed to) when our more serious weaknesses lay in defence. In other words we've taken a gamble, i hope it doesn't haunt us.

Certainly there is that risk with Silva at his age. However not really fair to blame Ben Chilwell for our defensive frailties last season 😉

51 minutes ago, The Brit said:

Jorginho has his moments but watch what he's like defensively. Offers little protection to the back four and doesn't have the pace to get back. Been that way since the first season under Sarri.

He is definitely not what we are looking for as the defensive midfielder. That seems to be one position where we don't have a clear first choice at present. 

Frank needs to look at some facts.  This is for 19/20 starts only, but can easily add this seasons games.  This is very loose and done quickly, so take with a grain of salt.  Stats read W / D / L % 

- Kepa 55% / 12% / 33%; 1.42 goals against per game - simply put, we lose 1 in 3 games Kepa plays (33 games)
- Caballero 40% / 40% / 20%; 1.40 goals against per game - we lose 1 in 5 Willy plays, albeit a lower sample (5 games)

Zouma 56% / 12% / 32% (25 games); 1.40 goals against per game
Christensen 48% / 19% / 33% (21 games); 1.67 goals against per game
Rudiger 53% / 16% / 32% (19 games); 1.32 goals against per game
Tomori 60% / 13% / 27% (15 games); 1.20 goals against per game

Last season, Lamps used 12 different combinations of 2 or 3 at the back.  For simplicity, discarding the 3 CB games as we do need to get to a 2 CB system, therefore:

When Kepa Played
Zouma / Tomori 63% / 13% / 25% - best output winning 3 in 5, losing 1 in 4 (8 game sample)
Zouma / Christensen (8) OR Christensen / Rudiger (6) OR Christensen / Tomori (2) OR Rudiger / Zouma (4) all had 50% win ratio (20 games total
In any combination Christensen loses between 33% to 50% of starts

When Caballero Played
Only played two at the back twice, both times Christensen /Rudiger - 0% / 50% / 50% (no wins)

What this tells me:
- What we all know - Lampard does not know his best defender or defensive partnerships.  Silva + <insert here, likely Zouma> going forward.
- This is backed up with Lampard changing his CB pairing 15 times last season following previous game (obviously availability plays a part here)
- None are great, and recognize many other variables at play here from conditions, availability, other 9 players, etc.  But Zouma and Tomori yielded most favorable results
- Christensen has the lowest win %, highest loss %, and highest average goals against of any defender 
- Be great to see key data within a game also (i.e. key headers, tackles, errors leading to goal, etc) beyond very high level summary
- I doubt much as changed this season, maybe worse!

6 minutes ago, The Brit said:

Jorginho has his moments but watch what he's like defensively. Offers little protection to the back four and doesn't have the pace to get back. Been that way since the first season under Sarri.

Since Jorginho is being pointed out as the main reason for our bad defending I think we should see a bit closer just how much did he manage to do in the past two seasons.

Here are Jorginho's defensive stats in the PL under Sarri, Jorginho was involved in 37 games in total:

Here are the same stats under Lampard last season, he played 31 games:

Very similar stats, in some stats he was actually better under Lampard and in some under Sarri but you can make an argument that he was actually better under Lampard because he played 6 games less and still managed to have very similar stats. One thing that stands out is that he clearly isn't the best player when it comes to winning duels.

Now lets add to this the team stats, with Sarri we had 21 wins, 8 loses and scored 63 goals and conceded 39, with 16 clean sheets.
With Lampard we had 20 wins, 12 loses and scored 69 goals, conceded 54 and had 9 clean sheets.

We scored 6 goals more under Lampard but conceded 15 goals more as well, under Lampard, Jorginho scored 4 goals and had 2 assists which means he had 2 goals more and 2 assists more under Lampard than under Sarri, while playing less games in total.

Out of the 12 loses with Lampard, Jorginho played in 10 of them and out of 20 wins Jorginho played in 15 of them. In comparison while under Sarri, Jorginho was playing in 7 out of 8 of our loses and played in all 21 wins we had. We lost 17 games with him playing and 3 without him. This also means that the one game which he didn't play under Sarri we lost and that when Lampard didn't play him we lost 2 games and won 5.

