30 minutes ago, JM7 said:

Danny Murphy (TalkSport): “Kovačić & Rüdiger went directly to the board to talk about Lampard.”

Matt Law: ‘Rüdiger clashed with Azpi, who attempted to bring the squad together.’

Telegraph: ‘Young players complained of bad treatment from some experienced players.’

Disgraceful.

He said she said stuff from the media. However if some players did indeed do this hope they are gone soon, not likely since Frank got sacked seems they were listened too.

Well I haven't had a chance to read much on the board for a while but just thought I would give my 2 cents:

 

First, I hate seeing Lampard go - probably my favorite player ever. Was thrilled to see him hired as Manager of Chelsea and as most of you was hopeful his success as a player and club legend would transfer to his managerial career. I don't think I ever considered his time at Derby as evidence of his possible success as it was only one year and I also never watched Derby to know anything about his tactics or philosophy. So basically, my whole opinion was based on faith.

Watching Chelsea this season Lampard had two major flaws. First, his insistence on trusting youth a bit too much, he put his Chelsea career on the line to develop players. Tammy Abraham and Reece James are the main culprits as they at times had no business being on the field. Tammy most of all had no business being in the starting 11 for Chelsea in any match outside of a domestic cup.

He may score a goal here or there but he is not a player to be depended on in tough premier league matches or european matches. That is what Giroud and Werner are are there for. Frank really got this wrong -I mean really, starting Tammy Abraham against Leicester? It's almost naïve. 

As for Reece, fantastic talent but has a long way to go to develop as a RB. His positional awareness is lacking and can be lazy tracking back. Azpi can still do a job and should be depended on in big matches.

Frank's second flaw and main reason for his demise was his lack of identity and ability to stick to a starting 11. Are we playing with a lone 6 and 2 number 8's? Or is it a six, eight, ten? Two holding mids and an attacking mid? Frank never decided on that and to make it worse he mixes and matches EVERY game. You cannot do that and expect results.  To compound the problem he tinkers with his striker and wingers constantly. So now you have a midfield with no visible identity, no consistency in selection passing to a forward line that is different each time. Tammy doesn't play like Werner does, and Giroud doesn't play like either. So which identity to we play with? Playing through lines to Werner? Or to feet to Tammy? Or wide to Chilwell and James so they can play 26 crosses in while Giroud is on the bench (Arsenal). 

Lampard may become a fantastic manager but it was never going to be at Chelsea. He needed to learn this lesson as a manager and he will need to identify his style of play. The only manager I don' really see a style of play for that is succeeding is Solsjkaer and even he, at least, is known to play defensive and on the counter. He also has established players all throughout the team that have multiple years of premier league experience to draw from. De Gea, Macguire, Wan Bissaka, Pogba, Fernandes (only 1 year but hes 26) Martial, Rashford etc. 

So, as much as I am saddened that Lampard is gone - it was necessary and inevitable. 

On a final note, he completely misused his new signings Werner and Havertz. Werner is not a winger to be used as such game after game. He's a central striker and he showed his speed and quality doing so earlier in the season. Once Pulisic got injured he moved Werner wide to accommodate Tammy which should have never happened.

Havertz is not a winger yet Lampard started him there on multiple occasions. He is a #10 or attacking midfielder and again he showed his quality early on with his runs from midfield carrying the team into the final third. Yet he gets relegated to the bench. I'm not saying he was brilliant, but if you give him a simple role behind the striker and protect him with your 2 other mids he would have been fine and could have been on track by now. Mason Mount could play a little deeper and Kante sits in front of the back four. 

Anyway, its unfortunate. Hopefully Tuechel brings an identity and doesn't tinker with the setup for the next few weeks. Choose a starting 11 and stick with it until they form a consistency as a group. 

 

Make of this what you will

 

36 minutes ago, JM7 said:

Danny Murphy (TalkSport): “Kovačić & Rüdiger went directly to the board to talk about Lampard.”

Matt Law: ‘Rüdiger clashed with Azpi, who attempted to bring the squad together.’

