2022/23 Frank Lampard

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At some point we need to stick it out. Improvement is not always going to be a straight line.

The attack are very poor but not helped by 2 defensive fullbacks. We are a low IQ team going forwards. If you look at our best team under Moyes with Arteta, Peanut’s, Osman and Cahill there were some intelligent footballers there who could make good decisions and take up good positions. Gray needs an age to workout what he is going to do and in fairness with no support from fullback he finds himself isolated
I agree with all that. Our midfield/attack isn’t a patch on those players you mention, they were clever, could pass and interchange with other players- helped by good overlapping fullbacks.

We need to build slowly and add the right players when we can, not just because they’re cheap, available and can be a squad player.
 
But you could have kept Richarlison and still signed pretty much every player you did in summer with the exception of Dwight McNeil and been in pretty much the exact same financial position you are now. Why on earth did Lampard sanction selling your best player to be replaced by McNeil? And if he didn't sanction the sale why does he not have the front to call it out that it was 'forced' on him?
Richarlison wanted to go and only had two years left on his contract. It wasn’t in Lampard’s hands. He has referred a number of times to losing the goals from Richarlison and needing to add in that area. Came close to signing Kudus from Ajax and he’d have made a difference - when that fell through they didn’t get anyone else in and as soon as the transfer window closed, clearly scoring goals was going to be the big issue in the team. Importantly Lmpard said we it was important if we couldn’t get the right player we didn’t just bring someone in for the sake of it
 

But you could have kept Richarlison and still signed pretty much every player you did in summer with the exception of Dwight McNeil and been in pretty much the exact same financial position you are now. Why on earth did Lampard sanction selling your best player to be replaced by McNeil? And if he didn't sanction the sale why does he not have the front to call it out that it was 'forced' on him?
Richarlison wanted to go and only had two years left on his contract. It wasn’t in Lampard’s hands.

He has referred a number of times to losing the goals from Richarlison and needing to add in that area. Came close to signing Kudus from Ajax and he’d have made a difference - when that fell through they didn’t get anyone else in and as soon as the transfer window closed, clearly scoring goals was going to be the big issue in the team. Kevin Thelwell failed Lanpard in that respect this summer.

Importantly Lampard said if we couldn’t get the right player we didn’t just bring someone in for the sake of it. He’s right, if you’ve wasted as much money as we have with no plan, there comes a point where wasting money on players, just because they’re available isn’t an option. It’s why Dwight McNeil seems such a bad signing, as you point out.
 

Richarlison wanted to go and only had two years left on his contract. It wasn’t in Lampard’s hands.

He has referred a number of times to losing the goals from Richarlison and needing to add in that area. Came close to signing Kudus from Ajax and he’d have made a difference - when that fell through they didn’t get anyone else in and as soon as the transfer window closed, clearly scoring goals was going to be the big issue in the team. Kevin Thelwell failed Lanpard in that respect this summer.

Importantly Lampard said if we couldn’t get the right player we didn’t just bring someone in for the sake of it. He’s right, if you’ve wasted as much money as we have with no plan, there comes a point where wasting money on players, just because they’re available isn’t an option. It’s why Dwight McNeil seems such a bad signing, as you point out.
Mbappe wanted to leave psg

Kane wanted to leave spurs

Salah wanted to leave Liverpool

If a player wants to leave it doesn’t mean they actually leave
 
That makes it sound like we couldn't have brought a striker in to replace Richarlison.

The work done on CD and CM has been good. However, the judgement to go with Calvert-Lewin was madness. You need goals to survive and we dont get many.

You'll see again today just how mad that decision was when we start Maupay as our goal threat and Calvert-Lewin resumes his position on the bench because he cant play back to back games
I don’t disagree and said as much during the summer, unless we replaced Richarlison we were going to struggle to score goals. I don’t think people realised just how good Richarlison was and how much he Peres over the cracks in our pathetic midfield/attack last season.

Nobody left in the team has a history of hitting a decent number of goals - seemed very unlikely any of the current bunch were going to score more than 5, let alone 10 goals a season. To that extent Thelwell really let Lmpard down in the summer and as soon as Kudus fell through there was no back up. Pretty sure behind the scenes Lampard was furious about the lack of goal threat and creativity added.

As soon as the window shut, if you looked at this team there were no goals in it and no creativity. We were always going to struggle to score goals with the players we have. I’m just not going to get too excited about not scoring when it was obviously going to be the case. This season with this squad, we’ll struggle to score enough goals to stay up, KITAP1 will be order of the day until we can get to next summer and add creativity and goals to the stronger spine Frank’s built.
 
Mbappe wanted to leave psg

Kane wanted to leave spurs

Salah wanted to leave Liverpool

If a player wants to leave it doesn’t mean they actually leave
True, we’re not in the same financial position as those teams though, are we? We had to sell Richarlison for FFP which is why Spurs bent us over on the fee.
 

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