In total we had won 5 games without Jorginho and won 36 games with him. With Sarri we had won 55% of all PL games and with Lampard we won 52%, Jorginho in total has managed to contribute for 47% of our wins out of all PL games we played which is a good record considering that we barely managed to win more than half of the games in both seasons.

If we compare Jorginho now to our POTYs, we find that in the season with Sarri our POTY was Hazard and under Lampard it was Kovacic.

Hazard 18/19 played 37 games (same as Jorginho) and was involved in 20 wins and 8 loses. Jorginho in comparison was involved in one more win and one less loss than Hazard.
Kovacic in 19/20 played 31 games (same as Jorginho) and was involved in 16 wins and 9 loses. Jorginho in comparison was involved in one less win and one more loss.

I won't compare the defensive stats of Hazard with Jorginho since it makes no sense but I can do that when it comes to Kovacic:

Kovacic in that same season had made less tackles and had a lower tackle success percentage wise (Jorginho had 3 more tackles made with 1% better success).
Kovacic had 5 more blocked shots than Jorginho (9-4), 42 less interceptions (22-64), 10 less clearances (16-26), same amount of headed clearances (7-7), 73 less recoveries (174-247), 63 more duels won (186-123), 36 less duels lost (115-151), 64 more 50-50 balls won (77-13), 6 areal-battles-won less (8-14), 22 less areal-battles-lost(17-39) and both had 0 errors leading to goal. Clearly Jorginho is better in some stats and our POTY in other stats which only points to the fact that both of them are slightly different in their quality, yet one of them is the POTY and the other one is constantly being blamed as the main problem. This narrative needs to change.

Clearly Jorginho has been performing and doing his role under both managers on a similar level, yet we have conceded more goals in one season and less in another, Jorginho has been in some ways even better under Lampard despite us conceding more goals, so how are we still complaining about a player like Jorginho?

18 minutes ago, PhilH930 said:

Frank needs to look at some facts.  This is for 19/20 starts only, but can easily add this seasons games.  This is very loose and done quickly, so take with a grain of salt.  Stats read W / D / L % 

- Kepa 55% / 12% / 33%; 1.42 goals against per game - simply put, we lose 1 in 3 games Kepa plays (33 games)
- Caballero 40% / 40% / 20%; 1.40 goals against per game - we lose 1 in 5 Willy plays, albeit a lower sample (5 games)

Zouma 56% / 12% / 32% (25 games); 1.40 goals against per game
Christensen 48% / 19% / 33% (21 games); 1.67 goals against per game
Rudiger 53% / 16% / 32% (19 games); 1.32 goals against per game
Tomori 60% / 13% / 27% (15 games); 1.20 goals against per game

Last season, Lamps used 12 different combinations of 2 or 3 at the back.  For simplicity, discarding the 3 CB games as we do need to get to a 2 CB system, therefore:

When Kepa Played
Zouma / Tomori 63% / 13% / 25% - best output winning 3 in 5, losing 1 in 4 (8 game sample)
Zouma / Christensen (8) OR Christensen / Rudiger (6) OR Christensen / Tomori (2) OR Rudiger / Zouma (4) all had 50% win ratio (20 games total
In any combination Christensen loses between 33% to 50% of starts

When Caballero Played
Only played two at the back twice, both times Christensen /Rudiger - 0% / 50% / 50% (no wins)

What this tells me:
- What we all know - Lampard does not know his best defender or defensive partnerships.  Silva + <insert here, likely Zouma> going forward.
- This is backed up with Lampard changing his CB pairing 15 times last season following previous game (obviously availability plays a part here)
- None are great, and recognize many other variables at play here from conditions, availability, other 9 players, etc.  But Zouma and Tomori yielded most favorable results
- Christensen has the lowest win %, highest loss %, and highest average goals against of any defender 
- Be great to see key data within a game also (i.e. key headers, tackles, errors leading to goal, etc) beyond very high level summary
- I doubt much as changed this season, maybe worse!

I have been saying for quite some time now that Christensen makes our whole defense weaker. For me he is the last weak link, we have a new keeper and a new LB and T.Silva. 