Telegraph: ‘Young players complained of bad treatment from some experienced players.’

Disgraceful.

The massive article in The Athletic claimed he wanted to move on some senior players because of their poor attitude and build the side around the hungrier youth players but we couldn’t/wouldn’t move them on in the summer. 

2 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Make of this what you will

 

You just don't know, you have to take it with a pinch of salt. It's so easy to speculate and assume. For one, I can believe that with Rudiger, I just don't like him as a bloke or a player, but again, I have 0 evidence to even assume he did that. 

The media can just make up anything, although to Matt Law's credit, he does have some solid connections to the club so that might be true. 

I’m hesitant to believe those rumours because people will always make things up after a manager leaves to find some reason for the poor performances. However I can’t help but feel Rudiger randomly being brought into the line up and kovacic playing every game despite being sh*t is suspicious.

Just now, Munkworth said:

The massive article in The Athletic claimed he wanted to move on some senior players because of their poor attitude and build the side around the hungrier youth players but we couldn’t/wouldn’t move them on in the summer. 

I wouldn't be surprised if some of that is true. We have a lot of senior players on the fringe who cannot be shifted because of salaries etc. They were signed as a result of our board lacking any long term strategy. Frank won't be the first or the last manager to ultimately be shown the door because of this issue. It is pretty clear that Frank backed the younger players that did so well for him last year. Ultimately I suspect that led to his downfall. Perhaps some of the experienced squad players were not happy with their limited roles, and managed to sow dissention.

1 minute ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

I’m hesitant to believe those rumours because people will always make things up after a manager leaves to find some reason for the poor performances. However I can’t help but feel Rudiger randomly being brought into the line up and kovacic playing every game despite being sh*t is suspicious.

Kovacic one puzzles me, I really hope that's not true. Kovacic only has himself to blame for not performing as well as he should be, he's played enough and done very little, but he isn't the only one. 

Rudiger however, I can't imagine him being happy with the minutes he's been getting, he's one who I want to see the back of just on his performances alone. 

Seems to me most likely a perfect storm of fragile egos and messy politics ... and poor Frank caught in the middle of it ... done himself no favours not keeping the communication lines open though, assuming that part is true. I remember similar things being said about Jose, especially from injured players.

 

13 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Make of this what you will

 

 

7 minutes ago, Slojo said:

Kovacic one puzzles me, I really hope that's not true. Kovacic only has himself to blame for not performing as well as he should be, he's played enough and done very little, but he isn't the only one. 

Rudiger however, I can't imagine him being happy with the minutes he's been getting, he's one who I want to see the back of just on his performances alone. 

It does not have to be right and the media knows that. 

Look at some of our "fans" abusing Kepa for being useless. 

What's the betting some idiots get ahold of this and send abuse to Kovacic and racist remarks to Rudiger?

Something must have happened though, it's just hard to trust news sources. 

But something definitely happened in the dressing room, the way these players just turned off and stopped performing was unnatural. It's like they didn't care anymore, lacked enthusiasm or just lost their confidence. The lack of long balls and through balls became irritating, every player just wanted to pass it backwards and sideways. 

I would love to know what actually happened but I guess we will never know. Similar to Mourinho's 3rd season, I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall then, to see how it all fell apart. 

16 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

Make of this what you will

 

Backstabbers.

I thought it might be Christensen but at least he and Giroud have been professionals even when they weren't playing.

I wonder how will Tuchel deal with those two.

Just now, Gol15 said:

Backstabbers.

I thought it might be Christensen but at least he and Giroud have been professionals even when they weren't playing.

I wonder how will Tuchel deal with those two.

He’ll play them every game.

2 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Backstabbers.

I thought it might be Christensen but at least he and Giroud have been professionals even when they weren't playing.

I wonder how will Tuchel deal with those two.

You're just jumping to conclusions without even knowing the details. 

Giroud and Christensen are innocent? You don't know that. You don't even know if Rudiger and Kovacic are guilty. It's all hearsay, don't jump to conclusions without evidence. 

