3 minutes ago, Imran_CFC said:

But that further limits the already limited pool of quality Managers available hence my point that it's not a sustainable approach.

Whoever the Manager is, whether the club sticks with Lampard or brings in someone with experience we just need to give the Manager time to build the squad and establish a playing philosophy and not look to chop and change every time we hit a bad month of results.  

To be fair to the club, chopping and changing works. Since 2005 when we won the league we haven't gone more than 1 season without winning a major trophy, if we don't win anything this season it will be the first time since then we went back to back seasons trophyless.

I personally would like to see us try to bring Lamps up as a manager but if we do sack him, the new manager bounce tends to bring home another piece of silverware.

16 minutes ago, Imran_CFC said:

and I answered your question of playing style, feel free to go back and read.

I just did and I really not trying to be rude but creating overloads in the wide areas to send in high crosses is more of a move rather than a playing style. It is not even a good move against decent teams. I was hoping to hear that the idea was to play fast forward moving triangles between the lines with one touch, and then allowing the pacier players (Werner, CHO and Pulisic) to have space in front of them to run into and receive the ball. Possession based slow build up does not suit the better players Chelsea have and so they can look ordinary when they are forced into a crowd. I have said this before too, the number of times I have seen Chilwell with the ball and Werner has run from the middle to the left into space behind the defenders only to see the ball played backwards or square leaving him frustrated. I am hoping not but I will think I will see it again tomorrow.

 

 

12 minutes ago, sonic90 said:

To be fair to the club, chopping and changing works. Since 2005 when we won the league we haven't gone more than 1 season without winning a major trophy, if we don't win anything this season it will be the first time since then we went back to back seasons trophyless.

I personally would like to see us try to bring Lamps up as a manager but if we do sack him, the new manager bounce tends to bring home another piece of silverware.

But just because it has worked, that by no way means it will work again.

Just think we got lucky in the past as we got some good coaches but also because we still had the backbone of good sides, with JT and Lamps and then we were lucky enough to have the talent of Hazard who almost single-handedly won us games and so many points to get us over the line.

Think if we thought that could work again it would be extremely dangerous and will make us no better than the likes of Watford! 

2 minutes ago, Nibs said:

But just because it has worked, that by no way means it will work again.

Just think we got lucky in the past as we got some good coaches but also because we still had the backbone of good sides, with JT and Lamps and then we were lucky enough to have the talent of Hazard who almost single-handedly won us games and so many points to get us over the line.

Think if we thought that could work again it would be extremely dangerous and will make us no better than the likes of Watford! 

Here is a genuine question. I am not in the least bit against Lampard but please tell me, apart from his history at the club and his enthusiasm for it, why with his lack of experience is he the best manager for Chelsea now? I understand last year with the transfer ban but things have changed and has he really shown enough that he can make a great team out of a talented and expensive bunch of players? I know this season is also different (no pre-season, lack of time between games, injuries etc) but other teams are having to deal with this too and a few surprising teams and coaches appear to be coping better. What have we seen in his short coaching career that indicates things will improve with time? I cannot believe that when the board sanctioned the latest spending, they were looking to play in the Europa League next season.

5 hours ago, Argo said:

Why does everyone act like it's a bad thing? 2 of our last 3 PL title's plus our sole CL have come from being sharp to sack a manager (one of which being our greatest ever against the wish of 99% of the fanbase) when it wasn't working, now compare that to a certain team in North London rich in managerial stability.

Now don't get me wrong i'd love it if we find a long term manager and i'd love it even more to be Lamps (whether that's from turning this around or returning as a more polished manager at a later date) but until we do, Roman's methods >>>>>>>>>>>>>> the Arsenal model.

Short term managers are very... short term. There’s far too many up and downs when we change managers all the time. I’d like to see us achieve a long term success with a long term manager, for example Man United under Ferguson. They were incredibly consistent and challenged for titles every year.

I want us to challenge for titles every year and the only way to do that is stick with the manager imo. We chop and change, the team changes, we have a transition season every two years. It’d be nice if Frank can keep us finishing top 4 consistently, with a decent title challenge every year and a cup here and there.

I reckon he’ll be able to do that if we stick with him. Not for a year or two but he will get there.

1 hour ago, Imran_CFC said:

Whether Frank is the man to take us forward or not is up for debate but continuing with the merry go round of Managers and looking to continue the success we had previously I don't think is. It is a model that is not sustainable in the current climate with FFP rules and more competition in capturing the top talent. Previously we could bring in a Manager and offer them a few high profile signings to build a team around and once the Manager left we were able to offload those players and freshen the squad for the new Manager.