Good stats, thanks. My son has already alerted me to the fact that statistically Zouma and Tomori has been our best pairing, and yet Lamps seems to have given up on it.

Out of curiosity, what were the stats when we went for a 3-man central defence? My impression was that it was pretty successful, notably at Spurs, and the players looked comfortable.

I think whichever combination we use is better-off with anyone other than Kepa in goal. His presence just seems to undermine everyone's confidence, especially at set-pieces.

 

4 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

I have been saying for quite some time now that Christensen makes our whole defense weaker. For me he is the last weak link, we have a new keeper and a new LB and T.Silva. 

Yes. The damage Christensen does in two games takes three games for any other defender. 

1 hour ago, The Brit said:

Jorginho has his moments but watch what he's like defensively. Offers little protection to the back four and doesn't have the pace to get back. Been that way since the first season under Sarri.

If we look for him to be a defensive powerhouse like Essien we will always be disappointed. He is a metronome to make us tick. 

We need a powerhouse alongside him

A quick note re the defense.

Villa were the 2nd worst defense in the league last season and now with a new keeper addition are arguably the best with the same defenders, Liverpool (previously the world's best defensive unit) have declined to a parody since Alisson has been crocked even with VVD.  

I think people underestimate the difference Mendy will make if he's as much as competant. No it won't suddenly make us flawless before anyone says it but he will make a huge difference.

7 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

If we look for him to be a defensive powerhouse like Essien we will always be disappointed. He is a metronome to make us tick. 

We need a powerhouse alongside him

I know we were after Rice, but Partey could have been a decent option in that role I think. Plus a fraction of the price quoted for Rice.

2 minutes ago, Argo said:

A quick note re the defense.

Villa were the 2nd worst defense in the league last season and now with a new keeper addition are arguably the best with the same defenders, Liverpool (previously the world's best defensive unit) have declined to a parody since Alisson has been crocked even with VVD.  

I think people underestimate the difference Mendy will make if he's as much as competant. No it won't suddenly make us flawless before anyone says it but he will make a huge difference.

Given put defenders are probably so scared to make even half a mistake with Kepa or Willy behind them I can agree.

Difference is you can put Big Petr pre Helmet in this side and they wont win titles, not without a JT and Ricky.

A good goalkeeper will make sure we get top 4. With quality defenders in front we can win titles as our attack is already beautiful.

3 minutes ago, forbzy said:

I know we were after Rice, but Partey could have been a decent option in that role I think. Plus a fraction of the price quoted for Rice.

Think we hope Kante can do that job. Honestly think we should tell him to play like Maka did. Sit, be an football to the defenders and look to play simple short balls to better offensive players.

Kante is a flaw in our attacking plan but he does very well at breaking up play and making tackles. He is just go far to far forward.

2 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Given put defenders are probably so scared to make even half a mistake with Kepa or Willy behind them I can agree.

Difference is you can put Big Petr pre Helmet in this side and they wont win titles, not without a JT and Ricky.

A good goalkeeper will make sure we get top 4. With quality defenders in front we can win titles as our attack is already beautiful.

Think we hope Kante can do that job. Honestly think we should tell him to play like Maka did. Sit, be an football to the defenders and look to play simple short balls to better offensive players.

Kante is a flaw in our attacking plan but he does very well at breaking up play and making tackles. He is just go far to far forward.

Kante is good at breaking up play. But he needs to be a little bit more disciplined positionally if he wants to cover the Maka role. He certainly could do it though. I assume he plays a similar role for France?

11 minutes ago, Argo said:

A quick note re the defense.

Villa were the 2nd worst defense in the league last season and now with a new keeper addition are arguably the best with the same defenders, Liverpool (previously the world's best defensive unit) have declined to a parody since Alisson has been crocked even with VVD.  

I think people underestimate the difference Mendy will make if he's as much as competant. No it won't suddenly make us flawless before anyone says it but he will make a huge difference.

Where i come from we say 50% of the team is the goalkeeper!

12 minutes ago, forbzy said:

I know we were after Rice, but Partey could have been a decent option in that role I think. Plus a fraction of the price quoted for Rice.

