In his first season as Premier League manager, Frank Lampard overcame the loss of Eden Hazard and a ban on moves to take his appearance to fourth position and Qualification for the Champions League. Chelsea will also play in the FA Cup final on Saturday. Somehow, this season has been incredibly successful. A number of young players who have had blood, Christian Pulisic looks incredibly promising in the wake of his post-reboot form, and with Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech, and perhaps Kai Havertz too, all in a position to arrive, the ostensible long term. looks brilliant.
But there are some questions. Chelsea finished third last season, picking up six more problems than this season, completing fourth. He also won the Europa League and led Manchester City to the aftermath in the League Cup final last season. There is a strange dissonance between Lampard’s birthday party and the widespread frustration he feels with Maurizio Sarri. The argument has been that Sarri’s football was heavy, and it is true, to some extent, although it was remarkable how the pre-season patience communication with a coach trying a revolution was temporarily forgotten. It is difficult to avoid concluding that other criteria apply to a young English coach who plays the media game well and a grumpy Italian whose press congresses oozed resentment.
None of this invalidates what Lampard has accomplished. Chelsea football has been offensive and exciting, and its move to 3 sides and the tension of Willian and Mason Mount have been at least partly guilty of Manchester United’s tasteless functionality in the FA Cup semi-finals.
However, there are still major concerns.
Obviously, there’s the defense. Chelsea have conceded 54 league goals, rather than in the sensible maximum half, and only one of their worst defensive seasons in the Premier League. This is partly due to the depressing form of Kepa Arrizabalaga, still the greatest beloved goalkeeper in history. He has noticed a lower proportion of framed shots this season than any other goalkeeper since Opta began accumulating knowledge in 2003. Lampard, perhaps unsurprisingly, lost his temper and covered Willy Caballero on the last day of the season, and offered himself for a likely new guardian, even if the option to recover something like the $90 million paid by Kepa is remote.
But it’s not just the number of goals, it’s the type of goals. Only Norwich and Aston Villa have conceded more goals in cross-games. After West Ham shook Chelsea from a series of corners, Lampard lamented the lack of height on his four backs. Maybe there’s something there, none of Antonio Rudiger, Andreas Christensen, Kurt Zouma or Fikayo Tomori is a commander, and it would be a marvel if there wasn’t at least one primary end at headquarters and probably also on the left. -back.
No team, on the other hand, has awarded as many goals to fast counterattacks as Chelsea. Again, the body factor of workers can be increased. Jorginho has never been inspired by Chelsea blue, while N’Golo Kante has had his worst season in England, which would possibly be partly similar to the legal action he worries about in France. But, again, Lampard Derby County has conceded a higher proportion of goals on the clock than any other team in the second-tier league in 2018-19, suggesting that the challenge is structural.
And that’s the biggest concern: protecting games and detained counters is largely a matter of constant drilling in the educational field. Failure in either case generates apparent considerations about coaching, and this can only be Lampard’s responsibility.
Darren Walsh / Chelsea / Getty Images
The other challenge is personality. Lampard seems unusually thin to be a manager. When Raheem Sterling raised the factor of his immediate promotion to Chelsea, Lampard listened again and insisted that he had “worked hard.” Certainly, but the answer seemed strangely lacking in the context of the broader verbal exchange over the racial structures of English football. More trivially, his anger with Liverpool training staff for allegedly breaking “the code” in his recent league game was a reminder of last season’s absurd Spygate, when Lampard seemed overly upset by the violation of an unwritten behavioral theory that only he was aware of. of.
Perhaps he is very sensitive to the problems of respect and decency, in which case playing with Jose Mourinho for so many years must have been a terrible experience; However, other managers would possibly look at this and think he is a manager who can be provoked.
This has been a promising Premier League first season for Lampard in some respects, however, it is transparent that there are also apparent innovations to be made.