As difficult as it is to bring in quality players it is becoming even more difficult off loading average or specialized players, we may struggle with Jorginho and we werent able to get rid of Bakayako, Rudiger, Emerson & Alonso in the summer & Arsenal have had their own issues with Ozil. Having consistency with a Manager allows a squad to settle and establish a playing style so that even if you have first team player absentees the replacements have some form of resemblance to the player who is being replaced and the team is not impacted greatly. Liverpool as an example have been plagued with injuries this season but the impact has not been that great because the style of play is still consistent whereas with us the moment we've had Reece out our whole play on the right hand side has disintegrated. 

This is where a Sporting Director comes into play, and I am still surprised we haven’t appointed one. A Sporting Director will be responsible for setting up a template for the style of play we want to play, and be responsible for recruiting players along with whoever the manager is. You fire the manager, and the next man coming in will have to work with that template. Bayern are a prime example of this with Salihamidzic overseeing the footballing side, and the coach responsible for training & picking the team.

As for a long term manager, I am not sure it’s a requirement in the modern game. You look at your Dortmund & Bayern that change managers frequently but still have a recognisable style of play, and they still bring onboard young talents. As long as you have a good Sporting Director, there is no need to keep a manager for longevity sake. 

 

4 minutes ago, pcmacca said:

Here is a genuine question. I am not in the least bit against Lampard but please tell me, apart from his history at the club and his enthusiasm for it, why with his lack of experience is he the best manager for Chelsea now? I understand last year with the transfer ban but things have changed and has he really shown enough that he can make a great team out of a talented and expensive bunch of players? I know this season is also different (no pre-season, lack of time between games, injuries etc) but other teams are having to deal with this too and a few surprising teams and coaches appear to be coping better. What have we seen in his short coaching career that indicates things will improve with time? I cannot believe that when the board sanctioned the latest spending, they were looking to play in the Europa League next season.

Of course the answer to that is, we don't know. We hope he is but he might not be. But then we don't know if a coach like Tuchel or Allegri would be the best manager for Chelsea either. Just as Arsenal found out with Emery and Barca have found out with their recent coaches, ALL appointments are a gamble.

For me, Lamps HAS to be given more time. Not just because he is a CFC legend and the fact the the guy loves the club, but he knows what Chelsea and the supporters is all about and he's a very intelligent bloke and a class act - - we're not talking Wayne Erm Rooney here! If we give him time and it doesn't work then fair enough - we'll all move on but at least he'll have had a fair crack of the whip. But just imagine if we act rashly now and get rid of him and he goes on to be a big success somewhere else whilst we carry on changing coach every 2 seasons and end up with a fractured squad and still a lack of trophies.

We have to show more patience and get out of this "devine right to success" thing we seem to have these days.

I'm all for giving Frank time and it's not like I'm demanding he win the title or at least put up a challenge (which Ole is doing). But the fact is we didn't spend £200m to miss out on top 4 and  fight for position with mid table clubs who don't have a fraction of our budget.  I just  can't see how anyone can think we will be successful under Frank in the coming years if we end up going backwards on a year where we had none. Just think of the excuses we would be making for Frank if we spent £20m in the summer, whilst sitting in the same position we are now. It would be "the board didnt back Frank and improve the squad".

2 hours ago, sonic90 said:

To be fair to the club, chopping and changing works. Since 2005 when we won the league we haven't gone more than 1 season without winning a major trophy, if we don't win anything this season it will be the first time since then we went back to back seasons trophyless.

I personally would like to see us try to bring Lamps up as a manager but if we do sack him, the new manager bounce tends to bring home another piece of silverware.

Not if the interim manager is Avram, as the know it all media is guessing.

55 minutes ago, KonaKai Blue said:

I'm all for giving Frank time and it's not like I'm demanding he win the title or at least put up a challenge (which Ole is doing). But the fact is we didn't spend £200m to miss out on top 4 and  fight for position with mid table clubs who don't have a fraction of our budget.  I just  can't see how anyone can think we will be successful under Frank in the coming years if we end up going backwards on a year where we had none. Just think of the excuses we would be making for Frank if we spent £20m in the summer, whilst sitting in the same position we are now. It would be "the board didnt back Frank and improve the squad".

But we only spent £200m because we weren't able to spend a thing last season. Mendy, Chilwell and Ziyech have all been decent - it is only the two big signings of Havertz and Werner who have been a let down. When (If) they come good, we really should be competing top 4 again. That's what I mean about luck. Man Utd spunked all that money on Pogba who has been a flop and troublesome to the squad (although maybe he is finally knuckling down now). They sign Fernandez for half of what they paid for Pogba and he has been a complete revelation and probably saved OGS his job. IF Havertz had performed for us like Fernandes had for United then it could be us sitting at the top of the PL. And maybe if we give it time we will.