Partey is not that great. You will see with Arsenal. Plus i like the fact that we go for first targets and get them no matter what abd dont settle for 2nd, 3rd or 4th choices like in the past. 

Don't think we are at a crisis point, but with investment comes pressure, nobody will let it slide this season if we aren't in the top 4 by start of the 2021, so criticism and scrutiny are  justified. Because whom he was as a player, I reckon his connection to the club and youth players are clouding his judgment when comes to selection. There's no longer the need to keep picking Mount just because he's one of "us" when there are better alternatives, same on Chrsitensen. He hasn't be good for a year, should have found a replacement by now. Actually we signed the much hyped Sari but kept him away for a year, I fail to imagine how much worse Sari could be.

There's the Jorginho stats 😂 No amount of stats hide the fact Jorginho is so bloody slow and is very weak, two big weaknesses IMO from a central midfielder.

2 hours ago, PhilH930 said:

Frank needs to look at some facts.  This is for 19/20 starts only, but can easily add this seasons games.  This is very loose and done quickly, so take with a grain of salt.  Stats read W / D / L % 

- Kepa 55% / 12% / 33%; 1.42 goals against per game - simply put, we lose 1 in 3 games Kepa plays (33 games)
- Caballero 40% / 40% / 20%; 1.40 goals against per game - we lose 1 in 5 Willy plays, albeit a lower sample (5 games)

Zouma 56% / 12% / 32% (25 games); 1.40 goals against per game
Christensen 48% / 19% / 33% (21 games); 1.67 goals against per game
Rudiger 53% / 16% / 32% (19 games); 1.32 goals against per game
Tomori 60% / 13% / 27% (15 games); 1.20 goals against per game

Last season, Lamps used 12 different combinations of 2 or 3 at the back.  For simplicity, discarding the 3 CB games as we do need to get to a 2 CB system, therefore:

When Kepa Played
Zouma / Tomori 63% / 13% / 25% - best output winning 3 in 5, losing 1 in 4 (8 game sample)
Zouma / Christensen (8) OR Christensen / Rudiger (6) OR Christensen / Tomori (2) OR Rudiger / Zouma (4) all had 50% win ratio (20 games total
In any combination Christensen loses between 33% to 50% of starts

When Caballero Played
Only played two at the back twice, both times Christensen /Rudiger - 0% / 50% / 50% (no wins)

What this tells me:
- What we all know - Lampard does not know his best defender or defensive partnerships.  Silva + <insert here, likely Zouma> going forward.
- This is backed up with Lampard changing his CB pairing 15 times last season following previous game (obviously availability plays a part here)
- None are great, and recognize many other variables at play here from conditions, availability, other 9 players, etc.  But Zouma and Tomori yielded most favorable results
- Christensen has the lowest win %, highest loss %, and highest average goals against of any defender 
- Be great to see key data within a game also (i.e. key headers, tackles, errors leading to goal, etc) beyond very high level summary
- I doubt much as changed this season, maybe worse!

Great post Phil. As bad as Willy is, he still doesn't make as many mistakes as Kepa, that's why I prefer him. 

But it's quite clear by the stats and by watching, that Christensen and Rudiger are our worst 2 defenders. Tomori can be a bit erratic at times but he looks promising also, I'm surprised to see him dropped as much as he has been because in contrast to Rudi and Christensen, I think he offers much more than those two. 

Zouma is obviously the best out of the bunch though, but that also worries me because I don't think Zouma is good enough even though I do think he's a decent defender. For me the defence should be Zouma/Tomori - Silva. Silva should always start when fit and eligble, he looks head and shoulders above everyone else imo. 

2 hours ago, Gol15 said:

Since Jorginho is being pointed out as the main reason for our bad defending I think we should see a bit closer just how much did he manage to do in the past two seasons.

Here are Jorginho's defensive stats in the PL under Sarri, Jorginho was involved in 37 games in total:

Here are the same stats under Lampard last season, he played 31 games:

Very similar stats, in some stats he was actually better under Lampard and in some under Sarri but you can make an argument that he was actually better under Lampard because he played 6 games less and still managed to have very similar stats. One thing that stands out is that he clearly isn't the best player when it comes to winning duels.