Edited January 25, 20215 yr by Slojo

4 minutes ago, sonic90 said:

When he first started we had a big issue with marking in the box to the point where every team knew how to exploit and basically almost score in every game through a corner or set piece, this was fixed after we conceded far more times than necessary.

More recently there is using Timo on the wing and playing Havertz in games even though he produced nothing at all.
The slow build up play never really changed at all, the one time he did was what happened at CIty when he went overboard and then reverted to type. Kante doesn't have the legs to be box to box anymore and he finally changed that to make him a 6 but then soon went back to 8 after he recovered a bit but he still was more effective as a 6.

He didn't play Giroud until he was on the edge of leaving the club - twice. And he didn't use the cups to experiment with until the edge of himself losing his job.

Our set piece issue has as much to do with Kepa's inability to command his box as it does with Lampard's tactics, with Kepa in goal teams were able to play the ball closer to our 6 yard box increasing the possibility of any deviation resulting in a goal whereas with Mendy they need to be more accurate as he collects anything in & around the 6 yard box.

Werner was used as a winger because we only have 3 natural wingers in the squad (Ziyech, Pulisic and CHO), with Ziyech out injured followed by Pulisic soon after he had no choice but to play Werner on the wing. He had to play Kai Havertz and look to integrate him into the first 11 considering he is our record signing, he played him in a few positions in order to establish where he can be best utilised, had he not given Kai time even that would've been used against Lampard for not giving our record signing time to integrate.

Believe it or not but we do not have any natural CDM's in our squad hence he was pushing for the signing of Rice, he tried playing Kante in the CDM role because one of our biggest weaknesses from last season was our inability to defend on the transition, Kante has predominantly played as a CDM this season with the exception of a handful of games. People question our slow buildup but fail to realize we are having to integrate 6 new first team signings into the first 11 without a pre-season so there will be some issues in buildup play etc. Our best attacking players play wide and Frank was trying to buildup play in the wide areas via Pulisic, CHO, Ziyech Reece etc. because we didnt have any creativity centrally.

Tammy's performance levels have been good at the start of last season and this season therefore dropping him from the outset did not make sense especially considering he is more likely to be our long term number 9 in comparison to Giroud. However every time Giroud has impressed in the cup competition Frank has rewarded him with starts in the league not sure how you can criticize him for that, it wasnt the threat of Giroud leaving that got Giroud minutes but his performance levels.

1 minute ago, Imran_CFC said:

Our set piece issue has as much to do with Kepa's inability to command his box as it does with Lampard's tactics, with Kepa in goal teams were able to play the ball closer to our 6 yard box increasing the possibility of any deviation resulting in a goal whereas with Mendy they need to be more accurate as he collects anything in & around the 6 yard box.

Werner was used as a winger because we only have 3 natural wingers in the squad (Ziyech, Pulisic and CHO), with Ziyech out injured followed by Pulisic soon after he had no choice but to play Werner on the wing. He had to play Kai Havertz and look to integrate him into the first 11 considering he is our record signing, he played him in a few positions in order to establish where he can be best utilised, had he not given Kai time even that would've been used against Lampard for not giving our record signing time to integrate.

Believe it or not but we do not have any natural CDM's in our squad hence he was pushing for the signing of Rice, he tried playing Kante in the CDM role because one of our biggest weaknesses from last season was our inability to defend on the transition, Kante has predominantly played as a CDM this season with the exception of a handful of games. People question our slow buildup but fail to realize we are having to integrate 6 new first team signings into the first 11 without a pre-season so there will be some issues in buildup play etc. Our best attacking players play wide and Frank was trying to buildup play in the wide areas via Pulisic, CHO, Ziyech Reece etc. because we didnt have any creativity centrally.

