2022/23 Frank Lampard

[Dougie]

He has to play someone at full back who's willing to actually go forwards.

The combination of Mykolenko and Coleman has been absolutely horrendous since Patterson's injury.

Yeah I feel the balance was right with mykolenko and Patterson. Patterson bombs forward while mykolenko looks to get to half way line and pass inside. With Patterson out it’s having negative effect on us further up the pitch. For me while Patterson is out Ruben should get the nod at left back, if it works great having noting to lose by not trying him. If he does well and then we get Patterson back we have great attacking fullbacks.

 

[MikeH72]

Blaming the fixtures?! We had Villa, Forest, Brentford and Leeds and in succession. That was our chance to get decent points on the board and build confidence but we got a 3 points out of 12.

And we got very decent results in tough away games at Brentford and Leeds. Forest we should’ve won but had no centre forwards, Villa was away and we had no centre forwards.

Our home fixtures have stunk, that is not up for debate. Forest has been the only one we’ve gone into as favourites, we’ve played 4 of last season’s top 7 aside from that. We have a favourable run of home games coming up and we have to take advantage because home form is what’ll see us through as it was last season.

 

[twoblue]

He's played 12 games with a brand new team and lost 4 games to Chelsea, United, Spurs, Newcastle who all out spent, in form, and will finish in the top 7 of the table.

iMO his management starts from this season, not from the Holocaust of last

?in a nutshell.
Only the forest match is a game that you would have said at the start of the season was a game we should have won but didn’t. (I bet if we played them now we’d win)

 

[Sharpies volley]

I'd seriously consider playing 442 on Saturday. Back 4 how it is. Play Gueye and Onana in the middle with Mcneil wide on one side and Iwobi wide the other, both playing as wide midfielders rather than out and out wingers that way they'll nullify their wingers and are able to come inside to support the midfield 2. Then Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Maupay up front to give their defense something to worry about. Back to basics.

Or even bring Garner in and push Onana wider instead of Mcneil.

 

[Lanolin]

It isn't half the league. The last 3 games have been against top 6 teams.

As I said in the post you're quoting, it's more than a third of the league. It's a lot of teams to be writing off as unbeatable.

 

[BenToffee79]

We wrote off the first 5 games. Who does this

 

[everton1953]

I don't know if Lampard is an average to good manager or not. What I do know is that Guardiola would struggle with this squad. We all know the recent calamitous running of this club has brought us to this low level. I just hope that the people who have the responsibility will ensure Lampard will get suitable replacements in January to prevent another relegation battle. There is a long time to go yet before we start crapping in our pants. Just don't waste the opportunity in January.

 

[zook]

Yeah I feel the balance was right with mykolenko and Patterson. Patterson bombs forward while mykolenko looks to get to half way line and pass inside. With Patterson out it’s having negative effect on us further up the pitch. For me while Patterson is out Ruben should get the nod at left back, if it works great having noting to lose by not trying him. If he does well and then we get Patterson back we have great attacking fullbacks.

We don't stretch opposition defences whatsoever with Myko/Coleman. It's absolutely no surprise that we create so little without that threat from overlaps yet Lampard has had 3 games in a row to do something about that and hasn't which is a massive worry.

You can get by with middling wide forward players like Gray and Gordon if you've got your fullbacks providing an outlet to drag defenders away.

Instead our gameplan seems to be relying completely on Gray/Gordon to bypass 2 defenders on their own to create any attacking threat.

 

[smileychap]

Blaming the fixtures?! We had Villa, Forest, Brentford and Leeds and in succession. That was our chance to get decent points on the board and build confidence but we got a 3 points out of 12.

This is spot on.... for how many of those games were we without a 'forward' (let's not pretend Maupay is a headline CF either, btw).

But also the losses against bonafide top half cubs have also not been 'embarrassing' as such:

Man U - we led then made silly mistakes in MF
Spurs - could NOT score 1st half and paid for it
New C - OK, bit lack lustre.

Need to get back into good habits. But I think most rational fans would have taken where we are right now at the start of August. Some better games coming up...

Badly need more width and intent in the final third from our full-backs (missing Patt-meister). Them bombing on a bit more will help Iwobi, Onana, Gordon et al hit the box more to help out Moped and DCL, too.

 

[TheBigIguana]

And we got very decent results in tough away games at Brentford and Leeds. Forest we should’ve won but had no centre forwards, Villa was away and we had no centre forwards.

Our home fixtures have stunk, that is not up for debate. Forest has been the only one we’ve gone into as favourites, we’ve played 4 of last season’s top 7 aside from that. We have a favourable run of home games coming up and we have to take advantage because home form is what’ll see us through as it was last season.

At this point just say we don't expect to ever win away.

 

[LocalNative]

?in a nutshell.
Only the forest match is a game that you would have said at the start of the season was a game we should have won but didn’t. (I bet if we played them now we’d win)

Except the quoted post is wrong. He's played 11 (not 12) league games and lost 5 (not 4).

 

[TheBigIguana]

This is spot on.... for how many of those games were we without a 'forward' (let's not pretend Maupay is a headline CF either, btw).

But also the losses against bonafide top half cubs have also not been 'embarrassing' as such:

Man U - we led then made silly mistakes in MF
Spurs - could NOT score 1st half and paid for it
New C - OK, bit lack lustre.

Need to get back into good habits. But I think most rational fans would have taken where we are right now at the start of August. Some better games coming up...

Badly need more width and intent in the final third from our full-backs (missing Patt-meister). Them bombing on a bit more will help Iwobi, Onana, Gordon et al hit the box more to help out Moped and Dominic Calvert-Lewin, too.

Results could have us 16th by the end of the day and we play awful football. And I don't mean how pretty it is to watch I mean how likely we are to win matches. We're bad and are going to lose more playing at this level. So who exactly was ok with that?

 

[MikeH72]

At this point just say we don't expect to ever win away.

Well we finished 16th last season and won 1 away game so no, I don’t expect to win away. Away wins are gold dust and a huge bonus, don’t particularly care if you like it or not because it’s reality.

 

[Colonel Getafe]

Think the fact it then took 70mins for us to make a change compounded the misery altogether. Even then it was all like-for-live changes, rather than really throwing the kitchen sink at them we settled for a 1-0 defeat.

Newcastle were 1-0 up and made a change at half time, we waited another 25 minutes. Baffling. As I said to someone yesterday, if old Mourinho would have been watching that performance and had 5 subs to use, he'd have hooked at least 3 off before half time.

 

[Stevie Nicks Bootleg]

Well we finished 16th last season and won 1 away game so no, I don’t expect to win away. Away wins are gold dust and a huge bonus, don’t particularly care if you like it or not because it’s reality.

If this is the case then we'll never have a good run of fixtures (and the most home games we'd ever have consecutively is two).