Is tomorrows games the absolute definition of a must win game, extraneous pressures starting be exerted

1 hour ago, Nibs said:

But we only spent £200m because we weren't able to spend a thing last season. Mendy, Chilwell and Ziyech have all been decent - it is only the two big signings of Havertz and Werner who have been a let down. When (If) they come good, we really should be competing top 4 again. That's what I mean about luck. Man Utd spunked all that money on Pogba who has been a flop and troublesome to the squad (although maybe he is finally knuckling down now). They sign Fernandez for half of what they paid for Pogba and he has been a complete revelation and probably saved OGS his job. IF Havertz had performed for us like Fernandes had for United then it could be us sitting at the top of the PL. And maybe if we give it time we will.

We spent £200m because Roman wants us to Challenge for the top honours, plain and simple. That is the standard set since he arrived. And to be fair we still managed to make Kovacic move permanent and had a new player in Pulisic. Imagine if the rules were so strict that we couldn't do that. 

Regardless, there are only 3 or 4 clubs capable of spending such money in a window (transfer ban or not) and luckily we are one of them thanks to a great business model and ambitious owner.

With regards to our signings, yes if they performed to how we all hoped and expected, we would be challenging for the league 100% as Pool have dropped off from last season.

But for one reason or another which includes Frank not getting the best out of them, they aren't doing the business and our star studded team are worse off than last season.

14 hours ago, Argo said:

That comes down to appointing different style's of manager in recent times. We've tended to shift from the idealist approach to pragmatism and back, we went from trying to implement a new style of play to transition from the old guard era to Hazard/Azpi/KDB etc to appointing Mou and Conte for quick fixes to then deciding we want the 2012 approach again by bringing in Sarri.

Which is why now we've gone for Sarri and then Lamps we must commit to the more progressive style of manager if the time comes for Lampard and then again if the time comes for the next one, if we go for an Allegri or Simeone type even as an interim we've thrown the (largely good) work of the last 2 and a half years away. If we have a club driven style of play that filters from the top all the way to the academy we could appoint not so great manager's and still have a high chance of success (ala Barcelona up until their recent collapse).

I agree on signing manager with similar style, that will help but we also need to do better on transfer department. 

It has been a while since we make splash in transfer market, we finally did it last season 200 m. But it was kinda poorly planned, can  you fit puli, Ziyech, Havertz, Werner in one team in real life, in fifa or fm, it is easy 4231 works like magic, sadly in realy life it is not the case. 

1 hour ago, Bob stark said:

I agree on signing manager with similar style, that will help but we also need to do better on transfer department. 

It has been a while since we make splash in transfer market, we finally did it last season 200 m. But it was kinda poorly planned, can  you fit puli, Ziyech, Havertz, Werner in one team in real life, in fifa or fm, it is easy 4231 works like magic, sadly in realy life it is not the case. 

I still think Haverz was never an active target but when we became aware of a chance of getting him then we had to go for it, he's a generational talent so we couldn't miss put on him. 

7 hours ago, Bob stark said:

I agree on signing manager with similar style, that will help but we also need to do better on transfer department. 

It has been a while since we make splash in transfer market, we finally did it last season 200 m. But it was kinda poorly planned, can  you fit puli, Ziyech, Havertz, Werner in one team in real life, in fifa or fm, it is easy 4231 works like magic, sadly in realy life it is not the case. 

True but it's also fair to say that Lampard abandoned the 4-2-3-1 pretty fast due to different reasons but our best win in the league this season was when we played 4-2-3-1 against Palace, we totally controlled that game and after our first goal Palace tried to risk more and they just got outclassed.

21 hours ago, dansubrosa said:

Short term managers are very... short term. There’s far too many up and downs when we change managers all the time. I’d like to see us achieve a long term success with a long term manager, for example Man United under Ferguson. They were incredibly consistent and challenged for titles every year.

I want us to challenge for titles every year and the only way to do that is stick with the manager imo. We chop and change, the team changes, we have a transition season every two years. It’d be nice if Frank can keep us finishing top 4 consistently, with a decent title challenge every year and a cup here and there.

I reckon he’ll be able to do that if we stick with him. Not for a year or two but he will get there.

It's still a question if Lampard has what it takes but I personally think that having a longer term solution for a manager where he will have the time to build a whole new generation that will fight for titles is what the club wants to do right now despite the fact that we haven't suffered that much from sacking different managers.

