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Now that the season is over (the Bayern game doesn’t matter), I want to give my personal opinion on the past 12 months at Chelsea. I’m not going to talk about a lot of stats, more about what I’ve seen with my eyes and what I’ve felt.
After 2016-17, this was perhaps the first season where I looked forward to watching Chelsea every week. The football we played was far better than the past few seasons and we did it with a bunch of likeable young players too. You can’t put a price on that.
The way the season ended was a real bummer but if you had given me a top 4 finish while playing some amazing football and a FA Cup final in July 2019, I would’ve taken the deal. This was the season that properly pulled me back into the club after years of apathy and limbo.
Everyone, including myself, thought we would not go far with a bunch of academy players and a rookie manager. Watching them fly on a weekly basis was amazing, with all the highs and lows it brought. Never have I been happier to be proven wrong.
For all the talk about our young players, it was in fact our so-called senior players that let us down. I will not be surprised if the Manchester United Player of the Year award goes to a Spanish GK for yet another season. I’m not talking about De Gea, btw.
The “technical” and “intelligent” players we bought under previous managers for silly money proved to be our weakest links. For example, we have no midfielder who can attack besides Mount and no midfielder who can defend besides Kante. We have no GK too.
The fanbase loves to talk about how our midfield is strong but the truth cannot be further away. We have plenty of midfielders but few functional ones. In the 4-3-3 Lampard favors, only Kante and Mount have specific positions in the XI. The rest are square pegs in round holes.
Despite our personnel weakness, we did phenomenally well. Take nothing away from that. Chelsea were on the end of some unprecedented bad luck but it only served to bring a lot of us closer to the club. The cup final summed up our season in that regard.
Our project is something that players clearly believe in, as seen by how Ziyech and Werner were ready to sign despite no guarantee of CL next season. The next step is to secure Havertz and a few defensive reinforcements – in obvious positions of need.
Getting rid of the bad apples is equally important too. There are close to 10 “senior” players who quite frankly have no business being near a club of Chelsea’s ambitions. If we want to rejoin the elite, getting rid of them is just as important as buying new ones.
If you want a statistical look at things, this thread might help you. But even ignoring our terrific numbers, I am happy with the job Lampard has done this season. He is not perfect and he has plenty to learn but he has done well regardless of his flaws. https://twitter.com/ExpectedChelsea/status/1287754792182448128">https://twitter.com/ExpectedC...
It is easy to look at our points total and position and say we were worse than last season but anyone with a pair of eyes can confirm otherwise. There are people who want only one style of play, even if our current style is far better. Ignore them.
Honestly, I don’t think Lampard gets the praise he deserves for his tactical nous. It is not easy to outplay every single team in the top 8 with a squad as young as ours. What we lacked in terms of personnel, we made up with strategy and intensity. Proper coaching, that.
Lampard has not only beaten big teams, he has beaten them by playing on the front foot. It would have been easy for him to sit deep and hit them on the counter like a few other rookie managers have but he didn’t choose the easy option. That takes some real bravado.
Where does Lampard have to improve? Squad management and player fitness, mainly. Lampard’s lack of rotation directly led to injuries at multiple points this season. His in-game management is not perfect but has come along nicely since August.
Tactically, he has gotten a few matches wrong but every manager gets a few wrong in a season with 60 games. His positives far outweigh his negatives as far as tactics are concerned. He will improve with time, of course, but tactics is not a major sticking point for now.
To conclude, this has been one of my favourite Chelsea seasons despite everything that was thrown at us. We were unlucky but it should only bring us closer.
We have achieved our ambitions for this season, here is to bigger and better things in the future.
We have achieved our ambitions for this season, here is to bigger and better things in the future.