Tammy's performance levels have been good at the start of last season and this season therefore dropping him from the outset did not make sense especially considering he is more likely to be our long term number 9 in comparison to Giroud. However every time Giroud has impressed in the cup competition Frank has rewarded him with starts in the league not sure how you can criticize him for that, it wasnt the threat of Giroud leaving that got Giroud minutes but his performance levels.

finally a post from someone who has watched us play... the only decisions i would have changed would have been to not play Rudi against city and Leicester .. or try a few games with 3 at the back..

If what is reported is only half true, Tuchel is inheriting a bad locker room that needs to be dealt with very fast.

1 hour ago, bluehaze said:

Absolute nonsense the rent boy thing is because the Chelsea/ Earls Court area in the 70's 80's there were a lot of gay pubs in the area frequented by rent boys. The male prostitute thing was fake news put about by the ICF.

Wouldn’t doubt it sounds like something a rival would make up but I’ve heard that consistently over the years from Chelsea fans not just rivals. 
 

Someone wrote a piece on it but as you say wouldn’t put it past the spammers to make that up. 
 

I didn’t know that about Earl’s Court but I’m born in 82 my missus in the late 90’s early 00’s lived right opposite Earl’s Court and I never saw any of that maybe it shifted by then. 

2 hours ago, reparto corse said:

Apparently he had a track record of promoting youth players while managing Mainz (his first big coaching job).

 

True. But at clubs like Mainz and Dortmund, you have to promote youths since you don't have big wallets like that of PSG and Chelsea to spend on players.

Which youth players did he promoted while at PSG?

 

just wonder when will the board and Roman ever f**king learn to let the manager to decide who he wants to buy instead of throwing players in who arent in the manager's list?

 

what is the point of asking someone to coach when you giving him players that he doesnt want?

 

I think most of this is just gossip, I don't buy the bad dressing room.

Sure Rudiger might have wanted to play more and same goes for Jorginho yet don't think this poisoned the dressing room.

I thought with my ESP skill he was a goner after the Leicester game yet there were no announcements.

I think the board disliked a few of the things he did yet would not have sacked him mid-season if our results were good enough.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, ducavis said:

Have you seen the list of  Conte’s signings at Inter? You don’t want to trust him your money.

If you dont trust your manager's decision to get players then dont hire him at the first place, no point in asking someone to coach and at the same time keep buying players that the manager doesnt want, it is wasting both time and money.

he is 2pt off the top, Seria A regardless, with Inter, getting 2nd in the league is an achievement consider how sh*t they were in the last 5-7 years

Just now, cfcforeverfan said:

just wonder when will the board and Roman ever f**king learn to let the manager to decide who he wants to buy instead of throwing players in who arent in the manager's list?

 

what is the point of asking someone to coach when you giving him players that he doesnt want?

It's the modern approach though isn't it ?  The role is First team COACH not Manager ... he is expected to take whatever he is given and work to improve it, and make the team better than the sum of its parts. It's dangerous to impose a system first and then fit players into it ; you have to assess what you have, and then what system fits best. Hiddink (first time) and Conte (first season) are the managers we have had who most obviously got that right.

4 minutes ago, cfcforeverfan said:

just wonder when will the board and Roman ever f**king learn to let the manager to decide who he wants to buy instead of throwing players in who arent in the manager's list?

 

what is the point of asking someone to coach when you giving him players that he doesnt want?

I’m not sure when this narrative started that frank wasn’t involved in the signings but almost every player we signed this summer said they talked to Frank. Besides if frank didn’t like the players he wouldn’t have forced them to play considering he wasn’t afraid to drop pulisic last season who was a board signing.

After Leeds we were on an upward trajectory looking like it was all coming together, something happened that much is certain..what we will never really know but the fact in the modern game that player revolt can just bring down a team is sh*t. 
 

The club themselves should fine players or resign them to the development squad if they are causing tension, if that happened in a company there would be disciplinary action why not a football club. 
 

I think that’s why conte got rid of Costa despite him being key, Antonio knew what he was doing, the club made a mistake not backing him and by breaking in bad terms with Jose and also not backing him. 
 

I blame the club and players before any of our recent managers.

Out of interest who would take José back?