I'm not sure if our own model works in the global sense, sure we have managed to fight for the titles and to be up there with the top teams but as time has been passing we see that it's harder and harder to achieve that consistency when different managers have different styles and I don't think we can find many teams that managed to be close to the top while sacking managers for a such a long time period as we have.
Like @Nibs pointed out, just because our model has worked it doesn't guarantee us that it will keep working and the reality is that we have been struggling to find that consistency in the recent years.

A team like Spurs that was irrelevant before has managed to jump in the new "big 4" conversation in the last few years due to them having a stable system with 1 stable manager, they sacked Poch as soon as he couldn't deliver though so we'll see how they will do now...

But this talk about the Arsenal's model though, I do want to point out that Wenger wasn't spending at all compared to us, United and City and he did manage to land Arsenal in top 4 for many years in a row despite being really behind in the market. At the time when United had a huge squad they were still spending and we started spending a whole lot and then Man City as well, Wenger at that time managed to still be relevant while not spending at all and that resulted in them building a whole new arena with 0 loans and 0 debts, Wenger is in fact one of the legendary managers of the PL no matter how much we don't really care about Arsenal we have to acknowledge the fact that Wenger made them a bigger team.

Edited January 16, 20215 yr by Gol15

21 hours ago, Nibs said:

Of course the answer to that is, we don't know. We hope he is but he might not be. But then we don't know if a coach like Tuchel or Allegri would be the best manager for Chelsea either. Just as Arsenal found out with Emery and Barca have found out with their recent coaches, ALL appointments are a gamble.

For me, Lamps HAS to be given more time. Not just because he is a CFC legend and the fact the the guy loves the club, but he knows what Chelsea and the supporters is all about and he's a very intelligent bloke and a class act - - we're not talking Wayne Erm Rooney here! If we give him time and it doesn't work then fair enough - we'll all move on but at least he'll have had a fair crack of the whip. But just imagine if we act rashly now and get rid of him and he goes on to be a big success somewhere else whilst we carry on changing coach every 2 seasons and end up with a fractured squad and still a lack of trophies.

We have to show more patience and get out of this "devine right to success" thing we seem to have these days.

Patience is something the fans may have but it is not something the Board seem to show at times of stress. And what do I mean by stress. Before the Fulham match Chelsea sit 10th in the table. I also saw the desire for a long time run that Ferguson had but please do bear in mind that he had years of experience before joining United. I also know that it didn't go well at the start with United but his experience and earlier success was there for all to see so they allowed him to continue believing he could turn it round. I hope Frank is equally capable but I really would like to see more proof and quickly before change becomes more likely.

31 minutes ago, pcmacca said:

Patience is something the fans may have but it is not something the Board seem to show at times of stress. And what do I mean by stress. Before the Fulham match Chelsea sit 10th in the table. I also saw the desire for a long time run that Ferguson had but please do bear in mind that he had years of experience before joining United. I also know that it didn't go well at the start with United but his experience and earlier success was there for all to see so they allowed him to continue believing he could turn it round. I hope Frank is equally capable but I really would like to see more proof and quickly before change becomes more likely.

But patience without seeing any improvement is a "waste of time". 

8 hours ago, dkw said:

I still think Haverz was never an active target but when we became aware of a chance of getting him then we had to go for it, he's a generational talent so we couldn't miss put on him. 

No disrespect to you and I've seen many fans label him as this 'generational talent', I quite frankly see it as BS. He's shown nothing of being the sort since making a big move. People who I've seen in the past that can be labelled as such are Rooney, Kaka and Hazard. Havertz is just hype so far.

Should be fired on the spot if he can’t be a ten man Fulham f**king pathetic 

Edited January 16, 20215 yr by IndianaBlue85

6 minutes ago, IndianaBlue85 said:

Should be fired on the spot if he can’t be a ten man Fulham f**king pathetic 

At least wait til the game is over.

1 minute ago, Stim said:

At least wait til the game is over.

If you actually read my post it said IF 

I think that game saved Lampards job. But where do we go from here? Can we really persist with playing like against the likes of Leicester? Something has to change in the way we play, and it's worth giving Callum the nod over Pulisic for the time being. 

Happy we've won, but I'm not confident against Leicester. 

The tactic and performance were just for Championship. We had luck Mount to score, because of GK error.

1 hour ago, KonaKai Blue said:

No disrespect to you and I've seen many fans label him as this 'generational talent', I quite frankly see it as BS. He's shown nothing of being the sort since making a big move. People who I've seen in the past that can be labelled as such are Rooney, Kaka and Hazard. Havertz is just hype so far.

Hindsight is an amazing thing.