Now lets add to this the team stats, with Sarri we had 21 wins, 8 loses and scored 63 goals and conceded 39, with 16 clean sheets.
With Lampard we had 20 wins, 12 loses and scored 69 goals, conceded 54 and had 9 clean sheets.

We scored 6 goals more under Lampard but conceded 15 goals more as well, under Lampard, Jorginho scored 4 goals and had 2 assists which means he had 2 goals more and 2 assists more under Lampard than under Sarri, while playing less games in total.

Out of the 12 loses with Lampard, Jorginho played in 10 of them and out of 20 wins Jorginho played in 15 of them. In comparison while under Sarri, Jorginho was playing in 7 out of 8 of our loses and played in all 21 wins we had. We lost 17 games with him playing and 3 without him. This also means that the one game which he didn't play under Sarri we lost and that when Lampard didn't play him we lost 2 games and won 5.

In total we had won 5 games without Jorginho and won 36 games with him. With Sarri we had won 55% of all PL games and with Lampard we won 52%, Jorginho in total has managed to contribute for 47% of our wins out of all PL games we played which is a good record considering that we barely managed to win more than half of the games in both seasons.

If we compare Jorginho now to our POTYs, we find that in the season with Sarri our POTY was Hazard and under Lampard it was Kovacic.

Hazard 18/19 played 37 games (same as Jorginho) and was involved in 20 wins and 8 loses. Jorginho in comparison was involved in one more win and one less loss than Hazard.
Kovacic in 19/20 played 31 games (same as Jorginho) and was involved in 16 wins and 9 loses. Jorginho in comparison was involved in one less win and one more loss.

I won't compare the defensive stats of Hazard with Jorginho since it makes no sense but I can do that when it comes to Kovacic:

Kovacic in that same season had made less tackles and had a lower tackle success percentage wise (Jorginho had 3 more tackles made with 1% better success).
Kovacic had 5 more blocked shots than Jorginho (9-4), 42 less interceptions (22-64), 10 less clearances (16-26), same amount of headed clearances (7-7), 73 less recoveries (174-247), 63 more duels won (186-123), 36 less duels lost (115-151), 64 more 50-50 balls won (77-13), 6 areal-battles-won less (8-14), 22 less areal-battles-lost(17-39) and both had 0 errors leading to goal. Clearly Jorginho is better in some stats and our POTY in other stats which only points to the fact that both of them are slightly different in their quality, yet one of them is the POTY and the other one is constantly being blamed as the main problem. This narrative needs to change.

Clearly Jorginho has been performing and doing his role under both managers on a similar level, yet we have conceded more goals in one season and less in another, Jorginho has been in some ways even better under Lampard despite us conceding more goals, so how are we still complaining about a player like Jorginho?

Stats don’t tell the whole story. Doesn’t highlight how many times a player is caught out of position, passes in behind etc

And as for talking about goals, he only scores pens so that’s meaningless.

I’m not saying he is the only reason chelsea concede goals but he’s not good enough for the way Lampard wants to play. Too slow. Just watch a replay of Liverpool’s counter attack at anfield for a reminder.

and I, unlike many chelsea fans who voted him player of the season 😬,don’t rate Kovacic much either

23 minutes ago, The Brit said:

Stats don’t tell the whole story. Doesn’t highlight how many times a player is caught out of position, passes in behind etc

And as for talking about goals, he only scores pens so that’s meaningless.

I’m not saying he is the only reason chelsea concede goals but he’s not good enough for the way Lampard wants to play. Too slow. Just watch a replay of Liverpool’s counter attack at anfield for a reminder.

and I, unlike many chelsea fans who voted him player of the season 😬,don’t rate Kovacic much either

The same player under 2 different managers played the same way but we conceded 15 goals more in the PL in the second season so it means it's not up to that one particular player.

You can put Fernandinho and Casemiro and Kante and we still concede most of those goals as long as Kepa and Christensen are playing, tell to Casemiro and Kante and Fernandinho to press high up and the result is identical as having Jorginho and Kovacic doing it.

So good luck finding your perfect player there, if there was another younger version of Busquets, Barcelona and Spain would have found him already...